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Walter Anderson (businessman)

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For other people with the same name, see Walter Anderson (disambiguation).

Walter C. Anderson (born 1953) is an American telecommunications entrepreneur, convicted felon, philanthropist, investor, and space advocate.

Early career

Anderson began his telecommunications career as a salesman at MCI Communications in 1979.

In 1984, he founded Mid-Atlantic Telecom with $100,000 in seed capital. In 1993 it was acquired for $18M.

In 1992, he founded Esprit Telecom plc (London), taking advantage of early telecom deregulation in the EU countries. In 1999 GTS (a US publicly traded company) acquired Esprit for $985M.

From 1996-98, Anderson made a strategic investment of $2.5M in Erol’s Internet, which he helped expand into one of the largest dial-up ISPs. Erol’s was acquired by RCN in 1998, netting a 5x return for Anderson’s investment.

In 1999, Anderson was elected as Chairman of the Board of Worldxchange Communications

Anderson was a seed/early-stage investor in many private space ventures in the 1990s and early 2000s, and paved the way for the "astropreneurs" who followed. His highest-profile space investment was MirCorp, the late 1990s start-up that briefly privatized Russia's aging Mir space station. He reportedly invested as much as $30 million into the venture. He also invested a similar sum into Rotary Rocket, a precursor to private space launch companies like SpaceX and Blue origin.

Commercial space support and advocacy

In 1988, Anderson co-founded the International Space University (ISU), and provided advice and support to the founding team.

ISU was founded in 1987 and held its first summer session program (SSP) in the summer of 1988 at the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ISU operates a multicultural and multidisciplinary graduate space studies program. ISU has held SSPs annually in varying locations around the world since the inaugural 1988 session. In 1995 it began offering a Masters program from its permanent campus in Strasbourg, France. Anderson was a permanent member and served on its Board of Directors for its initial five years of operations.

Anderson has been a leader in promoting the commercial development of space. He believes that the development of space resources can help to resolve many of the challenges facing the entire planet. He was a major supporter of the Space Frontier Foundation from its founding in 1988. He also created and endowed the Foundation for the Nongovernmental Development of Space [[(FINDS}]], which has provided funding for projects such as the "asteroid watch" and sponsored the CATS Prize (Cheap Access To Space).

In 2007, Anderson was hailed by New Scientist Magazine as one of the "Top 10 Influential Space Thinkers" [1]

MirCorp

Anderson had been an ardent supporter of the development of commercial space activities.[citation needed] Anderson provided significant funding to not-for-profit Space Frontier Foundation and served on their Board of Directors.[citation needed]

In 1999, the Russian government was suffering severe financial difficulties. They could no longer support the Mir Space Station. RSC Energia, the Russian organization that had built the Mir Station had become a private company and held “ownership” of the Mir Station.[2]

Anderson founded MirCorp to work in partnership with RSC Energia. Anderson’s team at MirCorp negotiated a "lease" of the Mir station on behalf of MirCorp, then began plans to commercialize and renovate the Mir Station[citation needed]

MirCorp signed up the first commercial space tourist, Dennis Tito, to fly to the Mir station.[citation needed] MirCorp was preparing for a public offering supported by Barclays Capital.[citation needed] The funds from the offering would be used to refurbish and expand the Mir station for commercial operations which would include media, manufacturing, orbit servicing and science activities. MirCorp launched the first "private manned mission" in history to the Mir to evaluate its condition and do some minor upgrades.[citation needed]

The NASA administrator at that time, Dan Goldin, made a number of public comments related to MirCorp commercial activities.[citation needed] He claimed that MirCorp was utilizing resources which the Russian Space Agency and RSC Energia had committed to the International Space Station.[citation needed]

NASA and the United States government pressured the Russian Space Agency to de-orbit the Mir and used both political and financial pressure.[citation needed] NASA officials made calls to United States corporations involved in space activities to warn them not to partner with or invest in MirCorp if they ever wanted to get another contract.[citation needed] In April 2001, the Mir was de-orbited into the Pacific Ocean. MirCorp was only four months away from the planned date of their public offering at that time.[citation needed]The MirCorp story is profiled in the documentary film Orphans of Apollo. [3]

Following the destruction of the Mir Station, the Russian crew and Tito continued to train for a flight to the new Russian section of ISS, in lieu of Mir. This was resisted heavily by Dan Goldin’s NASA, claiming a “private citizen” had no right to go to ISS, despite paying his own way. When the crew went to Houston to cross-train with US astronauts, Tito was initially denied entry. His two Russian cohorts threatened to return to Russia if Tito was not allowed in. Reluctantly, bowing to international pressure, NASA opened its doors to Tito, and ultimately, the flight to ISS flew as scheduled, giving Dennis Tito the honor of being the first Space Tourist, thanks largely to Walt Anderson’s efforts and advocacy. [citation needed]

Federal tax disputes

From 2002 to 2005, the United States government conducted an extensive investigation into Mr. Anderson's business and personal activities. Anderson was arrested on February 26, 2005, at Dulles International Airport as he was returning from London.[4][5]

Anderson was held in the Washington, D.C. jail for over 2 years. On September 8, 2006, Anderson pled guilty to some of the charges against him. [6][7]

On June 15, 2007, federal district judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that Anderson would not have to pay any restitution to the federal government due to a typographical error by the government in the plea agreement. In his ruling, Friedman stated that he did not have the authority to "read something into a contract that is not there or to interpret uncertain language in the government's favor". But Anderson would still have to pay restitution to the District of Columbia government, and the government may sue for the difference in civil court. [8]

He was released on December 28, 2012.[9]

Avealto

In 2013 Anderson founded Avealto Ltd., based in the UK. Avealto was founded to finance, construct and operate a fleet of High Altitude Platforms (“HAPs”). [10]

See also

References

  1. ^ 14 http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19526201.600
  2. ^ "Selling Peace - Inside the Soviet Conspiracy That Transformed then U.S. Space Program" ISBN 9781-926592-08-4 - ISSN 1496-6921 ©2009 Apogee Books/Jeffrey Manber
  3. ^ Foust, Jeff (July 20, 2008). "Preview: Orphans of Apollo". The Space Review. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  4. ^ Williams, Pete.Entrepreneur accused of biggest-ever tax scam. NBC News. March 3, 2005.
  5. ^ Weiss, Eric M. Telecom Mogul Guilty of Tax Scam. The Washington Post. September 9, 2006.
  6. ^ See generally United States v. Anderson, case no. 1:05-cr-00066-PLF-1, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on counts 5, 6, and 11 of the Superseding Indictment at docket entry 68.
  7. ^ For more detail, see also United States v. Walter Anderson, 545 F.3d 1072 (D.C. Cir. 2008), at [1].
  8. ^ Judge can't fix government's $100 million boo-boo. Associated Press. June 15, 2007.
  9. ^ Inmate #27981-016, Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Dep't of Justice, at [2].
  10. ^ http://www.avealto.com
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