Video of the Week: Shaffi Mather on a new way to fight corruption

Shaffi Mather explains why he left his first career to become a social entrepreneur, providing life-saving transportation with his company 1298 for Ambulance. Now, he has a new idea and plans to begin a company to fight the booming business of corruption in public service, eliminating it one bribe at a time.

Shaffi Mather was a successful young entrepreneur, who brought a family-run real estate business to the forefront of the local market before moving on to take major positions at two of India’s largest communication corporations -- Essel Group and Reliance Industries. However, after a perilous ride to the hospital with his mother he was forced to confront India’s need for a dependable ambulance service. He left his career at Reliance and founded 1298 for Ambulance, a for-profit service with a sliding scale payment system that has revolutionized medical transport in Mumbai and Kerala.



Today, Mather is also a co-founder of Moksha-Yug Access, a microfinance institution that operates in rural India, and The Education Initiative, which is involved in e-learning and in creating schools across India. In addition, Mather is a lawyer focusing on litigation in public interest -- battling for transparency in governance and use of public funds, human rights, civil rights and primacy of constitution. He is a TEDIndia Fellow.

from TED.com

Ambassador Neumann on Corruption in Afghanistan

Image via Wikipedia

"Corruption in Afghanistan has evolved over the years of war. Senior leaders taking a cut of projects may not be liked but the practice is long standing and has not traditionally sparked enormous discontent. But the years of warfare have produced a much more wide spread corruption in the society. When there is a pervasive sense of insecurity, when officials are not sure their government will continue, wonder whether they may have to flee to exile and lack any reason to believe they will ever enjoy a pension or even a living wage there is every incentive to profit from any position to safeguard themselves, their families and their friends. Without confidence in the future there is no basis for a sense of civic duty. This is the situation we face today. If every corrupt official were fired tomorrow I have no reason to doubt that the problem would shortly reemerge with the new cadre. This is not a counsel of despair. Other societies have emerged from prolonged period of instability. But it is a reminder that change will be slow and difficult and there are no silver bullets on single policy choices that will provide rapid change. In doing so we will have to pay attention also to the frequent assertions that our and other donors aid is fueling corruption through the actions of contractors and their interaction with Afghan subsidiaries."

Ronald E. NeumannUS Ambassador to Afghanistan ((2005-2007)Testimony at the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign AffairsCommittee on Oversight and Government ReformNovember 17, 2009

US Visas for $12,000 in Ukraine?

Image via Wikipedia

The FBI Cleveland office has just announced the arrest and charges filed in a lengthy investigation involving members of a criminal organization that trafficked in fake documents and fraudulent US visas in Ohio and Ukraine.

The investigation was reportedly started in December of 2007 when information was received that individuals in the Cleveland Ukrainian community were involved in a scheme to bring foreign nationals to Cleveland, Ohio and help them fraudulently obtain real Ohio driver’s licenses for a fee, issued by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) by a Deputy Registrar working for this criminal organization.

The FBI says that an undercover FBI agent was able to fraudulently obtain a real Ohio Driver’s License in August of 2008 for $3000 from this criminal organization. The investigation showed that this criminal organization operated for at least four years, charging foreign nationals, most of whom are unlawfully present, between $1,500 and $3,000 for Ohio driver’s licenses, and Ohio state identification cards using either fraudulent documentation or none at all.

The FBI also says that during the course of the US-based investigation, the investigators in Cleveland discovered evidence that the criminal group in Ohio were working with criminal counterparts in Ukraine. Together, they fraudulently obtained United States non-immigrant visas for Ukrainian nationals who then traveled to Ohio and other points in the United States. The visas were obtained from the United States Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, allegedly through corrupt Ukrainian national employees of the US Embassy.The investigative team from Cleveland, the FBI’s Legal Attaché’s Office in Kyiv, and Diplomatic Security Service Special Agents assigned to the US Embassy in Ukraine investigated the Ukrainian criminal group jointly with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Organized Crime Department over the course of many months. The criminal group allegedly charged each visa applicant $12,000.00. As a result of the joint international investigation, seven members of the Ukraine-based criminal organization, including two Embassy employees, were officially detained today in Ukraine by investigators of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs for violation of Ukrainian laws.

I inquired from the press office of US Embassy Kyiv if they have an official statement, but zip, nada. Usually comes with the territory for bloggers in pjs, btw. From my experience, only the press office at US Embassy Kabul is accommodating. Even when they can't give you the info you want, they at least, take the time to write back. End of rant, moving on.

Read the whole thing here.

