Alcoa Sued for Fraud and Bribery

Alcoa was sued by a metals company controlled by the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain for at least $1 billion on claims of fraud and bribery of officials overseas.

Aluminium Bahrain, or Alba, sued Alcoa in federal court in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, claiming it was overcharged for 15 years for alumina, an ingredient used to make aluminum. Alba, the 10th-largest aluminum producer, claims Alcoa bribed unidentified Bahraini government and company officials to get business. Alcoa is the world's largest producer of alumina and third-largest aluminum producer.

Former Prosecutor Arrested For Bribery

Police have arrested a Delaware County attorney and his private investigator for bribery. The attorney once served as the county prosecutor. Michael Alexander and his investigator Jeff Hinds were escorted out of Alexander's office in handcuffs Wednesday. According to an FBI affidavit, between 2005 and 2007 Alexander and Hinds offered three witnesses thousands in cash to change incriminating statements against a client.

Investigators say the witnesses recorded false statements about the crime in Alexander's office and the suspects coached the witnesses on what to say. According to the affidavit, the bribery worked because the client's charges were reduced. Experts believe this may not be the only bribery incident.

S.C. Johnson Wins Award In Kickback Scheme

A jury awarded consumer products giant S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. $147 million in damages Tuesday to compensate it for losses suffered in a trucking kickback scheme.

The Racine-based maker of products like Ziploc and Glade sued its former transportation director, Milton Morris, and a dozen other people and companies alleging a widespread scheme to bilk it out of millions of dollars. The company had asked for more than $100 million in damages.

The company claimed Morris, trucking company owner Thomas Buske, and others inflated rates and pocketed the excess. They paid each other with trips to places such as Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, rounds of golf and cash transferred through poker games.

Argentine's Former President Charged With Bribery

Former Argentine President Fernando de la Rua was charged with bribery Monday in connection to an alleged scheme to buy support from senators a year before his government collapsed, a court official said.

De la Rua, who governed Argentina from 1999 until December 2001, has repeatedly denied any involvement in an alleged bid by his aides to push labor reforms through Congress by giving senators millions of dollars. The scandal prompted his vice president to abruptly resign.

Flipping Scheme Sentencing Hearings Set

Sentencing dates have been set for next month for two of the three men who pleaded guilty in April 2006 to multiple fraud charges in a real estate flipping scheme involving rundown rental homes sold at inflated prices in Springfield and Decatur.


Gary Knox, the mastermind of the scheme, is to be sentenced March 5 and faces 151/2 to 191/2 years in prison. Frank Kelly Ciota, of Riverton, is to be sentenced March 12 and could face 61/2 to 8 years in prison, according to Sharon Paul, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

A third man, Dennis Wiese Jr., of Washington County, faces sentencing in May. His sentence range has not been determined.

Temporary Prison Repreive

Vernon Jackson and Brett Pfeffer, key figures in the federal prosecution of Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, were released recently from federal prison -- but it was only temporary. Their release from federal prison facilities in Pennsylvania and West Virginia was ordered so that they could testify at Jefferson's federal corruption trial.

But with the trial, which had been scheduled to begin Monday, postponed while a federal appellate court considers an appeal of a pretrial ruling, from Jefferson's attorneys, it's likely they will be returned to their prison cells shortly. The federal marshals' service had contracted with a local jail near Alexandria, Va., where the Jefferson case is being heard, to house the pair during the trial.

Jackson and Pfeffer pleaded guilty to participating in what the government says was a bribery scheme in which Jefferson was to help Jackson's company, iGate Inc., win telecommunications contracts in western Africa. Jackson was sentenced to seven years, three months in prison, while Pfeffer, a former aide to Jefferson, got an eight-year sentence. The government is expected to ask Judge T.S. Ellis III to reduce the sentences, but only after Pfeffer and Jackson testify and the Jefferson trial is over. Jefferson has pleaded innocent.

Former VW Boss Jailed In Bribery Scandal

A German court sentenced former VW works council head Klaus Volkert to almost three years in prison on Friday, the first person to be given jail time in the bribery and sex trips scandal that rocked Europe's biggest carmaker.

