James S. Henry

James S. Henry (Harvard B.A., M.S., J.D.) is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, economist, and investigative journalist.

Mr. Henry has served as an attorney at Shearman & Sterling (NY); Chief Economist, McKinsey & Company (NY); Vice President - Strategy, IBM/Lotus, member of Jack Welch's corporate business development at GE; and senior consultant at Monitor Co.

In the 1990s Mr. Henry founded the Sag Harbor Group (www.sagharbor.com), a strategy consulting firm that focused on competitive strategies and acquisitions for technology-based businesses. Mr. Henry has led successful high-value consulting projects for many prominent clients, including AT&T, ABB, Allen & Co., Cordys, IBM/Lotus, Intel, Cemex, ChinaTrust, the Government of Spain, South Africa Telcom, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swedish Power Board, TransAlta Utilities. .

As an entrepreneur, Mr. Henry has served as a founding partner of IVP, a Sao Paulo-based private equity firm that teamed with Warburg Pincus to create the first nationwide wireless network in Brazil. He has also served on the boards of several other startups, especially in the wireless and Internet arenas.

In the non-profit sector, Mr. Henry has been active in helping to found a venture that brings Internet services and training to artisans in developing countries. He has also served as an advisor to Ashoka, the “reverse Peace Corps” that sponsors 1500 fellows in 30 countries; board member of Friends World/ Global College (LI University); a founder and board member, Tax Justice Network (US); board member, TJN International an NGO focused on global tax policies; and a cooperating attorney for the ACLU, and Vice President of the NY Civil Liberties Union, specializing in First Amendment cases.

In 2006-7 Mr. Henry successfully sued the Village of Southampton, New York, in Federal Court, to guarantee that anti-war protesters would be allowed exercise their First Amendment rights in the Village's annual July 4th parades. In 2007, he was the first Democratic Candidate for Supervisor in Southampton Town, New York, to come within inches of defeating the long-entrenched Republican Party candidate.

As an investigative writer, Mr. Henry has written extensively about economic issues, and pioneered investigations of economic mismanagement, dirty banking, corruption, and money laundering in countries all over the globe. He is the author of more than 100 articles that have appeared in such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The New Republic, The Washington Post, US News, Manhattan Inc., Harpers, The Washington Monthly, Fortune, Business Week, Newsweek, Time, The Tax Lawyer, International Development Report, Jornal do Brasil, The Manila Chronicle, La Nacion, El Financiero, and Slate Magazine.

He has been a co-author or contributor to several published anthologies, including, with Paul Starr and Ray Bonner, Discarded Army – A Study of the Veterans Administration and Vietnam Veterans. (NY: Charterhouse, 1976); The Economics of Strategic Planning. (Lexington, Ma.: Lexington Books, 1986); Of Bonds and Bondage – A Reader on Philippine Debt, Emmanuel S. De Dios and Joel Rocamora (TNI, 1992); Transforming Retail Financial Services: The Impact of the Internet on Financial Services. (NY: AT Kearney/ SHG, 1999); and "The Mythology of Debt Relief," in Steve Hiatt and ed., A Game as Old as Empire (SF: Barrett Koehler, 2007). Mr. Henry is also the author of two seminal books on the history of Third World debt, capital flight, corruption, and private banking -- Banqueros y Lavadolares. (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, 1996, 564 pp.); and Blood Bankers (forward by Senator Bill Bradley) (New York: Avalon/ Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003; 2005 ppb, 452 pp.). His latest book is Pirate Bankers (NY: forthcoming, 2010). Mr. Henry has also served as an investigative producer on several documentaries, including (1)"Land Reform in Honduras" (1984); (2)"Noriega's Panama" (ABC News, 1991 - 1 hour); and "UnBoliviable!" (BuenaOndaFilms/ Donald Ranvaud, 2007.) Since 2007, he has also appeared on many occasions as an economic commentator for Al Jazeera/ English, the leading global television network that has pioneered free speech in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Henry’s investigations have taken him to more than 50 developing countries, including Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Malawi, Mexico, Namibia, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, the Sudan, Taiwan, Tanzania, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and many "offshore" and "onshore" havens

The fruits of his investigations were instrumental in the 1992 trial and conviction of Panama's Manual Noriega and his partners in the drug trade; the location and recovery of offshore assets stolen by Paraguay's General Alfredo Stroessner; the identification of Philippines Central Bank's role in enriching Ferdinand Marcos; the disruption of a major US cocaine smuggling ring in Brazil (Brazil's Senate established a Parliamentary Commission (CPI) in 1992-93 as a result); the detection of the role played by US currency in facilitating illegal activity; and the identification of the role played by leading international banks in facilitating capital flight and tax evasion in developing countries.

Mr. Henry has testified several times before the US Senate, and is a frequent speaker at public forums on development, havens, money laundering, and tax evasion.

Mr. Henry is founder and editor of SubmergingMarkets (www.submergingmarkets.com), an "occasional" online investigative magazine that specializes in political and economic development.

Mr. Henry is a National Merit Scholar and an honors graduate of Harvard College (BA, Social Studies; Detur Prize; Phi Beta Kappa, 1972), Harvard Law School (J.D., honors, 1976), Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (MS, Economics, 1978; a.b.d.), a National Merit Scholar, a Danforth Fellow, a former “Nader Raider,” a member of the New York Bar since 1978, and an "Adirondack 46R." In 2009 he was named the "Edward R. Murrow Fellow" at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy/ Tufts University, where he taught a graduate level seminar on the recent global financial crisis.

Mr. Henry is proud father of Alex and Claire Henry, two budding authors and song-writers.