Thursday, November 2, 2017

FBI plants bull's-eye on GM, Ford as UAW scandal widens


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Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press Published 1:01 p.m. ET Nov. 2, 2017

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The intertwined lives of a UAW official and a Fiat Chrysler executive

Over a period of years, former Fiat Chrysler executive Al Iacobelli and former UAW Vice President General Holiefield helped to save Chrysler and then stole millions intended for worker training, authorities say. Wochit

FBI probe into crooked dealings between UAW and auto execs now involves FCA, GM and Ford. At issue is whether training funds tied to all three automakers were stolen

636452244096334924-GM-Ford.jpg

(Photo: Associated Press/Getty Images)

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The FBI's probe into financial shenanigans by UAW and auto executives has extended to General Motors and Ford, which join FCA in a growing scandal that focuses on stolen training funds, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

At the heart of the probe is whether funds that were meant to train autoworkers at all three companies were instead secretly funneled to union officials and auto executives who were scheming together to line their own pockets.

Since the investigation surfaced four months ago, criminal charges have been filed against two FCA officials and three UAW officials, including ex-FCA Vice President Alphons Iacobelli and Monica Morgan-Holified, the widow of the late UAW Vice President General Holiefield. The pair, along with others, are accused of  siphoning millions of dollars from a UAW training center and spending it on themselves, buying everything from luxury vehicles to $35,000 Mont Blanc ink pens.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles headquarters, located inBuy Photo

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles headquarters, located in Auburn Hills, left, and UAW headquarters. (Photo: Detroit Free Press)

The Free Press has now learned that the FBI is also eyeing at least one GM official for similar conduct, and is looking into the financial records of  training centers that are funded by GM and Ford with the goal of training union autoworkers.

“We are cooperating with the inquiry,"  Kelli Felker, manufacturing & labor communications manager at Ford, said in a statement. "We are confident in the UAW-Ford National Programs Center leadership team and the policies and procedures used to govern the program operations that benefit approximately 57,000 members of our UAW-Ford hourly workforce.”

GM also is cooperating, stating:  "We have been contacted by the Eastern District of Michigan U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding an investigation into the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources. We are fully cooperating with the investigation."

The UAW declined comment on the latest development, but has emphasized that the union continues to cooperate with the investigation.

As first reported by the Detroit News, the FBI's latest targets in the probe include Joe Ashton, 69, a retired UAW vice president who was appointed to GM’s board in 2014, and Cindy Estrada, Ashton's successor who oversaw the union’s GM department.

Neither could be reached for comment this morning.

Related:

Feds: UAW and FCA execs laundered money through fake hospice center

Feds: Bargaining rivals stole millions from FCA; kept UAW officials 'fat, dumb and happy'

So far, the investigation has focused on allegations that FCA auto executives and UAW officials ran a sophisticated money laundering scheme,  The executives allegedly stole money from the training center, then funneled it to themselves through various organizations, including a children's charity called the Leave the Light On Foundation and the Hospice of Metropolitan Detroit.

As prosecutors alleged in court documents, the scam was part of a bigger goal by at  FCA execs to keep UAW officials "fat, dumb and happy." And the schemers were careful not to get caught, they said, claiming they warned one another not to leave a paper trail about what was going on.

According to court documents, the training center was funded by FCA and received between $13 million  and $31 million a year.  Prosecutors say least $4.5 million of that money was misspent.

Here is what the accused have been charged with:

The Rochester Hills home of Al Iacobelli

The Rochester Hills home of Al Iacobelli (Photo: Eric D. Lawrence)

  • Iacobelli is accused of steering $1.2 million in employee-training funds to Morgan, Holiefield and others. Iacobelli also is accused of pocketing $1 million in training funds and using it to buy a Ferrari, pay off his personal American Express and Chase credit cards, buy two Mont Blanc pens at $35,700 each, install a swimming pool, outdoor kitchen and spa at his Rochester Hills home. 
  • Morgan, whose photo business allegedly once received $70,000 from a charity that was supposed to help children struggling with hardships. The government claims the charity was really a sham, set up by Holifield and Iacobelli.
  • Virdell King, 65, of Detroit, the first African-American female to be elected president of a local union in UAW-Chrysler's history.  She is accused of buying designer shoes, clothing, jewelry and luggage using credit cards that were issued through the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center. King also is accused of making more than $40,000 in additional purchases that pampered other senior UAW officials, including a shotgun, golf equipment, luggage, concert tickets, theme park tickets and other items.
  • Jerome Durden of Rochester, a financial analyst at FCA who allegedly helped conceal the fraud. He pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme and faces up to five years in prison.

