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Mafia ‘mega-trial’ convicts 70 members of Italy’s most powerful clan
8 Nov, 2021 14:19
of hoarding and managing public housing operated with the 'ndrangheta type mafia method.
© Alfonso Di Vincenzo / KONTROLAB / LightRocket via Getty Images
An Italian judge has convicted 70 people connected to the country’s most powerful mafia clan – the 'Ndrangheta, with some receiving maximum-length sentences.
The marathon Mafia trial was held over the weekend and saw 91 defendants tried in a specially converted court room in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme.
A total of 70 mobsters were convicted in the trial, one of the country’s largest ever. The charges against those on trial included drugs trafficking, murder, extortion, theft and abuse of office.
Anti-mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri – who has lived under police protection for more than 30 years as a result of his mission to defeat the clan – remarked that the sentencing was an “important” one and that he was not “afraid of anything or anyone”.
Some of the mobsters sentenced had opted for a quick, private trial to have their jail time shortened by a third if they were found guilty. About a third of the group are set to serve over 10 years behind bars.
However, a handful of key clan members were slapped with the maximum 20-year sentence prosecutors pushed for. Pasquale Gallone, 62, who helped coordinate his boss’s three-year run from 2014, was one of the gangsters to receive a two-decade long sentence.
Among the people tried, the majority of the 19 acquitted were only marginal suspects, Gratteri said.
Commenting on the verdict, he said that: “We continue our work with serenity and the firmness needed for such an important trial.”
The next two years will see 355 alleged gangsters and corrupt officials face the docks for their involvement with the 'Ndrangheta, a network of some 150 families.
The clan, more powerful than the notorious Sicilian Cosa Nostra mob, is a major player in Europe’s cocaine trafficking, said to control about 80% of the continent’s smuggling operations.
Chile MPs move to impeach president over Pandora Papers
9 Nov, 2021 14:04
Chile’s Chamber of Deputies has approved a motion to impeach outgoing President Sebastian Pinera over alleged shady business deals that were seemingly exposed in the Pandora Papers leak.
The impeachment motion was narrowly passed by Chile’s lower house early on Tuesday following nearly 22 hours of debate. The motion was supported by 78 MPs, while 67 voted against and three abstained.
The motion is now set to head to the country’s Senate for approval, where it will need to get two thirds of votes to be passed. The upper house is expected to vote on the impeachment just days before the upcoming presidential election, which is set to take place on November 21.
Billionaire businessman Pinera will not partake in the polls, since the incumbent president cannot seek immediate re-election, according to Chile’s constitution.
The case against Pinera stems from allegations raised in the recently leaked Pandora Papers, a cache of nearly 12 million documents related to offshore deals, which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) began publishing on October 3. The expose alleged that multiple top politicians were among the list of businessmen with secret offshore accounts.
The leaked documents linked Pinera to the sale of the Dominga mining project through a company owned by his children to businessman Carlos Delano, a close associate of the president. A large part of the deal took place in the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands.
It is the second impeachment attempt to be made against Pinera during the current term. Back in 2019, an unsuccessful impeachment bid was launched against the president over his crackdown on anti-inequality protests that swept the country at the time.
Test results for steel used in US Navy subs ‘falsified’ for decades
9 Nov, 2021 09:11
August 31, 2014. © Reuters / US Navy Handout
A former metallurgist at a Washington state foundry that produced steel used in US Navy submarines has admitted to taking “shortcuts” and doctoring the results of strength and toughness tests on the metal for over three decades.
Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, pleaded guilty to the fraud at a Tacoma court on Monday. Thomas was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in the city that provided steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to manufacture submarine hulls.
According to the Justice Department, the tests were to prove that the steel would hold up in a collision or during certain “wartime scenarios.” While there was no information on whether any submarine hulls had failed, authorities said the Navy had incurred additional costs and maintenance-related expenses to ensure the vessels were seaworthy.
Although the government did not reveal which subs were affected, the contractors have jointly built Virginia class submarines for about two decades. In a statement to the court, Thomas’ attorney noted that the “government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised.”
In her plea agreement, Thomas told the court that she faked test results for at least 240 steel productions between 1985 and 2017 – roughly half the steel the foundry supplied to the Navy. Her attorney said Thomas “took shortcuts,” but “never intended to compromise the integrity of any material.”
In 2017, a metallurgist being groomed to replace Thomas noticed the suspicious test results and alerted the foundry’s parent company, Bradken Inc. The Kansas City-based firm fired her and disclosed the falsified data to the Navy, but suggested that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud. Prosecutors said this affected the Navy’s efforts to investigate the scope of the problem and address potential risks to personnel.
