The Informant (2009 film)

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The Informant
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Produced by Jennifer Fox and Gregory Jacobs
Written by Scott Z Burns
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale
Distributed by Warner Brothers
Release date(s) TBA
Country United States
Language English
IMDb profile

The Informant is an upcoming dark comedy thriller film, a true story, directed by Steven Soderbergh.[1] The film is based on the 2000 book, The Informant, by journalist Kurt Eichenwald. [2] The script was written by Scott Z. Burns and the film stars Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, and Joel McHale. Production began in May, 2008 in Decatur, Illinois. Most of filming will be done in Decatur, Illinois.[3] A release date has yet to be announced.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The Informant is a thriller that takes place in Central Illinois during the early-1990s at the Fortune 500 company, Archer Daniels Midland, known as ADM. ADM is an agri-business powerhouse and one of the largest companies in the world. Its former Chairman, Dwayne Andreas, had extensive political connections to both political parties and was also connected indirectly to President Nixon's Watergate.[4] Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon, is the duplicitous hero of the film.[4] The FBI agents involved with the actual case recently went public during the filming and stated that "he is a national hero".[5] Whitacre was a young rising star at ADM where he was the President of the BioProducts Division and Corporate Vice President of the company. As a result of some very odd circumstances, Whitacre also became the highest-level executive to turn whistleblower in U.S. history.

One night in early November, 1992, the high-ranking ADM executive did something extraordinary when he confessed to FBI agent Brian Shepard, played by Scott Bakula, that ADM executives-including Whitacre himself-had routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, a food additive. It was initially Whitacre’s wife, an elementary school teacher, who forced Whitacre to become a whistleblower by threatening to go to the FBI herself if he would not have informed the authorities of ADM’s illegal price-fixing activities. That meeting was stunning in the sense that it revealed a massive criminal conspiracy involving a price fixing cartel. After informing the FBI, he assisted in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the cartel’s activity in business meetings in locations such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. During Whitacre's undercover work that spanned almost three years, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes that documented crimes committed by executives from around the world fixing the prices of food additives in the largest price-fixing case in history at the time.

In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, headlines around the world reported that the whistleblower (Whitacre) defrauded $9 million from his company at the same period of time he was secretly working for the FBI and taping his co-workers. No sooner did an army of federal agents stage a dramatic raid on ADM's Illinois headquarters, than the company hit back with damning evidence that the government's star witness had his own agenda. Whitacre became delusional with the FBI in his failed attempt to save himself. The FBI quickly learned that Whitacre was suffering from manic-depression, also known as bipolar disorder with the resulting grandiosity and embellishments in full bloom. Before the ADM price fixing trail began, the FBI learned that their star witness was suffering from mental illness.

The Informant also focused on Whitacre's meltdown and bizarre behavior which occurred from the pressures of working for the FBI. The story goes into great detail about Whitacre's bizarre behavior and how he cracked under pressure working undercover. After working undercover for years, he became extremely manic, stopped sleeping during most nights, and was seen using a gas leaf blower on his driveway during a thunderstorm at three o’clock in the morning. Whitacre attempted suicide a few months later, but he was saved by his groundskeeper.

Whitacre, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in nutritional biochemistry, was the most improbable figure of the story. With his extremely poor judgment associated with bipolar disorder that became worse the longer he worked undercover, he believed up to the end that he would become chief executive officer of ADM when the dust settled. His wife tried to convince him otherwise. He also became peculiarly suggestible as his mental state diminished: after seeing the movie, The Firm, he imitated its hero, Mitch McDeere played by Tom Cruise, and began taping the FBI agents and storing the tapes for later use.