UAW and FCA officials have said that no labor contracts were  perverted by the alleged scandal. Prosecutors have said they don't know if that happened, but that laws were broken: auto executives were giving things to union officials when the law prohibits that.

Fiat Chrysler officials declined comment on the latest developments, but FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne has previously expressed “disgust” at the alleged conduct and called it the “most egregious breach of trust by the individuals involved.”

"These acts were of course neither known nor sanctioned by FCA US," Marchionne has previously stated. "In fact, upon learning of some possible malfeasance in June 2015, the company investigated and, once credible evidence of wrongdoing was discovered, the individuals involved were immediately separated from the company."

Iacobelli, who had led the company's contract talks with the UAW in 2011, abruptly resigned one month before he was set to lead negotiations on a new four-year contract with the UAW in 2015.

"This conduct had nothing whatsoever to do with the collective bargaining process," Marchionne previously said, "but rather involved two bad actors who apparently saw an opportunity to misappropriate funds entrusted to their control and who, unfortunately, co-opted other individuals to carry out or conceal their activities over a period of several years."

The U.S. Attorney's office and FBI both declined comment.

Free Press reporters Eric Lawrence and Phoebe Wall Howard contributed to this report.

Above is fromhttp://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/11/02/uaw-scandal-gm-ford/824911001/

House Dems sue for records on Trump Hotel lease


Michael Isikoff

20 minutes ago


The Trump International Hotel is shown on Aug. 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. The hotel, located blocks from the White House, has become both a tourist attraction in the nation’s capital and also a symbol of President Trump’s intermingling of business and politics. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON – All seventeen Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today filed a novel lawsuit against the Trump administration to force it to turn over documents about the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.—records, they say, that will reveal details about how the president is personally profiting while in office.

The lawsuit represents the latest legal challenge to Trump’s controversial decision to retain ownership of his international real estate firm, which operates the Trump Hotel in a building leased from the government’s General Services Administration.

“This hotel is not just a building with Donald Trump’s name on it,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House committee.  “It is a glaring symbol of the Trump Administration’s lack of accountability and a daily reminder of the refusal by Republicans in Congress to do their job.  This may be standard operating procedure in foreign countries—but not here.  Not in America.”

Guided by a Georgetown law professor, the Democrats are employing an unusual legal tactic to get Trump Hotel records: they are using an obscure law, enacted during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, that authorizes any seven members of the House oversight panel to obtain records from a federal agency.

The Trump Hotel has been a lightening rod for the president’s critics ever since he took office last January . Almost immediately, the GSA stopped providing Congress with regular updates on the hotel’s expenses and profits under its government lease.

Nevertheless, some records about the hotel’s operations have surfaced: In August, the GSA “inadvertently” posted “privileged and confidential” documents showing the hotel earned $1.97 million in profits during the first four months of this year. The business has become a favorite of lobbying groups and foreign governments seeking to influence the administration.

The documents showing the hotel’s profits have since been removed from the GSA website and no further updates have been made available to the public or Congress. The GSA did not respond to requests for comment from Yahoo News about the removal of the records or the filing of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks GSA documents including monthly expense records so the committee can investigate “whether the Office of the Presidency is being used for private gain” and “the extent to which the Trump Hotel is receiving payments from foreign governments,” according to a “fact sheet” explaining the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington. The panel also wants to see records relating to why the GSA reversed an earlier legal interpretation of the lease, which prohibits any “elected official of the Government of the United States” from sharing in the profits of the hotel.

The lawsuit is not the first to be filed over Trump’s business operations while he is serving as president.  Three other suits have been filed contending that the president is receiving unconstitutional “emoluments” from foreign governments through his ownership of the hotel.

A judge in New York is currently weighing a motion by the Justice Department to dismiss one of the suits on the grounds that the plaintiffs, including a liberal legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, lack standing to bring the case because they can’t show they have been injured by the president’s conduct.