The Justice Department said that when investigators confronted Thomas with the fraudulent results, she admitted that it “looks bad” and revealed that she had given passing grades in some tests because she thought the Navy’s temperature-testing requirements were “stupid.”
Thomas, who faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February, was apparently not “motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment,” her attorney said, adding that she “regretted failing to follow her moral compass.”
Are you kidding, 240 times; I think she followed her moral compass, I'm just not sure her compass is set to true north.
Swedish oil executives charged with complicity in war crimes
12 Nov, 2021 12:18
© Reuters / Roberto Schmidt
Swedish prosecutors have charged the chairman and former CEO of Lundin Energy oil and gas company for complicity in war crimes perpetrated by the Sudanese army and militias in southern Sudan between 1999 and 2003.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) said on Thursday that the local firm, which was named Lundin Oil at that time, had asked the Sudanese authorities in May 1999 to secure a potential oil field in the south of the country, despite being aware that it wasn’t fully controlled, and that capturing the land would require the use of force.
“What constitutes complicity in a criminal sense is that they made these demands despite understanding or, in any case being indifferent to, the military and the militia carrying out the war in a way that was forbidden according to international humanitarian law,” it pointed out in a statement.
The Sudanese government forces “systematically attacked civilians or carried out indiscriminate attacks,” according to the prosecutors.
The probe against Lundin Energy had been initiated in Sweden in 2010 after a report by the Dutch non-governmental organization PAX accused the firm of being involved in human rights abuses in Sudan.
PAX praised the indictment of Ludin’s chairman Ian Lundin and former CEO Alex Schneiter, who is currently a board member, with complicity in war crimes as “a great victory for justice and a historic achievement.”
Lundin Energy, however, denied any wrongdoing, insisting in a long statement on Friday that its operations in Sudan were “fully legitimate and responsible.”
The prosecutors had no evidence or valid grounds to press the charges, with their statement of criminal action being “extremely vague and inexplicit,” it said.
The company argued that reports by NGOs “can’t be relied upon as evidence in court” as they lack credibility, accuracy and reliability.
Lundin Energy also challenged the claim by the prosecutors to confiscate 1.39 billion crowns ($161.7 million) that the firm made from the sale of its business in Sudan in 2003. There’s “no basis for a corporate fine or forfeiture,” it said.
The Swedish company was a major player in Sudan between 1991 and 2003 amid a decades-long civil war between the central government in Khartoum, the Muslim-majority north and the oil-rich Christian south. Omar al-Bashir, who was Sudan’s president during that conflict, is now wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide and other war crimes. The fighting in the North African country ended in 2011, with South Sudan becoming an independent state.
FBI accused of leaking private data to NYT
12 Nov, 2021 03:49
The New York Times has obtained ‘privileged communications’ of Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe, raising suspicions that an FBI source might have leaked the newspaper confidential data obtained during recent raids.
FBI agents raided the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe last Saturday as part of an investigation into the acquisition of a diary purportedly written by President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley. On Thursday, less than a week after the raid, the New York Times published an article claiming to have obtained “internal documents” from Project Veritas’ attorney.
The article sparked outrage among conservatives, who accused the FBI of leaking private communications from the organization to the newspaper.
“The FBI raided Project Veritas on a pretext and is now leaking their privileged communications to the New York Times. This is a scandal,” tweeted lawyer and Human Events co-publisher Will Chamberlain, who called for the article’s co-author, Adam Goldman, to be “subpoenaed tomorrow and forced to reveal his criminal source.”
Chamberlain also raised further legal concerns, noting that Project Veritas “is currently in litigation with the New York Times” over a separate issue, which would make any leaks to the newspaper an even bigger scandal.
“This isn’t journalism, this is straight up theft,” he concluded.
Attorney Harmeet Dhillon – who is currently representing Project Veritas and O’Keefe – also accused the New York Times of publishing a “private, privileged correspondence” which “they have no legal right to possess,” while political commentator and lawyer Mike Cernovich wrote, “This is not a grey area. It’s black letter criminal felonies committed by the FBI and the New York Times.”
A federal court ordered the US Justice Department to stop extracting information from O’Keefe’s devices on Thursday.
The FBI took two of O’Keefe’s phones during its raid on his home and the Project Veritas founder said his devices contained confidential material, including information relating to his journalistic sources.
“This is an attack on the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” said O’Keefe this week, adding, “I've heard ‘the process is the punishment.’ I didn't really understand what that meant until this weekend.”
O’Keefe said he “wouldn't wish” the situation “on any journalist.”
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