The court found Volkert guilty of inciting and abetting a breach of trust and handed the former labour boss a two year and nine month sentence.

Government Employee Sentenced In Bribery Case

A former D.C. government employee, who was in charge of assigning first-time criminal offenders to do cleanup and other community service tasks, was sentenced yesterday to 13 months in prison for taking bribes from people who did no work, prosecutors said.

Eric A. Shannon, 41, was a sanitation supervisor for the D.C. Department of Public Works, which uses first-time offenders on weekends to help with tasks such as cleaning alleys, removing leaves and removing graffiti. If the work is done and the offenders commit no other crimes, their cases are dismissed.

Prosecutors said that Shannon took bribes on at least six occasions from offenders who did not do the work. In exchange for payments of $50 to $400, Shannon provided signed letters on city stationery falsely claiming that the work had been performed, prosecutors said. Last June, for example, he solicited and took $400 in return for providing a letter attesting that an offender completed 88 hours of community service, prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ordered that Shannon serve two years of supervised release after leaving prison.

Scruggs Sought Trent Lott's Influence

Powerful plaintiffs attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs tried to use his brother-in-law, former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, to influence the ruling of a sitting Mississippi judge, a government witness testified Wednesday in federal court. He also testified that in another case a judge, and not Scruggs, first floated the idea of a $40,000 bribe.

The testimony about Lott came during a hearing in a federal case in which Scruggs, his son Zach, and law partner Sidney Backstrom are charged with trying to bribe Circuit Judge Henry Lackey to get a favorable ruling in a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees.

Lott is not charged with any wrongdoing. U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. refused Wednesday to dismiss the charges against Scruggs and others in the alleged bribery attempt involving Lackey. The hearing was scheduled to continue today. A trial is scheduled to start March 31.

Contractor gets 12 years for bribery

A federal judge in San Diego, California, sentenced defense contractor Brent Wilkes to 12 years in prison Tuesday for bribing then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, federal prosecutors said.

He was accused of providing more than $700,000 to Cunningham in exchange for the Southern California Republican's help steering more than $70 million in defense contracts to Wilkes and another contractor, Mitchell Wade.

Prosecutors accused Wilkes, 53, of paying off a $500,000 note on Cunningham's California home; picking up the tab for vacation outings, private jet travel and limousines; buying Cunningham a $14,000 speedboat; and having an employee line up prostitutes for himself and the lawmaker during a two-night stay in Hawaii.
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If Wilkes was anything like Stan "Pampy" Barre, III, he would have just performed oral sex on the prostitute for free.

Defense Seeks Acquittal In Volkswagen Bribery Trial

The former head of Volkswagen AG's powerful employee council, on trial in a scandal involving special bonus payments, deserves no more than a suspended sentence and fine if found guilty of incitement to breach of trust, his attorney said in closing arguments Monday.

Volkert is a key figure in an investigation revolving around whether VW employee representatives received illegal privileges, including lavish foreign trips involving prostitutes paid for by the company. The probe started after Volkswagen alerted prosecutors to possible wrongdoing.

In its closings last week, the prosecution recommended that Volkert, who headed the council for 15 years, be convicted on all counts and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Former Officials Press Cabinet To Quit

More than 50 former Philippine officials called for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's Cabinet to resign, stoking political turbulence yesterday in the face of corruption charges that have battered her presidency.

The officials from previous administrations, including former Arroyo Cabinet members, made the public appeal after attending a Mass led by Roman Catholic groups and ex-President Corazon Aquino to show support for a star witness in a new corruption scandal. At least 3,000 protesters attended the Mass at a Catholic university in suburban Manila.

Ex-Brookshire Mayor pleads guilty in bribery scheme

A former mayor of Brookshire and another ex-city official have pleaded guilty in a contract-related bribery scheme.

Federal prosecutors say ex-mayor Keith Allen Woods and former Brookshire public works director Henry Anthony Cheney pleaded guilty Friday.

The investigation involved contracts for Brookshire, a town of about 4,100 located 30 miles west of Houston.