But the new lawsuit being brought Thursday by the House members is significant because, if it survives a court challenge, it could give congressional Democrats new leverage to pry documents out of the Trump administration on a host of other issues.

Their case relies on a little known law known as the “seven member” statute. Enacted in 1928 and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, it provides that any seven members of the principal House oversight committee can request—and receive–  reports and documents from federal agencies.

The law has only occasionally been used over the years—with varying results. Rep. Dennis Hastert (a future Speaker of the House) and Rob Portman (now a U.S. Senator), both Republicans, successfully invoked the law in 1994 to obtain documents about a Texas savings and loan from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

But in 2006, when Rep. Henry Waxman, then ranking Democrat on the House panel, along with other Democrats, filed a lawsuit under the “seven member” statute to obtain Medicare records from the Bush administration, they lost on the grounds they lacked “standing” to bring the case. (Before the Democrats had a chance to appeal, they regained control of the House that year and the case became moot.)

David C. Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor who drafted the complaint being filed today, said the House Democratic case gained new traction last summer after the GSA notified Cummings in a letter it would refuse to turn over records about the Trump Hotel. In doing so, a GSA official cited a new Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that the administration would only produce records when requested by a full committee or subcommittee (currently controlled by Republicans.)

“Individual members of Congress, including ranking minority members, do not have the authority to conduct oversight in the absence of a specific delegation by a full house, committee, or subcommittee,” the Justice Department legal opinion read.

“They basically said, ‘we’re not going to give the stuff to Democrats,’” said Vladeck. But in so doing, he argued, they ignored the fine print in the 89-year-old “seven member statute” and gave the Democrats new grounds to bring their lawsuit.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-dems-sue-records-trump-hotel-lease-160856792.html

Plote Contempt Case may actually be going to trial?

UPDATE:  Case to continue now on December 13, 2017.


Or perhaps there will be a settlement on November 14

The following is from:  http://www.judici.com/courts/cases/case_information.jsp?court=IL004015J&ocl=IL004015J,2014CH170,IL004015JL2014CH170D1

My reading of the case information from the website is that there are two hearings in mid-November and then the case  goes to trial in December.  If anyone knows more please let me know.

The highlighted items should clue you into what’s happening.

2014CH170 PLOTE CONSTRUCTION, INC

Case Information

Case
2014CH170  
Last Update
10/30/2017
Last Upload
10/30/2017 @ 11:55

Case Category
Civil
Case Type - Subtype
CH - 101
Chancery - Injunction

Other Litigants

Role
Name

Defendant/Respondent
BELVIDERE MATERIALS, LLC

Defendant/Respondent
CHICAGO TITLE LAND TRUST COMPANY

Plaintiff/Petitioner
COUNTY OF BOONE

Litigant Information

Full Name
PLOTE CONSTRUCTION, INC

Date of Birth
Role
Defendant/Respondent
Physical File Location

Impounded
No
Initial Open Date
08/21/2014


Attorney
FULLER, WARREN R  


10 - Motion hearing
08/29/2014
9:00 A.M.
YOUNG  
3

82 - Motion/substitute
08/29/2014
9:00 A.M.
YOUNG  
3

35 - Status hearing
09/18/2014
1:30 P.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
11/13/2014
1:30 P.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
11/13/2014
2:13 P.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
01/15/2015
9:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
04/14/2015
9:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
05/12/2015
9:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
06/02/2015
9:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

23 - Petition hearing
07/07/2015
9:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

23 - Petition hearing
07/28/2015
10:00 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
08/17/2015
8:45 A.M.
TOBIN  
1

35 - Status hearing
08/21/2015
3:00 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

10 - Motion hearing
10/26/2015
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

115 - Decision
11/23/2015
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI
  
2

10 - Motion hearing
01/25/2016
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
02/08/2016
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
04/11/2016
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
04/25/2016
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
10/24/2016
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
02/13/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
05/08/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
07/10/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
08/14/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
10/05/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
11/14/2017
11:00 A.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

35 - Status hearing
11/17/2017
11:00 A.M.
NICOLOSI
  
2

2 - Bench trial
12/11/2017
9:00 A.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

2 - Bench trial
12/11/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

2 - Bench trial
12/12/2017
9:00 A.M.
NICOLOSI  
2

2 - Bench trial
12/14/2017
1:30 P.M.
NICOLOSI  

Partial History

11/17/2017
SA Smith pres. No other parties appears. By agreement 12/11/17 date is stricken and case is cont to 12/13/17 at 11am. See Order ORDER