Related Item:Inspection of Embassy Kyiv, UkraineOIG Report Number ISP-I-07-17A | March 2007

Arrest in Kickback/Bribe Scheme on Iraq Reconstruction

Image by racoles via Flickr

Former DOS program manager charged

Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post reports on a former State Department program manager in Iraq who has been charged with accepting tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in exchange for steering contracts to Iraqi construction firms (WaPo |October 21, 2009):

The criminal complaint, unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in western Texas, charged Richard Lopez Razo, 52, with illegal receipt of kickbacks and bribes and with wire fraud. He was arrested Friday in Sterling and later released on his own recognizance, court documents said.From 2005 to July 2008, Razo worked in Iraq as a logistics specialist for three U.S. companies, according to the complaint. It alleges that during that period he requested tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from Iraqi subcontractors for lining up construction contracts. The subcontractors sent some of the money to Razo's North Carolina bank account via wire transfers, according to the allegations.

Razo began work for the State Department as a provincial program manager in Iraq in September 2008, with oversight for reconstruction projects in the south, according to the court documents.

The news item posted in Huffington Post has additional details of the case here, including specific allegations in the 16-page affidavit executed by James Wray, a special agent with the SIGAR’s office. I'm trying to locate the unsealed complaint; DOJ has nothing online on this as of this writing.

* * *

Updated: From the State Dept DPB on October 21, 2009:

QUESTION: Ian, any reaction to the State Department official charged with taking kickbacks from reconstruction contracts in Iraq?

MR. KELLY: Yeah. I don’t have a reaction, per se, because we don’t want to really comment on an ongoing criminal investigation, which is what we’re talking about here. I can talk to you about what his status was with the Department of State. He had a temporary Civil Service appointment to the State Department that was limited to Iraq only and limited to a particular timeframe. And he began employment with the Department of State in July of 2008, and his employment terminated just last week.He was a provincial program manager on the Maysan Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq. And in this role, he would have had – he would have managed U.S. Government projects and programs designed to improve stability and security in Iraq. But beyond that, I really can’t say any more.QUESTION: Did the State Department play any role in the investigation?MR. KELLY: I can’t really comment on that, I’m afraid.QUESTION: Well, was he – what was the length of his contract? Did it run its course or was he --MR. KELLY: It – the contract ran out on October 16.QUESTION: So he wasn’t fired, in other words?MR. KELLY: No, because his contract ran out.

Video of the Week: The Snakehead

When human smuggler Sister Ping was finally captured by the FBI and went on trial in New York City, Patrick Radden Keefe became fascinated by the powerful "snakehead"-her business acumen, her underground network, and the respect and affection she commanded in Chinatown even as prosecutors charged her with being the kingpin of a vast and often violent criminal enterprise. Her story, and the story of the smuggling ship the Golden Venture, raised a series of fascinating questions about why people will still risk their lives and borrow tens of thousands of dollars to live and work as illegal immigrants in America.To get to the bottom of the story, Keefe interviewed smugglers and cops, government informants and FBI agents, White House officials and undocumented immigrants. He journeyed to Canada, where Sister Ping's network sent customers over the Niagara River in rubber rafts, to Hong Kong and Bangkok, where corrupt officials allowed undocumented immigrants to board planes to America, to the rust belt town of York, Pennsylvania, where the Golden Venture passengers were imprisoned for four years, and to Fujian Province, China, where many villages are completely empty now-because everyone has left for America.From the New America Foundation

Check out Patrick Radeen Keefe's The Snakehead website.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Debating The Snakehead, by Patrick Radden Keefe. (slate.com)

18 Months for Theft of More Than $800,000

Former U.S. Embassy Haiti Employee Jean G. Saint-Joy Sentenced

This came from DOJ yesterday: A former employee at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for stealing more than $800,000 from the U.S. Department of State.

Jean G. Saint-Joy, 44, aka Gary Saint-Joy, aka Garry Saint-Joy, a citizen of Haiti, was also ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina to pay restitution in the amount of the theft. Saint-Joy pleaded guilty on Feb. 5, 2009, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Saint-Joy admitted that beginning in approximately 2003 and continuing until early 2008, he engaged in a scheme to embezzle funds from the State Department. According to court documents, Saint-Joy was employed as a cashier by the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from approximately 1995 until July 2008. As part of this scheme, Saint- Joy admitted he submitted and caused to be submitted false and fraudulent documents to the State Department claiming that he required reimbursement for the payment of legitimate embassy expenses.

