Zeenews Bureau
Washington: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has asked US President Barack Obama to apologise for attacking him on his record at private equity firm Bain Capital.
Notably, Romney’s alleged role in Bain Capital has triggered a war between the campaigners of Obama and the former Massachusetts governor.
In interviews with five television news networks, Romney said Obama and his campaign were hitting him on his record at Bain Capital in a bid to `deflect attention from Obama`s `failed economic record`. He further urged the US President to apologise for the “false and misleading” attacks.
"There is absolutely no evidence that I had any role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February 1999," Romney told ABC News.
"Why the President continues and his people continue to make these kinds of charges and try to turn this into something big is clear, I think, to the American people because the President`s failed to do the job he was elected to do which was to get this economy turned around."
Romney`s presidential campaign came under siege as he faced as fresh questions over when he finally quit as the boss of Bain Capital. The Republican candidate has long maintained that he quit the company in 1999 to run the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, remaining only the nominal head of the company until 2002, a position supported by a statement from the company.
However, the row took a new twist after it emerged that Romney had testified that he had attended the "Board meetings" at the Boston, Massachusetts-based company ‘in sworn testimony’ to prove his residential status when running for governor of the state in 2002.
The Obama campaign reportedly seized on the issue, calling on Romney to release his tax returns and arguing that the former Bain boss can be held politically responsible for the outsourcing and bankruptcies at Bain-invested companies until 2002.
“Ultimately, I think Mr Romney is going to have to answer those questions because if he aspires to being president, one of the things you learn is you`re ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations,” the BBC quoted Obama, as saying.
However, Romney hit back the Obama campaign for suggesting he might have committed a "felony" by signing his official documents saying he was nominal head of Bain Capital after 1999, and accused the President of running personal smear campaign instead of engaging in a serious debate about the future of America.
“I was the owner of the entity that was filing this information, but I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after 1999. I left in February of 1999,” The Telegraph quoted Romney as saying.
Romney categorically denied the insinuation that he was in any way actively involved in running Bain Capital or its investments after he left to run the Salt Lake City winter Olympics in 1999. Romney’s campaign has also accused Obama of being a "liar" and an "outsourcer-in-chief", and called on him to ask his "out of control staff" to apologise, but the President reportedly refused, by saying it was justified to question whether Romney was the CEO "Mr Fix-it" he claimed to be.
(With ANI inputs)
