Category: Justice

The Wheels of Justice Turn Slowly

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In Nigeria, where they intend to charge Dick Cheney for bribery for his activities as head of Halliburton:

Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.

Indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said in an interview today at his office in Abuja, the capital. An arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol,” the world’s biggest international police organization, he said.

And the Wikileaks tapes reveal that the Obama administration went hammers and tongs against Spanish judicial investigations of torture by Bush administration officials.

So it appears that the rich and powerful evil-doers are more likely to be prosecuted in Nigeria, and more likely to be protected in the United States.

H/t emptywheel.

Well, This is a Surprise

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In the latest twist to the legal travails of Sergey Aleynikov, who is accused of theft of Goldman-Sach’s illegal market front-running high frequency trading software is now arguing that the code in question was open source, so there was no theft:

Sergey Aleynikov, who is accused of stealing Goldman Sachs’ source code used in high-frequency trading, argued that he was standing up to the investment bank’s proprietary claims on open-source code, not trying to steal private codes to use at a competing trading firm.

Mr Aleynikov, a former computer programmer at the bank, is accused of downloading proprietary code related to high-speed trading systems in June 2009 for use at a new job at a competing firm.

While this statement may actually be true, it does strike me as a rather low percentage defense.

Unfortunately, it also implies that we will not be getting any details on how the Vampire Squid and its Wall Street co-conspirators might actually be gaming the system with their co-located high speed trading systems during the trial.

The Insider Trading Arrests Have Begun

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We now have the first arrest as a result of the Department of Justice’s investigation of insider trading facilitated by “research firms”:

The government made the first arrest in a broad investigation of alleged insider trading on Wall Street, charging an employee of a California research firm used by hedge funds.

Don Ching Trang Chu was arrested at his home in Somerset, N.J., and charged in federal court in New York with two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. He was released on a $1-million bond.

A complaint filed by prosecutors says Chu helped hedge funds get inside information on publicly traded companies by connecting the funds with employees of the firms. 

One interesting thing to note is that, like Tamil financier Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon, once again they have arrested someone who isn’t a member of the Wall Street white boy’s club.

The real question here is whether this will be pursued up the chain.

My guess is no, because both Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have sold their genitals to the finance industry have decided to look forward, and not backward.

In a related note, a judge has said that the wiretaps in the Galleon case are admissible, which implies that this will increasingly be used as a tool by prosecutors in financial corruption.

That’s Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!!

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Tom Delay was convicted of one count of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to launder money.

Basically, he used the Republican national committee to funnel illegal corporate money to state races for the the Texas legislature.

While the charges typically carry a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison, the judge can also sentence him to probation.

First, Delay his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, is very good, so there promises to be years of appeals, and there is a very real chance that he will find a judge or judges who owe him some sort of favor.

This is Texas, after all.

Call me a cynic, but I would be very surprised if he spends more than 18 months in a minimum security prison.

When one considers the degree to which he made pay to play a part of the Washington, DC political scene, he deserves a lot more than that.

He is a truly contemptible human being, and the most evil contestant on Dancing With the Stars ever, which is saying a lot.

Tom Delay, Felon…You know, I REALLY like the sound of that, and for today, at least, that is the truth.

Of course, he could go the way of Kenneth Lay, and die while the appeal is going on, which would be very convenient for people who are concerned that he might cooperate with authorities.

This is Texas, after all.

About Damn Time

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The FBI has raided at least 3 hedge funds on suspicion of insider trading:

The FBI has begun what is expected to be a far-reaching probe into insider trading with raids on hedge funds linked to some of Wall Street’s most high-profile and wealthiest players.

The sweep – which began with armed agents raiding the Connecticut offices of Level Global Investors and Diamondback Capital Management, both multibillion dollar hedge funds set up by former managers at Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors – is already affecting stocks: a collective $15bn was wiped off the valuations of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

According to reports published in the Wall Street Journal, investigators from several law enforcement and regulatory agencies are looking into multiple insider-trading rings that reaped millions in illegal profits. An FBI spokesman confirmed last night that the agency was executing “court-ordered search warrants”, but declined to elaborate.

One focus is whether proprietary information is being passed from companies to hedge funds by network of independent analysts and consultants.

Well, this is refreshing: It appears that someone is beginning to look at “business as usual” on Wall Street, and they have noticed that it’s corrupt.

I also have to note that the coverage on the Marketplace radio program was repulsive.

They had an apologist fow wall street on, and he wrung his hands about how fuzzy the lines were, and how no one was really hurt.

This is bovine scatology. Just because they are robbing millions of.investors a few bucks at a time does not diminish the crime.