PJN


10/30/2017
Status hearing set for 11/14/2017 at 11:00 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

10/27/2017
SA Smith pres. No other party appears. By agreement, case cont to 11-14-17 at 11:00 a.m. for possible settlement. ORDER
UNASSIGNED

10/23/2017
Status hearing set for 11/17/2017 at 11:00 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

10/05/2017
Status hearing set for 10/27/2017 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

10/05/2017
SA Smith pres for Pl. Atty Fuller pres for Def. Case comes on for status. By agreement, case cont to 10-27-17 at 1:30 p.m. for status on possible settlement.
PJN

08/14/2017
ASA Karla Maville and SA Tricia Smith pres for the pl. Atty Fuller pres for defs. Case comes on for status. By agreement, case is set for status on 10/5/17 at 1:30 p.m. By agreement, the bench trial dates are set as follows: 12/11/17 at 9:00 a.m. for a full day, 12/12/17 at 9:00 a.m. for the entire morning, and if needed, on 12/14/17 at 1:30 p.m. for the entire afternoon. See Order. ORDER
PJN

07/19/2017
Notice of Filing Plaintiff's Response to Supreme Court Rule 213(f) Interrogatories Directed to Plaintiff, County of Boone Plaintiff's Response to Defendants' Second Rule 214 Production Request Directed to Plaintiff, County of Boone
UNASSIGNED

07/10/2017
SA Smith pres for pl. No other party appears. Case comes on for status. By agreement, case is cont'd to 8/14/17 at 1:30 p.m. for further status. AGREED ORDER
PJN

05/25/2017
MANDATE The Judgment of the trial court is Affirmed.
UNASSIGNED

05/08/2017
Status hearing set for 07/10/2017 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

05/08/2017
SA Smith pres for Pl. Atty Fuller pres for Defs. Case comes on for status. Court is advised that the Appellate Court-Second District will issue it's mandate 35 days from 4-20-17. Case cont to 7-10-17 at 1:30 p.m. for further status. ORDER
PJN

02/13/2017
Status hearing set for 05/08/2017 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

02/13/2017
SA Smith pres for Pl. Atty Andrew Fuller pres for Defs. Case comes on for status. By agreement, case cont to 5-8-17 at 1:30 p.m. for further status. ORDER
PJN

10/26/2016
Status hearing set for 02/13/2017 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

10/24/2016
ASA Goulart pres for Pl. No other party appears. By agreement, case cont to 2-13-17 at 1:30 p.m. for status. ORDER
PJN

10/24/2016
Court Correspondence
UNASSIGNED

04/25/2016
Status hearing set for 10/24/2016 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

04/25/2016
SA Courier pres for Pl. Atty Andrew Fuller pres for Defs. Case comes on for status. Upon hearing arguments of counsel and reviewing briefs, Court hereby grants Def's request for stay. The hearing scheduled for 5-9-15 is stricken. Case cont to 10-24-16 at 1:30 p.m. for status on appeal. ORDER
PJN

04/22/2016
Notice of Filing Boone County's Response to Defendant's Claim for Stay
UNASSIGNED

04/18/2016
Defendants Brief in Support of Objections to Proceed and Claim of Stay
UNASSIGNED

04/12/2016
Status hearing set for 04/25/2016 at 1:30 in courtroom 2.
UNASSIGNED

04/11/2016
SA Courier pres for Pl. Atty Andrew Fuller pres for Defs. Case comes on for status. State represents that they are ready to proceed for hearing on 5-9-16. Def objects due to the filing of an appeal. Argument heard. Case remains set for hearing on 5-9-16 at 1:30 p.m. Case is also set on 4-25-16 at 1:30 p.m. for status on the appeal issue. Def has until 4-15-16 to submit a brief in its position. Pl has 7 days thereafter (4-22-16) to submit a response. ORDER Receipt for payment on contempt fine ($3000.00)
PJN

2 


For information regarding the issues involved in the case go to the following postings: 

http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2014/12/county-seeks-injunctive-relief.html

http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2016/03/is-plote-now-appealing-their-contempt.html

http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2016/02/status-of-plote-case.html