Defense Contractor Called A War Profiteer

Federal prosecutors say Brent Wilkes is a war profiteer, a lecher and a liar whose decade-long bribery of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham netted him $46 million.
For that, and for orchestrating the largest congressional bribery scheme in history, they say the Poway defense contractor should be sentenced to 25 years in prison.

In court papers filed this week, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office threw the book at Wilkes, 53, who is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday. They blasted his once-high-flying lifestyle, belittled his claims of innocence and branded him an “overgrown frat boy” fueled by greed and avarice.

At minimum, Wilkes should receive no less than 16 years and eight months in prison, prosecutors said. That would be exactly twice the length of the sentence Cunningham received after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion.

Investigators Take Samsung Files In Bribery Probe

South Korean prosecutors confiscated computer files from Samsung Electronics Co.'s offices yesterday as part of a probe into allegations that Samsung Group bribed government officials and other influential figures.

Investigators took files from the company's offices in Suwon, south of Seoul, Yun Jong Sok, a spokesman for the probe, said by telephone in the capital. Lee Eun Hee, a Samsung Electronics spokeswoman, confirmed special prosecutors were at the company's offices, without providing further details.

Special prosecutors also obtained court approval to search the National Tax Service's offices for computer files needed for the investigation, Yun said, without elaborating.

Did Craig Act Improperly?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate Ethics Committee says Idaho Sen. Larry Craig acted improperly in a men's room sex sting. In a letter Wednesday, the ethics panel says Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea in a June arrest at a Minneapolis airport was an effort to evade legal consequences of his own actions.

The letter says Craig's actions brought discredit on the Senate.

The panel took no further action.

Best Funded House Incumbents

Money follows power. That simple axiom helps explain why incumbent members of Congress, on average, raise so much more campaign cash than the candidates who want to supplant them.

In fact, 65 U.S. House incumbents each reported more than $1 million in total receipts last year, including six who topped the $2 million mark, according to a CQ Politics analysis of updated campaign finance reports filed by candidates to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at the end of January.

Many of the members of Congress who raked in seven-figure sums last year are politically influential figures who hold party leadership posts or chair key committees, and they wield fundraising clout commensurate to their stature. Most of these incumbents have “safe” seats that ensure they can stay in Congress for as long as they want.

Other big House fundraisers, though, come from the other end of the electoral security spectrum. They have to raise a lot of money because they face difficult re-election campaigns this year. |Read on|

Politics Unclothed

Brought to you from the T-P:


With the Democratic presidential race too close to call, the nomination could be decided by an elite group of party insiders and elected officials known as "super-delegates," reigniting controversy about just how democratic the party selection process is.

While most of the 4,049 Democratic delegates are assigned proportionately based on how well a candidate does in a state's primary or caucus, 794 of them -- nearly a fifth -- can swing to any candidate they want.

Righteous Warrior - Biography of Jesse Helms

Appearing on “Larry King Live” in 1995, Jesse Helms, then the senior senator from North Carolina, fielded a call from an unusual admirer. Helms deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, the caller gushed, “for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers.” Given the rank ugliness of the sentiment — the guest host, Robert Novak, called it, with considerable understatement, “politically incorrect” — Helms could only pause before responding. But the hesitation couldn’t suppress his gut instincts. “Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” he said. With prodding from Novak, he added that he’d been spanked as a child for using the N-word and noted (with a delicious hint of uncertainty), “I don’t think I’ve used it since.” As for the caller’s main point — the virtue of keeping down blacks — it passed without comment.

William A. Link, a historian at the University of Florida, recounts this incident in “Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism,” his hefty life of the blunt, bullheaded, hard-right leader who — more than anyone besides Ronald Reagan — embodied conservatism in the 1980s and beyond. Summoning a measure of sympathy for his rather unsympathetic subject, Link can be overly diplomatic in discussing, as he calls it, Helms’s “racial insensitivity.” But it’s to his credit that even when engaging Helms’s more odious views, he shuns stridency while still managing to demonstrate the centrality of Dixie-bred racism to Helms’s career — and to the book’s larger tale of Southern-style conservatism’s ascent since the 1960s.

