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View Full Version : Govt folds case against Blackwater. Execs plead guilty to misdemeanors.




tsai3904
02-21-2013, 05:35 PM
The criminal investigation into the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater concluded Thursday when two executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanor firearms charges.

Former Blackwater president Gary Jackson and former vice-president Bill Matthews each pleaded guilty to one count of failure to make and maintain records related to firearms.

U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan sentenced each to four months house arrest and fined them $5,000 each.

In August, the company admitted to lawbreaking that ranged from possessing illegal machine guns at its Camden County training grounds to attempting to land $15 billion in oil and defense contracts in southern Sudan while U.S. companies were barred from doing business there.

The company agreed to pay a fine of up to $7.5 million and entered a deferred prosecution agreement that will essentially expire after three years of good corporate behavior. Only the corporation admitted wrongdoing in that deal.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/21/2697179/two-former-blackwater-executives.html

This case was suppose to lead to wide ranging charges (from 2010):


While the indictment is somewhat limited in scope, it could be the government’s opening salvo in a broader offensive to bring criminal charges against the company. They could include charges for bribery and export violations, according to officials familiar with the case, perhaps under a strategy of turning former and current executives of the company against one another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/world/17XE.html

HOLLYWOOD
02-21-2013, 05:46 PM
LOL The US 'JUST-US' judicial system...

Not the same for the Mundanes/Serfs, so get back to work and pay those taxes for the aristocrats and their game.

THIS >>>>
failure to make and maintain records related to firearms. Sound like that game I read about called: FAST-n-FURIOUS :rolleyes:

Expatriate
02-21-2013, 05:53 PM
Bet they'd come up with more than a misdemeanor charge if you or I were caught "possessing illegal machine guns" among other things.

I thought misdemeanor charges were for petting manatees.

kcchiefs6465
02-21-2013, 05:55 PM
Forgive me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure someone will clarify, but isn't possessing an illegal machine gun a Federal crime with MMS of 10 years? [I can't even remember the fines but would imagine them in the range of 50,000 to 250,000 dollars]

tangent4ronpaul
02-21-2013, 05:59 PM
Bet they'd come up with more than a misdemeanor charge if you or I were caught "possessing illegal machine guns" among other things.

I thought misdemeanor charges were for petting manatees.

I've heard of people with a slam fire issue in a SEMI-AUTOMATIC firearm discovered at a range doing serious federal time.


Forgive me if I'm wrong, and I'm sure someone will clarify, but isn't possessing an illegal machine gun a Federal crime with MMS of 10 years? [I can't even remember the fines but would imagine them in the range of 50,000 to 250,000 dollars]

They are a corporation. corporations enjoy all the privileges of citizenship, but almost none of the responsibilities. What are you going to do? - incarcerate a sheet of paper?

:rolleyes:

-t

dannno
02-21-2013, 06:02 PM
Stop your yabbering, this case is now CLOSED. Nothing to see here.

kcchiefs6465
02-21-2013, 06:24 PM
They are a corporation. corporations enjoy all the privileges of citizenship, but almost none of the responsibilities. What are you going to do? - incarcerate a sheet of paper?
:rolleyes:
-t
Reminds me of this...

Career criminals

... According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, every single one of the top ten weapons contractors was convicted of or admitted to defrauding the government between 1980 and 1992. For example:
* Grumman paid the government $20 million to escape criminal liability for coercing subcontractors into making political contributions.
* Lockheed was convicted of paying millions in bribes to obtain classified planning documents.
* Northrop was fined $17 million for falsifying test data on its cruise missiles and fighter jets.
* Rockwell was fined $5.5 million for committing criminal fraud against the Air Force.

In another study, the Project on Government Oversight (PGO) searched public records from October 1989 to February 1994 and found-in just that 4~/~-year period-85 instances of fraud, waste and abuse in weapons contracting. For example:

Boeing, Grumman, Hughes, Raytheon and RCA pleaded guilty to illegal trafficking in classified documents and paid a total of almost $15 million in restitution, reimbursements, fines, etc.

* Hughes pleaded guilty to procurement fraud in one case, was convicted of it in a second case and, along with McDonnell Douglas and General Motors, settled out-of-court for a total of more than $1 million dollars in a third case.

* Teledyne paid $5 million in a civil settlement for false testing, plus $5 million for repairs.

* McDonnell Douglas settled for a total of more than $22 million in four "defective pricing" cases.

