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 Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion. 
 
 But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney’s exit from Bain. 
 
 The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney’s departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post‘s article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999. 
 
 Here’s what happened with Stericycle. In November 1999, Bain Capital and Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, filed with the SEC a Schedule 13D, which lists owners of publicly traded companies, noting that they had jointly purchased $75 million worth of shares in Stericycle, a fast-growing player in the medical-waste industry. (That April, Stericycle had announced plans to buy the medical-waste businesses of Browning Ferris Industries and Allied Waste Industries.) The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the “sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd.” 
 
 The document also states that Romney “may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power with respect to” 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle “in his capacity as sole shareholder” of the Bain entities that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm’s stock—the largest bloc among the firm’s owners.) The original copy of the filing was signed by Romney. 
 
 Another SEC document filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an individual who holds “voting and dispositive power” with respect to the stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock? 
 
 The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also call into question the account of Romney’s exit from Bain that the company and the Romney campaign have provided. 
 
 Stericycle was a lucrative investment for Romney and Bain. The company had entered the medical-waste business a decade earlier, when it took over a food irradiation plant in Arkansas and began zapping medical waste, rather than strawberries, with radiation. The company subsequently replaced irradiation with a technology that used low-frequency radio waves to sterilize medical waste—gowns, masks, gloves, and other medical equipment—before it was transported to an incinerator. By mid-1997, Stericycle was the second-largest medical-waste disposal business in the nation. Two years later, it was the largest. With 240,000 customers, its operations spanned the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Fortune ranked it No. 10 on its list of the 100 fastest growing companies in the nation. 
 
 But the company had its woes, accumulating a troubling safety record along the way. In 1991, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited its Arkansas operation for 11 workplace safety violations. The facility had not provided employees with sufficient protective gear, and it had kept body parts, fetuses, and dead experimental animals in unmarked storage containers, placing workers at risk. In 1995, Stericycle was fined $3.3 million—later decreased to $800,000—by Rhode Island for knowingly exposing workers to life-threatening diseases at its medical-waste treatment facility in Woonsocket. Two years later, workers at another of its medical-waste processing plants in Morton, Washington, were exposed to tuberculosis. In 2002 and 2003—after Bain and its partners had bought their major interest in the firm—Stericycle reached settlements with the attorneys general in Arizona and Utah after it was accused of violating antitrust laws. It paid Arizona $320,000 in civil penalties and lawyers’ fees, and paid Utah $580,000. 
 
 Despite the firm’s regulatory run-ins, the deal worked out well for Bain. In 2001, the Bain-Madison Dearborn partnership that had invested in the company sold 40 percent of its holdings in Stericycle for about $88 million—marking a hefty profit on its original investment of $75 million. The Bain-related group sold the rest of its holdings by 2004. By that point it had earned $49.5 million. It was not until six years later that anti-abortion activists would target Stericycle for collecting medical waste at abortion clinics. This campaign has compared Stericycle to German firms that provided assistance to the Nazis during the Holocaust. A Stericycle official told Huffington Post that its abortion clinics business constitutes a “small” portion of its total operations. (Stericycle declined a request for comment from Mother Jones.) 
 
 In 1995, Stericycle was fined by Rhode Island for knowingly exposing workers to life-threatening diseases at its medical-waste treatment facility. 
 
 In response to questions from Mother Jones, a spokeswoman for Bain maintained that Romney was not involved in the Stericycle deal in 1999, saying that he had “resigned” months before the stock purchase was negotiated. The spokeswoman noted that following his resignation Romney remained only “a signatory on certain documents,” until his separation agreement with Bain was finalized in 2002. And Bain issued this statement: “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies since that time.” (The Romney presidential campaign did not respond to requests for comment.) 
 
 But the document Romney signed related to the Stericycle deal did identify him as a participant in that particular deal and the person in charge of several Bain entities. (Did Bain and Romney file a document with the SEC that was not accurate?) Moreover, in 1999, Bain and Romney both described his departure from Bain not as a resignation and far from absolute. On February 12, 1999, the Boston Herald reported, “Romney said he will stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investment and key personnel decisions.” And a Bain press release issued on July 19, 1999, noted that Romney was “currently on a part-time leave of absence”—and quoted Romney speaking for Bain Capital. In 2001 and 2002, Romney filed Massachusetts state disclosure forms noting he was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital NY, Inc.—a Bain outfit that was incorporated in Delaware on April 13, 1999—two months after Romney’s supposed retirement from the firm. A May 2001 filing with the SEC identified Romney as “a member of the Management Committee” of two Bain entities. And in 2007, the Washington Post reported that R. Bradford Malt, a Bain lawyer, said Romney took a “leave of absence” when he assumed the Olympics post and retained sole ownership of the firm for two more years. 
 
 All of this undermines Bain’s contention that Romney, though he maintained an ownership interest in the firm and its funds, had nothing to do with the firm’s activities after February 1999. The Stericycle deal may raise red flags for anti-abortion activists. But it also raises questions about the true timing of Romney’s departure from Bain and casts doubt on claims by the company and the Romney campaign that he had nothing to do with Bain business after February 1999. ||||| WASHINGTON -- One of the highest performing companies in which the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney invested is now a top target of the most vehement anti-abortion groups in the nation. 
 