According to court documents, Saint-Joy illegally obtained approximately $428,639 from the State Department as a result of the scheme. Saint-Joy also admitted he provided and caused to be provided false and fraudulent requests for cash advances from the embassy’s cash advance accounts with two banks in Port-au-Prince. According to court documents, Saint-Joy illegally obtained approximately $50,000 from one account and approximately $371,627 from the other account. The total amount of Saint-Joy’s theft was approximately $849,000.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Ethan H. Levisohn and Marc Levin of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, which is headed by William M. Welch, II. The case was investigated by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State.

Cute Alpacas for Visas and Some Corruption News

A group of cute alpacas
From Wikipedia, licensed under cca 2.5

Despite economic troubles in the U.S., some Chinese still go to great lengths to get there. Gady Epstein of Forbes.com in Your Alpaca For A Visa? (04.23.09, 06:00 PM EDT) writes about a couple of Chinese who had posed as livestock farmers interested in buying at least 40 to 50 alpacas from a Tennessee farmer so they could get a credible letter of invitation to visit his farm and be approved for visas. He writes that “the going rate for a full-service visa package, including fake documents, coaching for your visa interview and help landing a job once you're in the U.S., is as much as $15,000 to $17,500, and for that, a customer may end up as, say, a cook in a Chinese restaurant, working 70 to 80 hours a week for less than $2,000 a month. Who wants to go to that kind of trouble to seek that kind of opportunity?”

Probably the kind who did not want to sneak through the drug-cartel infested southern border? I mean -- think about it, why would anyone want to crawl through a tunnel where who knows what you might see, or who might be shooting at you -- if there is another option? Alpacas are the other option. Or emus, wild wilkworms or nanotech spiders; heck, could be anything with a creative twist that has not been heard of before ...

The bad news for scam artists and their friends is that DS special agents who conducts visa and passport fraud and related crimes are still on the job despite demands for their services in Iraq and elsewhere. DS-assisted arrests rose for the fourth consecutive year, achieving a 23 percent increase over 2007.

Extracted from DS 2008 Year In Review

In related news in the world of scams and corruption …

A federal jury returned a guilty verdict against HASMUKH PATEL, 54, of McDonough, Georgia, on a dozen counts related to a fraud and bribery scheme and a conspiracy to encourage and induce aliens to come to and reside in the United States on April 13, 2009. Patel, a former Immigration Adjudicator with Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS/CIS) was convicted on 12 counts.

According to United States Attorney Nahmias and the information presented in court: Witnesses testified that from March of 2005 through August 2007, PATEL took actions to bring a foreign national couple to this country based on fraudulent work visas. PATEL was found guilty of submitting fraudulent visa applications to the Department of Labor and to the Department of Homeland Security. As part of the scheme, a witness testified, he paid PATEL $100,000 to bring his brother and sister-in-law into the United States. PATEL had stated in the visa application that the foreign national woman would work in his home, caring for his wife, but she never did. Evidence at trial established that the couple instead went to Brunswick, Georgia, to work in the family convenience store. PATEL wrote a series of checks to the visa recipient to make it appear that the woman worked in his home, when she did not.


Witnesses from the United States Consulate in Mumbai, India, testified that PATEL called the consulate to vouch for the veracity of the visa application, informing a consular official he was employed by the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Service. Consular officials later alerted investigators that the defendant was attempting to bring in another couple on the same type of temporary work visa. The evidence showed that PATEL also accessed his DHS computer to see if he or a visa recipient were under investigation. Read the whole thing here.

Still over at DHS this time with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- Former Deputy Assistant Director of International Operations at DHS/ICE, GERARDO CHAVEZ, was sentenced recently to 90 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to make forfeiture of various assets. Chavez, age 46, of Clifton, Va., pleaded guilty on Nov. 6, 2008 to accepting bribes in exchange for official acts and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and money laundering.

According to court documents, from August 2003 to August 2007 while serving [at the American Embassy] in Caracas, Venezuela, as a Supervisory Special Agent and Attaché for ICE (formerly U.S. Customs Service), Chavez used his official position to steer $2.8 million in sole source U.S. government contracts to Caracas-based Blindajes Del Caribe (Blincar). The contracts were to purchase and armor 4-wheel drive vehicles to be used by U.S. law enforcement and government personnel throughout the South America and Caribbean region. Chavez received kick-backs totaling $172,000 from the owner of Blincar and anticipated another $87,000 from the scheme prior to its being uncovered by U.S. government law enforcement agents. Read more here.

In the CentreView Southern Edition, the Judge was quoted as asking about Chavez’s motive. Chavez with voice breaking said, "There’s nothing I can say to change what I did; I committed a crime. The money is all gone."