Smart Advice From Laura Scott

KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE SELECTION OF JUDGES

Having High Hopes

Sometimes when a new politician is about to be elected to office, the citizens have high hopes that things will change; this will be the time the politician looks out for the citizens rather then their family and friends.

Sometimes that hope is dashed thus resulting in more harm being caused to the citizens and their beloved city. How tragic!!!

Convicted Felons Profit From Contracts In New Orleans

Only in New Orleans can a convicted felon profit financially from city contracts while the convicted felon awaits sentencing from looting from other city contracts. This is how the scheme works:

1. You get rich under New Orleans' city contracts.
2. You receive a plea bargain for stealing from one contract.
3. As a result of your plea bargain, your sentence is reduced.
4. You transfer ownership of your business to your wife, thus she now holds the interest in your other questionable city contracts.
5. When you go to prison, your wife still collects from the city contracts.
6. Any fines you have to pay are paid with proceeds from the city contracts that is still under you and your wife's control.
7. When you get out of prison, you are able to go on with your life, from the proceeds that your wife was collecting, from the city contracts while you were in prison.

Only in New Orleans could such a thing happen. Although the City of New Orleans has hired a new Inspector General, he too feels that the City is stuck with this arrangement. As a result, New Orleans' politics will never change.

Political Hype vs. Reality

Sometimes a politician's campaign is run on "political hype" that gets citizens excited. This "political hype" usually centers on corny phrases that the politician feels will keep the people motivated that a change is about to come.

I remember one cornered in New Orleans: "There's a New Posse in Town" by former New Orleans' Mayor, Marc Morial. The New Orleans'citizens now know what that phrase meant: HELPING OUT YOUR CRONIES

New Orleans Political Machine

Sometimes I wonder whether New Orleans has some sort of political machine whereas no politicians are completely innocent from some type of corruption. Why I would call it a political machine because it seems that every politician is following the same path: Their behavior is always in question.

If a politician is black, however, he always try to play the race card whenever someone question his/her behavior. This is so disturbing because since the race card is always played, no one will ever listen if race is really the issue.

The Politician's Mark

Some politicians leave office on a good foot while others leave office surrounded by controversy. Sometimes the controversial politician will try to seek a new political office. Their constituents, however, may remember their past failings and decide that they are no longer capable of holding public office.

This may leave some of their supporters disappointed. For example--some supporters may have held roles under their administration. Now they are left in the cold trying to search for new

The Art Of Politicking

Sometimes you may think that you are just one voice, on the world wide web, where no one can hear you crying out for change. That is where it all start: One voice at a time calling for change.



It does not matter what change you are rooting for. It can be on a national, state, or city level; just allow your voice to be heard and watch that change come about.

New Orleans' Politics

New Orleans politics is like none other. Here you will find politicians changing their race or creed. For example, you might read, information online, about how some politicians were the first black to accomplish this or that; later you might read online articles about how some politicians were the first Creole to accomplish this or that. I know this may be confusing but only in New Orleans will you find politicians being immortalized as black when they want to push the agenda on how they aggressively broke down barriers in order to get to where they are.

Then when they die, somehow they have now become Creoles---as if to say----look at me---I wasn't really black after all. Thanks for voting for me anyway---you black fools---who otherwise I would never have anything to do with. You see, my main purpose was to represent the Creole folks of New Orleans and help them move up in the political arena.

A Wanna Be Politician

Are politicians made or is it that being a politician, you have characteristics, from early on, that determine your destiny? Sometimes people try so hard to fit into that mode but it only leads them desperately in that circle of politicians trying to fit in.

That wanna be politician will find himself desperately trying to climb the political ladder, however, that climb will eventually lead to his demise and the world will know that he is only a pathetic wanna be politician who will only find himself in legal trouble.

Passing The Torch

When a politician is in office, he usually run in circles with other politicians. Sometimes, however, it may be more conducive for the politician to seek out others who are more like them.

This is a good way for the politician to feel assured that his confidences won't be broken. He usually seek out those who have the same values and beliefs. That way, his secrets can go with him to his grave.