In the end, because Whitacre violated his immunity agreement with the government, he was also charged for price-fixing, the same case that Whitacre exposed for the FBI, in addition to wire fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. In order to save Whitacre, his first attorney, James Epstein, presented a sterling performance to the top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials convincing them that the government was not duped by Mark Whitacre, but instead the government created him. Epstein emphasized that Whitacre was not trained for FBI undercover work; he was simply thrown in there without any training whatsoever and without any support to prevent him from cracking under pressure. He argued that FBI undercover agents get training for several years, and still do not go undercover longer than a year because they can crack due to the pressure. Whitacre, without training went undercover for almost three years. Epstein told the DOJ officials that he would go public in a trial with everything that Whitacre went through for three years working undercover, and to only be punished after he helped crack one of the largest white-collar cases in history. He convinced the government that Whitacre solved a billion dollar case for the FBI, and that the case was a hundred-fold larger than Whitacre's fraud case. Epstein was successful in getting a very light sentence for Whitacre. He saved Whitacre. However, Whitacre, with his manic-depression fully out of control by then, saw it differently and he fired Epstein because he was not willing to do any jail time.

Whitacre then hired another attorney and they distanced themselves from the government where Whitacre was no longer of value to them as a witness. The government used the tapes in the ADM trials, but not Whitacre. In turn, Whitacre received a federal prison sentence that was three-times longer than the white-collar criminals he exposed in a much larger criminal conspiracy. Kurt Eichenwald, author of The Informant which was the source for this film, and several FBI agents adamantly disagreed with the nine-year sentence that Whitacre received. The story ends with the FBI agents, along with John Ashcroft, working on their attempt to obtain a presidential pardon for Whitacre in return for his substantial assistance with the massive ADM case.

More than ten years later (April 6, 2008), the former FBI supervisor of the price fixing case, Dean Paisley, with backing from the two other FBI agents and a former prosecutor, went public with praise about Whitacre. "Had it not been for the fraud conviction, he would be a national hero”, Paisley said. “Well, he is a national hero", the former FBI supervisor stated. [5] "Withouthim, the biggest antitrust case we've ever had would not have been", Paisley added.[5]

As a result of the hundreds of tapes made by Whitacre, the lysine conspirators, including ADM, ultimately settled federal charges for more than $100 million. ADM also paid hundreds of millions of dollars in class action settlements to customers that it stole from during the price-fixing schemes. Several Asian and European lysine and citric acid producers, whom conspired to fix prices with ADM, paid criminal fines in the tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. government. A few top executives, including the Vice Chairman of ADM who was the son of the former powerful Chairman, received three years of federal prison time. The ADM investigation, in turn, convinced antitrust prosecutors that price-fixing was a far more pervasive problem than they had suspected and led to prosecutions of cartels in vitamins, fax paper, and graphite electrodes. Billions of dollars have already been paid in antitrust fines to the U.S. government since Whitacre first blew the whistle in 1992.

[edit] Cast


[edit] Production

In 2002, after completing Ocean’s Eleven, director Steven Soderbergh announced his intent to adapt a film of the 2000 nonfiction book , The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald, a former journalist for the New York Times. Scott Z. Burns wrote the script based on the book. Filming began in May, 2008 in Central Illinois.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Editorial Staff (2005, June 18). The Informant, the Movie. Hollywood.com. http://www.hollywood.com/movie/The_Informant/3464215]
  2. ^ Webber, Susan (2000, September 25). Tale of the Tapes. Aurora Advisors Newsletter. http://www.auroraadvisors.com/articles/2000-09_dailydeal.html]
  3. ^ a b Cain, Tim (2008, March 19). Don't expect 'Informant' hobnobbing. Decatur Herald and Review.  http://herald-review.com/articles/2008/03/19/columnists/cain/1030816.txt]
  4. ^ a b Stresing, D. (2000, October 24). Book review: The Informant. BookPage.com.  http://www.bookpage.com/0009bp/nonfiction/informant.html]
  5. ^ a b c Cain, Tim (2008, April 6). Behind the inside man: Mark Whitacre, talks about 'The Informant,' his time in prison and moving forward. Decatur Herald and Review. [http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2008/04/06/news/local/1031549.txt
  6. ^ Michael Fleming. "Rush to judgment", Variety, 2007-08-10. Retrieved on 2008-02-21. 

[edit] External links

  • National Public Radio, a RealAudio broadcast from This American Life: we hear from Mark Whitacre and former New York Times reporter, Kurt Eichenwald, whose book The Informant outlines how a shadowy cabal of men in suits actually sat down together around a table and set worldwide food ingredient prices (leading to the largest antitrust fine in U.S. history).