Former Green party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, left, shakes hands with Cuban President Fidel Castro after a conference at the University of Havana in Havana, Cuba on Tuesday, July 9, 2002. Nader arrived in Cuba on Sunday at the invitation of National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)

"If it takes one to know one, he should be in a very experienced position to advocate a comprehensive corporate reform package and get it through Congress," Nader, the Green Party 2000 presidential candidate, told reporters on a visit to Cuba.

The president went to Wall Street on Tuesday to announce measures to make corporate officers more accountable and boost criminal penalties for corporate fraud in response to scandals that have shaken investor confidence.

Bush is facing questions about his integrity as a director of Texas-based Harken Energy Corp. a decade ago, when the company faced an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for masking huge losses. Democrats in Congress have called for full publication of records of the SEC's 1992 investigation of Bush's trading in Harken shares. The SEC concluded he did not have access to insider information.

"Bush was an irresponsible corporatist with Harken Energy. He managed to sell his stock for hundreds of thousands of dollars two months before the bad news came out," Nader said. "He was on the audit committee. He was on the board of directors. He clearly knew about the bad news."

While Democrats have questioned Bush's qualifications for leading the charge against corporate corruption, Nader said the president was just the man for the job. "Coming out of the corporate world, having done some of these things, having associated with people like Kenny Boy -- Ken Lay of Enron -- he is in the best position possible to enact very fundamental structural systemic corporate reform, and unleash major prosecution against these companies and their bosses through the Justice Department and the SEC," Nader said.

Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd

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