"Why did you do it?" the judge asked again. Replied Chavez: "I think I was in a place where, unfortunately, I got carried away, being there in that environment." More from the community newspaper:

Crying, Chavez said, "I lost my career — something I did well for 23 years. I lost my law-enforcement retirement, my home, car, wife, kids. I’ve disgraced my family — which is the worst part. I know you’re obligated to send a message to others. I only ask that you leave me hope to be reunited with my kids within a reasonable amount of time. There’s no excuse and no explanation." "When we lose the honest services of our public servants, we lose a great deal," said [Judge] Ellis. He also noted that these vehicles "were not really well-armed," after all.

Addressing Chavez, the judge commented on his "remarkable career" and called him a person of intelligence and ability. But, he said, "Public corruption is truly a cancer on the body politic, and we need a sentence that stands as a beacon, a deterrent and a warning to other public officials that corruption will not be tolerated."

Federal prosecutors apparently also listed as an aggravating factor the fact that Chavez approved 325 preferential procedures for expediting U.S. visas applied for by business friends and as favors.

An Idiot's Guide on How to Put Your Mistress on the National Security Payroll

Jeff Stein of CQ (Foggo Saga Doesn’t Reflect Well on Much of Anybody) with more revelations on the CIA's ex-EXDIR Dusty:

"Of the many laughable elements to the Dusty Foggo story, I have three favorites.

1. One is that from 1993 through 2005, Foggo “completed CIA ethics training eight times, and served two years as a Deputy Ethics official,” according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo.
   
   
2. Another is that, at the same time he was defrauding the government with millions of dollars worth of bogus contracts, Foggo received three employee performance awards.
   
   
3. The third is that he passed a CIA polygraph exam, in which he was grilled about all sorts of questionable behavior in his personnel dossier, from unreported dalliances with female foreign nationals — including, allegedly, a woman involved with a Russian mole — to an assault, to putting an unqualified girlfriend on the agency payroll."

And I just have three quick thoughts on this:

• Like Showtime’s Dexter says when asked how he deals with all the gore, “I’m good at compartmentalization." Which probably means -- one needs to carved the inside of one's head into tiny little boxes with different passwords and lock combinations; and make sure each compartment could not talk or pass gossip to each other? Because how else do you beat the poly?
  
  
• The next time I get to brag about my dusty performance awards and somebody gives me the “so what? look” – I have Dusty to thank for it.
  
  
• I'm doing my pre-order at amazon.com now. There will certainly be a slew of books on this from the jailhouse – the office: CIA edition, bodice rippers, thrillers, and perhaps even an action hero novel (Foggo's lawyers attempted to "portray Foggo as a hero engaged in actions necessary to protect the public from terrorist acts.").
  
  And ooooh, there may even be a few "how-to books" like – “How to Defraud the Government for Dummies,” "How to Put Your Mistress on the National Security Payroll," "An Idiots Guide to Cloak and Dagger," and "How to Use Graymail, Influence People, and Reduce Jail Time."
  

He has exactly 37 months to work on his drafts.

Hall of Shame: Song for the Traveling Bribery Men

Hey, hey … there’s nowhere to run

The SAD's sensitive air operations
Is sad, sad and swept up in a fraud

Hey, hey … there’s nowhere to run

Conspiracy, conspiracy, had no mercy
But gov’s $40 million is no controversy
Cuz it’s all classified information, anyway.

Okay … I'm too tired to hunt for more rhymes and I’m sleep-deprived today but I did want to post this quickly …

This one on Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA from Marcus Stern of ProPublica (February 25, 2009) “Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations.” Excerpts below, read the full report here.

According to prosecutors and testimony included in the filing, Foggo arranged for his family to remain in Europe at taxpayer expense while he moved to Langley. He then arranged a CIA job for his mistress, identified only by the initials ER. At first the CIA ruled that ER was ineligible for employment because a background check found that she had an improper relationship with a superior in her previous government position and had destroyed evidence being sought by the inspector general of that agency.

"Instead of being receptive to her supervisor's critiques and suggestions, ER made it clear that she had influence with Foggo. Indeed, she did," the prosecutors' sentencing memo [2] states. "Her supervisor had been an attorney with the (CIA's Office of General Counsel) for 20 years, during which time she received numerous performance awards and even the Career Intelligence Medal, which rewards 'exceptional achievements that substantially contributed to the mission of the Agency' over the course of her career. Within months of crossing Foggo's mistress, however, she suffered a humiliating firing by Foggo."

The government's 24-page reply [1] to Foggo's sentencing memorandum, 31-page sentencing memo [2] and 82-page appendix [3] are full of such previously undisclosed material.