But General Electric was the champ. PGO lists fourteen cases, including a conviction for mail and procurement fraud that resulted in a criminal fine of $10 million and restitution of $2.2 million. In our own research, we found several other examples of GE crimes and civil violations:

* In 1961, GE pleaded guilty to price-fixing and paid a $372,500 fine.
* In 1977, it was convicted of price-fixing again.
* In 1979, it settled out-of-court when the State of Alabama sued it for dumping PCBs in a river.
* In 1981, it was convicted of setting up a $1.25 million slush fund to bribe Puerto Rican officials.
* In 1985, GE pleaded guilty to 108 counts of fraud on a Minuteman missile contract. In addition, the chief engineer of GE's space systems division was convicted of perjury, and GE paid a fine of a million dollars.
* In 1985, it pleaded guilty to falsifying time cards.
* In 1989, it paid the government $3.5 million to settle five civil lawsuits alleging contractor fraud at a jet-engine plant (which involved the alteration of 9,000 daily labor vouchers to inflate its Pentagon billings).

In 1990, GE was convicted of criminal fraud for cheating the Army on a contract for battlefield computers; it declined to appeal and paid $16 million in criminal and civil fines. ($11.7 million of this amount was to settle government complaints that it had padded its bids on 200 other military and space contracts-which comes to just $58,000 or so per contract.)

In 1993, GE sold its weapons division to Martin Marietta for $3 billion (retaining 23.5% of the stock and two seats on the board of directors).

The largest investigation of Pentagon fraud took place between 1986 and 1990. Called Operation Ill Wind, it began when Pentagon official John Marlowe was caught molesting little girls. He cut a deal to stay out of jail and, for the next few years, secretly recorded hundreds of conversations with weapons contractors.

There's no way of knowing how much the crimes Ill Wind looked into cost the taxpayers, but the investigation, which cost $20 million, brought in ten times that much in fines. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Pasztor, "more than 90 companies and individuals were convicted of felonies... including eight of the military's fifteen largest suppliers....Boeing, GE and United Technologies pleaded guilty...Hughes, Unisys, Raytheon, Loral, Litton, Teledyne, Cubic, Hazeltine, Whittaker and LTV...admitted they violated the law."

Unisys signed the largest Pentagon fraud settlement in history: $190 million in fines, penalties and forgone profits (which means they weren't allowed to charge for cost overruns the way military contractors usually do).

Assistant Navy Secretary Melvyn Paisley was the central figure in the Ill Wind scandal and the highest-ranking person convicted (he was sentenced to four years in prison). He ran his office like a supermarket for weapons manufacturers, soaking up bribes, divvying up multibillion-dollar contracts and diverting work to a firm he secretly controlled with a partner.

Paisley may have been a bit more...flamboyant than most, but there was nothing terribly unusual about his approach. As of 1994, nearly 70 of the Pentagon's 100 largest suppliers were under investigation. Fines for that year totaled a record $1.2 billion.

That may sound like a lot, but it's less than 2% of the weapons industry's net income (which averaged $64 billion a year in 1994 and 1995). A billion or two in fines is hardly an incentive to end the corruption and waste in Pentagon contracting.


Very good read.

excerpted from the book
Take the Rich Off Welfare
by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman
Odonian Press, 1996


Military Waste and Fraud (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Military_Fraud.html)

tsai3904
02-22-2013, 05:05 PM
More info on the case:


The federal prosecution of five former employees of the private security firm Blackwater has crumbled after the defendants said they were acting at the behest of the CIA by providing five guns as gifts to King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Federal prosecutors indicted former Blackwater president Gary Jackson and four others in 2010 on a long list of felony firearms violations involving dozens of weapons, including 17 M-4 military assault rifles and 17 Romanian-made AK-47s.

All charges against three of the accused were dismissed Thursday at the request of prosecutors after a federal judge ruled earlier this month to reduce several of the felony charges to misdemeanors.

...

Several of the federal charges were related to a Bushmaster M4 rifle, three Glock handguns and a Remington shotgun presented to King Abdullah and his traveling entourage during a 2005 visit to Blackwater's headquarters. Prosecutors said the weapons were part of a bid for Blackwater to land a lucrative security contract with Jordan and that registration records tracking the guns were later falsified to claim the weapons were sold to individuals.

Though many documents in the court file are still under seal for national security reasons, it appears the government's case began to unravel last year when defense lawyers produced sworn statements from two retired CIA officials who said they knew about the weapons presented to the king.

John Macguire, who described himself as a CIA officer for 23 years ending in 2005, and Charles Seidel, who said he was CIA station chief in the Jordanian capital of Amman in 2005, said they would be willing to testify about their knowledge of government involvement if the spy agency allowed it.

"I have information related to the transfer of firearms to the King of Jordan described in numerous counts of the indictment and how the U.S. government's authorization for the transfer of those weapons took place," Maguire said in a statement filed with the court.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/blackwayer-prosecution-charges-dropped_n_2741850.html

QuickZ06
02-22-2013, 05:26 PM
Stop your yabbering, this case is now CLOSED. Nothing to see here.

Yep!

tod evans
02-22-2013, 06:00 PM
"Just-Us" has been done.:mad: