Some publicly traded companies that received taxpayer-backed small business loans to pay their employees during the early weeks of the pandemic paid out millions to Wall Street investors in dividends and share buybacks, publicly available financial disclosures reviewed by The Washington Post show.
Franklin Turner, a government contracts attorney in the DC office of McCarter & English, said buybacks and dividends “would certainly be something that any government regulator would likely consider.” “The requirement was not that companies be flat broke when they apply … the requirement was ‘can you make a reasonable good faith determination that you need this,’ ” Turner added.