US:Barack Obama, star of the Democratic Party and a frontrunner in the presidential race, was forced on to the defensive yesterday over past financial dealings.
Disclosure of his share dealings in two companies - one dealing in pharmaceuticals and the other in communications - was a knock to Mr Obama who is campaigning on a platform of higher ethical standards in politics.
His campaign team insisted yesterday the share dealings had all been above board and there had been no conflict of interest.
A financial website, TheStreet.com, reported on Monday that in March 2005 Mr Obama bought more than $50,000 (€38,140) of stock in the companies. One of them, AVI BioPharma, was developing a drug to treat avian flu and the other, SkyTerra, a satellite communications business, was expanding wifi access across the US. Mr Obama opened himself up to accusations of conflict of interest by advocating in the Senate, within two weeks of buying AVI shares, an increase in federal funding to fight avian flu.
But a spokesman for Mr Obama, Bill Burton, said yesterday that his shares had been held in a blind trust. His stockbroker had bought the shares in the two companies and Mr Obama had no knowledge of them. Mr Burton said Mr Obama had ended the blind trust after receiving a letter in the mail from a company in which he had shares and "realised he didn't have the level of blindness he expected". He sold the stocks, losing about $15,000 on SkyTerra and earning a profit of about $2,000 on AVI.