But here is the great part – Foggo is asking for the court’s consideration because he is a family man (p.17).

In the Government’s Sentencing Memorandum, the Acting US Attorney writes: "The Court will see that, despite his effectiveness as an administrator, Foggo was never a truly honest public servant. His charm and guile took him to the highest ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was finally exposed. For his crime, which spanned more than three years, and for the public he deprived of his honest services when they needed them most, Foggo deserves to be imprisoned for over three years."

And then here’s the other one.

AP reports that Michael John O'Keefe, Sr. who was formerly the deputy nonimmigrant visa chief at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, Canada, has pleaded guilty to accepting an illegal gratuity, a felony that carries up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. It also reports that O'Keefe is to be sentenced on June 19 so he can finish the semester at Southern New Hampshire University, where he is now a professor.


The Union Leader however, reports that officials at Southern New Hampshire University, where Michael O'Keefe had worked as a part-time instructor since fall were stunned and said O'Keefe would no longer teach at the school. "Obviously, we will immediately remove him from the classroom," said Paul LeBlanc, the school's president. "We had no idea."

Hey, hey…there’s nowhere to run…

Update: The wires is reporting that it's a 37-month sentence for Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, which matched the prosecutors' recommendations. He pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud.

The Embassy Hired Him When He Was 12?

A former employee at U.S. Embassy in Haiti pleads guilty to theft of more than $800,000 - that's the headline of the press release that came from the Department of Justice yesterday. Full text reprinted below:

February 5, 2009: WASHINGTON – A former employee at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti pleaded guilty today to one count of theft for stealing more than $800,000 from the U.S. Department of State, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division announced.

According to court documents, Jean G. Saint-Joy, 25, a/k/a Gary Saint-Joy, a/k/a Garry Saint-Joy, a citizen of Haiti, was employed as a cashier by the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from approximately 1995 until July 2008 (emphasis mine).

Beginning in approximately 2003 and continuing until early 2008, Saint-Joy admitted he engaged in a scheme to embezzle funds from the State Department. As part of this scheme, Saint- Joy admitted he submitted and caused to be submitted false and fraudulent documents to the State Department claiming that he required reimbursement for the payment of legitimate embassy expenses. According to court documents, Saint-Joy illegally obtained approximately $428,639 from the State Department as a result of the scheme. Saint-Joy also admitted he provided and caused to be provided false and fraudulent requests for cash advances from the embassy’s cash advance accounts with two banks in Port-au-Prince. According to court documents, Saint-Joy illegally obtained approximately $50,000 from one account and approximately $371,627 from the other account. The total amount of Saint-Joy’s theft was approximately $849,000.

The charge to which Saint-Joy pleaded guilty carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Sentencing was scheduled for May 26, 2009.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Ethan H. Levisohn and Marc Levin of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, which is headed by William M. Welch, II. The case was investigated by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State.

This guy would be one of our local hire, officially referred to as either a "Foreign Service National" or LES for "locally employed staff." But the guy is 25 years old. He was, according to this press release "employed as a cashier by the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from approximately 1995 until July 2008." Hmmnn ... that would make him approximately 12 years old when he started working there, wouldn't it?


Been trying to find the relevant OIG report as well to no avail. Looks like the list of reports posted online dates back as far as 2007 only. Don't know what happened to the more current ones. I simply wanted to know what his American supervisors were doing while the culprit was doing his scheme between 2003-2005. Was this a question of lack of oversight? Or was this the results of doing less with less. At one post, with no HR officer, the Management Officer was pulling double duty as the HR officer. But the officer had no HR training, and the local staff had no prior training, which screwed up everyone - naturally. Imagine if the Management Officer is doing triple duty as the Financial Management Officer with no training either... yes, that would be problematic...

Quickie: An Ambassadorship in His Mind

You've probably seen already the news of the Illinois Governor's arrest. U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said that the federal authorities arrested Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich this morning because the governor went on "a political corruption crime spree" that needed to be stopped.

Item 91 of the USA v. Rod R. Blagojevich, and John Harris criminal complaint, has the following nugget:

91. On November 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Deputy Governor A. This was the same day as the United States Presidential election. With respect to the Senate seat, Deputy Governor A suggested putting together a list of things that ROD BLAGOJEVICH would accept in exchange for the Senate seat. ROD BLAGOJEVICH responded that the list “can’t be in writing.” Thereafter, ROD BLAGOJEVICH discussed whether he could obtain an ambassadorship in exchange for the Senate seat.

I don't know about you but I'm glad Mr. Fitzgerald got him first.