 Stericycle, a massive medical waste disposal service company, received a $75 million investment from Bain Capital in 1999 and soon became an industry leader. Today, it has more than 485,000 customers worldwide. Its clients include hospitals, blood banks, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. But it has also helped dispose of medical waste from Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics -- waste that included aborted fetuses -- and that has attracted the ire of the pro-life community and establishment Republicans. 
 
 Romney's relationship to the company, which was flagged by the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge and further examined through an independent review of documents, is tangential. By the time Bain Capital had made the investment in Stericycle, he had left the firm to run the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He maintained ownership in Bain and kept holdings in its private equity funds, which included Stericycle stock, but he had no say in the managerial or strategic decisions at the firm, according to Bain officials. 
 
 But at a time when Romney is attempting to sell South Carolina voters on his pro-life record -- running values-themed radio ads and defending himself from attacks that say he governed as pro-abortion lawmaker -- the link between Stericycle and Bain could still cause him problems. 
 
 "It is pretty significant. A lot of these companies, unfortunately, don't know what is going on," said Michael Marcavage, director of the Campaign to Stop Stericycle, an offshoot of the evangelistic organization Repent America. "You need to put morality before money and a lot of these companies need to look at who they are investing with ... Just imagine if the company was involved in discrimination against blacks? Who would want to be involved in that?" 
 
 "If they knew that was going on and still looked at it as a business venture we would certainly speak heavily against it," Marcavage added. 
 
 Stericycle's work with abortion clinics constitutes a "small" portion of its overall operations, an official with the company told The Huffington Post (the official declined to confirm whether or not Planned Parenthood specifically is still a client). And anti-abortion activists' decision to target it seems misdirected; what would those clinics be left to do without the services provided by Stericycle and companies like it? 
 
 There is no publicly available data showing that either Romney or other officials at Bain knew of Stericycle's work with Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics before the investment. Nor would it be unreasonable if they knew about it and found it irrelevant. Bain, after all, is not a religious outfit, unless the religion is money-making. 
 
 The Romney campaign did not return a request for comment. 
 
 Bain's $75 million investment in the company was announced in August and finalized in November of 1999. An official with the firm told The Huffington Post that such deals are usually planned three or four months before the announcement date, which means it was likely conceived of after February 1999, when Romney left for the Olympics. The first reported documentation of Stericycle servicing an abortion clinic came in 2003, one year before Bain sold its stake in the company. 
 
 Repent America itself only became aware of the issue in 2010, when it was reported that Stericycle had picked up “biohazardous waste” at an abortion clinic in Richmond, Virginia. The group subsequently put pressure on Penske and Ryder, the truck-leasing companies that Stericycle had hired, to stop working with the medical waste disposal company. 
 
 More than suggesting Bain's indifference to the abortion debate, the story the firm's involvement with Stericycle illustrates how the private equity chapter of Romney's career has complicated his political ambitions. Every company Bain has invested in has a story of its own, whether it's the use of generous tax breaks and government subsidies to build a steel company in Indiana or the rapid growth of Staples. 
 
 With Stericycle, that story is as much about leveraging money to make more as the politics of abortion. 
 
 The company was only a decade old when Bain began contemplating an investment. What the private equity firm found alluring was that Stericycle had a straightforward, fairly fail-safe strategy for growth. The waste and recycling behemoth Allied Waste Industries had spent $10 billion to acquire Browning-Ferris Industries in 1999 and was looking to sell its medical waste department in order to pay off the debt from that acquisition. Stericycle decided it would buy that division, which was, at the time, the country's largest. The company just needed help with funding. In stepped Bain and another private equity firm, Madison Dearborn Partners. 
 
 On paper, it was a win-win situation. By consuming its number one competitor, Stericycle became the largest company in the industry. It added 200,000 new customers, saw a reported 266 percent increase in revenue within a year and was named the tenth-fastest growing company in the country by Fortune magazine. According to SEC data, it would go on to make more than $900 million in profits during the Bain years, from 1999 to 2004, and employment would increase by 1,200 -- owed largely to the company taking on workers from Browning-Ferris Industries. 
 
 The deal was good for Bain too. According to an investment prospectus from December 2003, the return rate that Bain received on its investment in Stericycle was approximately 66 percent, or 49.5 million dollars. 
 
 Romney had become governor of Massachusetts by then. But according to financial disclosure reports flagged by American Bridge and a review of SEC data, both he and his wife maintained investments in Bain Capital funds, including ones that had the Stericycle stock. 
 
 Also on HuffPost:
– Another Bain Capital controversy for Mitt Romney: He may have still been involved with the private-equity firm when it invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal company that disposes of aborted fetuses, thus making it a target of anti-abortion activists. The Huffington Post first revealed the Romney-Stericycle connection, but Bain kept it from blowing up into a controversy by claiming that Romney left the firm in February 1999, before the deal was made. But SEC documents obtained by Mother Jones list Romney as "sole shareholder, Chairman, CEO, and President" of Bain and as a definite participant in the deal—a deal that made him and his partners millions; one document even includes his signature. The documents are relevant not only because of the abortion controversy, but because of Romney's departure from Bain. He has used the official account of the timing of his exit to defend himself—not just with regard to the Stericycle deal, but also with regard to the recent article about Bain's connections to major job outsourcing. In that case, the Romney campaign noted that his February 1999 exit came at least a month before Bain acquired two of the companies that outsourced jobs. But these documents indicate Romney was still playing a role at the company until the end of that year. Mother Jones has a detailed look at the documents—as well as Stericycle's troubled safety record.