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EPA officials outed scientists who blew whistle on alleged corruption
& altered chemical hazard assessments at agency – reports
1 Oct, 2021 17:36
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials reportedly exposed whistleblowers who raised corruption allegations after apparently uncovering proof that senior agency staffers had tampered with risk assessments for chemicals.
In June, four EPA scientists reportedly brought allegations of corruption against the agency’s New Chemicals Division and shared detailed evidence that high-level figures had deleted hazard alerts and altered conclusions in several chemical assessments to make them appear safer.
Minutes after receiving one such complaint on June 28, Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), shared the file with six senior colleagues – at least one of whom was named in the complaint, according to records obtained by The Intercept through Freedom of Information requests.
The four whistleblowers are represented by environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which also submitted the complaint to the EPA inspector general’s office and sought an audit to identify the altered risk assessments. A copy was also sent to Representative Ro Khanna (D-California), who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s environment subcommittee.
The scientists also called for a review of cases in which they alleged comments in documents had been erased – and urged the agency to conduct an evaluation of the process “that allowed these improper changes to be made and remain uncorrected.” Among the six people Freedhoff forwarded the document to was OPPT deputy director for programs Tala Henry, who is reportedly described in the complaint as being involved in approving several chemicals that were not properly assessed.
According to The Intercept, the records – which include more than 1,000 pages of internal emails – show that within a day EPA officials had shared the complaint with other employees who had been named in it. Two days later, the named staffers apparently held a Zoom meeting to discuss how to respond – something legal experts told the outlet could compromise the investigation.
“That’s just not the way it’s done. How do we know they weren’t using that meeting to get their stories straight?” Kyla Bennett, PEER’s director of science policy, told The Intercept.
An analogy would be if there’s a murder investigation. You don’t go to all of the people who you think might have done it and give them all the evidence you’ve collected and say, ‘This is what we’re thinking.’
Although PEER and the whistleblowers decided against publicly naming the EPA staff members because “we are not judge and jury,” Bennett had earlier told the outlet that the agency had “released” the whistleblowers’ names – putting them in an “incredibly uncomfortable situation” and giving superiors the “chance to circle the wagons trying to go after them.”
In addition to potential threats of legal action against them by the companies whose chemicals were being assessed, the whistleblowers were reportedly subjected to various forms of harassment – including incidents involving shouting, name-calling, and disparagement of their work in front of colleagues. All four scientists were also reportedly reprimanded for not reviewing new chemicals quickly enough.
In a statement response to The Intercept, which has carried out a months-long investigation into the allegations, the EPA expressed its commitment to “protecting employee rights, including the important right of all employees to be free from retaliation for whistleblowing.”
What you say doesn't seem to be what you do!
The agency is apparently conducting a “workplace climate assessment” within the NCD, which has reportedly approved dozens of new chemicals for market release since the first whistleblower complaint was filed.
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Georgia detains controversial ex-President Saakashvili, who fled
homeland in 2013 & was sentenced in absentia on criminal charges
1 Oct, 2021 17:25
FILE PHOTO. Mikhail Saakashvili at a court hearing in Kiev, Ukraine on December 11, 2017.
© Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko
Former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili has been detained upon his return home, the country’s prime minister has said. The controversial figure now faces a total of nine years behind bars, having been sentenced in absentia.
Saakashvili was arrested by law enforcement and incarcerated, Irakly Garibalishvili told the media, on Friday evening. “I want to inform our society that the third president of Georgia, the wanted Mikhail Saakashvili, has been detained,” the prime minister explained.
Based in Ukraine in recent years, Saakashvili unexpectedly announced plans to fly to the capital Tblisi earlier this week, publishing his flight manifesto online. He promised his supporters he’d lead a fight to “save” Georgia. It was not the first time Saakashvili pledged to return, but this time, he kept his word.
“I have bought a ticket for the evening of October 2 to be in Tbilisi with you and defend your will and take part in saving Georgia,” he stated. On Friday morning, he posted a video claiming to be in the coastal city of Batumi, some 300 kilometers to the West of the capital.
His return coincides with local elections, in which his UNM party is challenging the ruling Georgian Dream. Saakashvili stepped down as the UNM’s chairman, from exile, two years ago. He was replaced by his own chosen candidate, Grigol Vashadze.
Saakashvili fled his homeland back in 2013, shortly after his political rival Giorgi Margvelashvili trounced his favored successor Davit Bakradze in a presidential election. The colourful politician has been targeted by multiple criminal cases since then, which he claims are politically motivated.
In January 2018, he was handed a three-year sentence for abusing power in pardoning former Interior Ministry officials convicted in a 2006 murder case. Later that year, Saakashvili received a separate six-year jail term for abusing his authority by trying to cover up evidence related to the 2005 beating of an opposition politician.
