Former United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe accepted more than $500,000 in bribes from Chinese businesses in exchange for help obtaining lucrative investments and government contracts, according to federal court documents unsealed Tuesday, sparking an investigation into whether bribery is “business as usual at the U.N.”
In exchange for the money, federal prosecutors say Ashe used his position as Permanent Resident to the United Nations for Antigua and Barbuda and General Assembly head to introduce a U.N. document in support of a real estate project being developed by Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng.
Prosecutors say some of the bribe money was used to pay for Ashe’s family vacation and to construct a basketball court at his home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He opened two bank accounts to receive the funds and then underreported his income by more than $1.2 million, officials said.
A pharmacist in Nebraska has pleaded guilty to what is possibly the largest case of Medicaid fraud in the state. Scott Tran, owner of Tran Pharmacy, submitted hundreds of fraudulent claims for tobramycin solution (Tobi) in the names of his customers’ children, The Journal Star reported. By pleading guilty on September 29, 2015, Tran agreed to a restitution of $14.4 million. Assistant US Attorney Alan Everett told The Journal Star that the government could recoup close to $3 million from the pharmacist’s home, store, bank accounts, stocks, and life insurance policies. US Magistrate Judge Cheryl Zwart noted that Tran will not likely serve as a pharmacist ever again. “In a profession such as yours, employment is a major concern. Do you understand that?” Zwart asked, according to The Journal Star. “Yes, your honor,” Tran said. – See more at: http://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/pharmacist-admits-to-144-million-medicaid-fraud#sthash.7qbjI7jF.dpuf
According to a July Gallup poll, public approval of Congress has fallen to near-record lows. On average, 34% of the population approves of a given Congress. The current 114th Congress has a 17% approval rating.
Americans have reason to be concerned. According to GovTrack.us, the last two Congresses have enacted fewer laws than any other Congress since 1947. And the 114th Congress may just surpass them all in terms of doing nothing.
House Speaker John Boehner has argued that “We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal”—not by the laws they pass. Even by that metric, Boehner’s Congress is still underperforming as a law must be passed to repeal another one.
MORE THAN 10 years ago, Robert Gold sought to do what many Americans have dreamed of their whole lives: patent an idea.
Gold developed a breakthrough in wireless communications that would help people speak to one another with less interference and greater security.
Then it disappeared like a dropped call.
The Department of Defense concluded that his invention could be a national security threat in the wrong hands and slapped Gold’s patent application with a so-called “secrecy order” in 2002, which prevented him from discussing the technology with anyone. Five years later, his attorney succeeded in lifting the order, but by then, it was too late.
Nurses Registry and Home Health Corp., and the estate of its former owner, Lennie House, have agreed to a judgment against them for $16 million to resolve allegations of health-care fraud, U.S. Attorney Kerry Harvey announced Thursday.
The final report of an outside investigation into corruption within DeKalb County’s government calls for the county’s Interim Chief Executive Officer (ICEO), Lee May, to resign. But May is firing back. Wednesday, May and former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers, who led the probe, traded barbs through the media.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Sept. 29 (UPI) — The Department of Justice announced Tuesday the indictment of 10 Puerto Rico police officers for allegedly running a criminal organization from a police department.
The officers used their status as law enforcement to “make money through robbery, extortion, manipulating court records and selling illegal narcotics,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
The indictment was returned by a grand jury in Puerto Rico on Thursday. The defendants are charged with conspiring to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act and some of the defendants are charged with extortion under color of official right, narcotics trafficking, civil rights violations and false statements made to federal agents.
Volkswagen’s brazen and bizarre “Diesel-gate” deception beggars belief. This sustained and sophisticated software scamsuggests truly pathological levels of managerial desperation and contempt: desperation around a failed promise of clean diesel technology and unsubtle contempt for unsuspecting regulators and customers alike. Precisely how gullible did these wizards of Wolfsburg think people would be?
That’s why the real story here revolves less around the deceit than its discovery. An eco-NGO, the International Council on Clean Transportation — not formal regulatory review — effectively uncovered the con. A $50,000 emissions test was run bya West Virginia University lab and its researchers have told reporters they “kind of opened the can of worms” on Volkswagen’s cheating. The discrepancies measured proved neither minor nor marginal; they grotesquely exceeded what the law allowed by 10 times to 30 times. Follow-up tests erased any reasonable, or benefit of the, doubt. Data-driven analysis drove the German giant to confess tampering with 11 million cars.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — September became the deadliest month of 2015 after a series of weekend shootings left three people dead.
At least 13 people were shot and three killed in the month’s final weekend. The circumstances of many of the shootings remain under investigation.
Cleveland tallied 97 homicides as of Monday morning, a drastic increase over recent years setting the city on track to experience one of its deadliest years in nearly a decade.
Police are still working to determine what’s behind the uptick, but investigators have said that many shootings are related to ongoing battles between local street gangs.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed four of the 22 corruption charges against U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and a wealthy friend, keeping intact most of the case against the New Jersey Democrat and his alleged co-conspirator.
In his ruling, Judge William Walls of the U.S. District Court of New Jersey determined that prosecutors failed to meet the legal standard necessary to show that donations to the senator’s legal-defense fund were given in exchange for official acts from the senator.
But Judge Walls issued a number of decisions Monday that maintained most of the Justice Department’s case against Mr. Menendez and his friend, Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor.
