bribery

As DeLong noted, Blackwater lost its license to operate in Iraq in 2007, after its security officers gunned down innocent civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Yet Blackwater didn’t actually leave Iraq until earlier this year, and even then it didn’t really leave. Many of its security guards were allowed to stay and work under a [...]

Breaking news from The New York Times:
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

From The Times-Picayune of New Orleans:
Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson was found guilty of 11 of 16 corruption charges today by a federal jury. [...]
Jefferson was charged with soliciting bribes and other crimes for a series of schemes in which he helped American businesses broker deals in West African in exchange for payments or financial [...]

More news from Michigan:
City Councilwoman Monica Conyers has been identified in an FBI bribery probe as “Council Member A,” the city official investigators say received more than $6,000 in cash bribes in exchange for a deciding vote that approved a $1.2 billion sewage disposal contract with the waste management company Synagro Technologies.
According to a report [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Minehaha Forman has the details:
The FBI has offered Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers a plea deal involving her apparent connection to the Synagro Technologies sludge scandal according to published reports Tuesday afternoon. Conyers, who is married to U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., is suspected of being “Council member A,” a figure investigators [...]

Justice may be blind, but it sure ain’t quick.
Forty-six months after federal agents found $90,000 of aluminum-wrapped cash in his freezer, and thirty-seven months after FBI agents raided his office on Capitol Hill, former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) begins trial today in Virginia on charges that he sought cash in exchange for promoting U.S. business [...]