The ex-president has consistently maintained his innocence, however his rule was authoritarian in nature and the likes of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights publicly condemned him after images emerged showing prisoners being sodomized and beaten in a Tblisi prison, under his watch.
Earlier on Friday, Saakashvili released two video addresses, the first claiming he was in Batumi. The claim was dismissed by Georgia’s interior ministry, which said the ex-president had not crossed the country’s borders. So far, no official information on where exactly Saakashvili was apprehended has been released.
After his departure from Tblisi, in 2013, Saakashvili first moved to New York. After spending around two years in the US, hiding from Georgia’s prosecutors, he relocated to Ukraine to become the governor of Odessa region on the invitation of then-president Petro Poroshenko. The latter granted the fugitive politician Ukrainian citizenship, which led to Saakashvili losing his Georgian nationality.
The Saakashvili-Poroshenko honeymoon ended some two years later, with the Ukrainian leader taking away the politician’s Ukrainian passport. Saakashvili, now rendered effectively stateless, spent some time in the Netherlands, before returning to Ukraine after the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Friday’s events mark the latest drama of a controversial career. Earlier in the day, the Kremlin commented that everything around the Georgian-turned-Ukrainian was a “circus.” In 2008, Saakashvili led his country into a short, disastrous war with Russia. The European Union’s investigation blamed his Tbilisi government for starting the conflict.
Seriously, they didn't blame Russia?
Vice president of Russia’s leading bank placed on federal wanted list
after she absconds following major financial fraud charge
1 Oct, 2021 10:45
FILE PHOTO. Marina Rakova, the Vice President of Sberbank.
Marina Rakova, the vice president of Sberbank, has been placed on the federal wanted list by Russian law enforcement after being charged in absentia with embezzlement. She is suspected to have gone abroad, fearing prosecution.
According to a source cited by news agency TASS, the investigation also plans to put Rakova on the international wanted list.
Prior to her work at Sberbank, Rakova was deputy education minister. She allegedly took taxpayers’ money, initially intended for state contracts for a federal education program, and sent it to the Fund for New Forms of Education Development, where she was the CEO.
Rakova is suspected of embezzling more than 50 million rubles ($685,000) and faces up to 10 years in prison. According to REN TV, the Fund for New Forms of Education Development was allocated as much as 2.837 billion rubles ($39 million) during her time in the ministry, meaning the current charges may just be the tip of the iceberg.
On Wednesday, her office and home were searched by law enforcement. One day later, she failed to turn up for questioning and turned off her mobile phone, it was reported.
On Thursday, a Moscow court also detained three of Rakova’s former colleagues, Maxim Inkin, Evgeny Zak, and Kristina Kryuchkova, who are also suspected of taking part in the fraud.
Sberbank is a Russian state-owned financial institution and is the country’s most popular bank. Earlier this year, Forbes declared it to be the “most reliable” of all banks operating in the country.
It will certainly drop down that list next year.
Australian NSW premier Berejiklian resigns amid corruption probe,
says only regret is not seeing end to her own draconian lockdown
1 Oct, 2021 05:20
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces her resignation at a news conference in Sydney, Australia, October 1, 2021 © AAP Image / Bianca De Marchi via Reuters
The head of the Australian state of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, has abruptly resigned just before a corruption watchdog launched a probe into potential misconduct, stating that she had “no option” but to quit.
“My only regret will be not to be able to finish the job to ensure the people of New South Wales transition to living freely with Covid,” Berejiklian – among the country’s most vocal advocates of draconian lockdown measures – said on Friday, as she announced her resignation, soon after the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) declared an upcoming probe.
My resignation as premier could not happen at a worse time, but the timing is completely outside of my control as the ICAC has chosen to take this action during the most challenging weeks of the most challenging times in the history of NSW.
Despite her resignation, Berejiklian stated “categorically” that she had “always acted with the highest level of integrity” while in office, lamenting that the move came during the “darkest days” in NSW’s history – presumably referring to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which has kept NSW in a near-perpetual state of lockdown for months on end.
The ICAC said it will investigate potential conflicts of interest linked to public grants awarded to certain organizations between 2012 and 2018, some of which occurred prior to Berejiklian’s premiership, when she served in a lower office in the state government. The corruption watchdog will hold public hearings later this month to probe the matter further.
The investigation initially centered on former NSW legislator Daryl Maguire, alleging that, while Berejiklian had been in a “secret” personal relationship with him, she may have “engaged in conduct that constituted ... a breach of public trust” by helping to funnel government grant dollars into organizations in Maguire’s district.
Maguire, who previously served alongside Berejiklian in the state’s Liberal Party, resigned in 2018 over a separate series of corruption allegations linked to property deals with an overseas developer.
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