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Trials Work

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Ahmed Ghailani, accused of being complicit in the embassy bombings in Africa 19 1998, was acquitted of all but one of the almost 300 charges against him:

White House officials said Thursday that the acquittal of Ahmed Ghailani on all but one of more than 280 criminal charges in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa would not undermine their effort to try former Guantanamo detainees in civilian court, even as the mixed verdict reignited debate over that policy.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Ghailani – the first former detainee to be tried in federal court – will receive a lengthy prison sentence for his conviction on one count of conspiracy.

Of course, it lazy investigators had not tortured him at Guantanamo in the first place, and instead used their brains and skills, they probably would have gotten dozens of convictions, but even with the sloppy work, the get a conviction.

There is no need for torture of military kangaroo courts. We can use our judges and our laws, right here in the United States.

Of course, we won’t because Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder are to wimpy to stand up for our values.

US Comes Out Against Patenting Genes

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This is a big deal, and a case where a very bad actor forced their hand:

Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.

The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

“We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,” the brief said.

Basically, a company, Myriad Genetics, got a patent on breast cancer genes, it licenses government funded research which found the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and has used this patent to prevent the development of better and cheaper tests, and their behavior was so egregious that the government felt compelled to act.

It’s still up to the judge, but this is a good first step.

Genes have never been an invention, they have been a discovery, and discoveries are not supposed to be patentable.

Because Doing the Right Thing is Too Hard

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So, once again, after taking a bit of heat from Republicans, Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ are looking to cave on a core value.

Only this time, it is not a core value of the Democratic party, but rather a core value which our nation was founded, the idea that the King’s power to simply imprison indefinitely on a whim is an anathema to a civilized society:

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.

The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.

The administration asserts that it can hold Mohammed and other al-Qaeda operatives under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts when Guantanamo Bay detainees have challenged their detention.

The White House has made it clear that President Obama will ultimately make the decision, and a federal prosecution of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators has not been ruled out, senior officials said. Still, they acknowledge that a trial is unlikely to happen before the next presidential election and, even then, would require a different political environment.

You see, even after they tried a child soldier using laws that were made up after the actions, and using evidence derived from torture, Republicans are still saying bad things about them, so now, they will now just stop trials altogether.

Due process is just too politically inconvenient.

There is a point where moral cowardice crosses a line, and becomes actively evil, and emulating the practices of the worst despots in history out of electoral consideration is way over that line.

What the Nobel Laureate Says

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No, not Paul Krugman, George Akerlof:

As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail.

And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. See this, this and this.

OK, that’s one Laureate, but here is a second, Joe Stiglitz:

An institutionalized system of skewed incentives allowed Wall Street bankers and other corporate executives to gamble with America’s wealth and then get away largely scot-free after the house of cards came tumbling down, plunging the U.S. into the worst economic crisis in decades and destroying trillions of dollars of wealth worldwide.

That’s the analysis of Joseph Stiglitz, an internationally renowned economist and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. ………

Of course, this will not happen unless the politicians are forced to, because in general, the establishment believes that the big Wall Street Banks must be free to rape and pillage innovate, and in the specific case, Obama likes Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin, and any investigation of the fraud would doubtless have at least one, and possibly all three, of them in the dock facing criminal charges.

One Less Bigot With Power

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Andrew Shirvell has been fired as assistant Michigan Attorney General for stalking University of Michigan student Chris Armstrong.

Armstrong was the first openly gay president of the Michigan Student Assembly, and this sent the already right-wing Shirvell into a delusional hissy fit.

As a private citizen, it would be creepy, but as a supporter and confidant of Michigan’s right wing Attorney General, it took on some rather disturbing overtones.

Background here.

But Eric “Place” Holder Remains True to Form

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The Obama Department of Justice has elected not to prosecute CIA officials who obstructed justice by erasing torture tapes:

Central Intelligence Agency officials will not face criminal charges for the destruction of dozens of videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of terrorism suspects, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

After a closely watched investigation of nearly three years, the decision by a special federal prosecutor is the latest example of Justice Department officials’ declining to seek criminal penalties for some of the controversial episodes in the C.I.A.’s now defunct detention and interrogation program. The destruction of the tapes, in particular, was seen as so striking that the Bush administration itself launched the special investigation after the action was publicly disclosed.

Government officials said Tuesday that the special prosecutor, John H. Durham, could still decide to charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements to a grand jury over the course of the investigation, which began in January 2008.

Yes, they could, “Charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements,” but they won’t because they want to cover this up because Obama and Holder fear a future prosecution by a future Republican administration want to “look forward, not backward.”

Respect for the rule of law, my ass.

I can haz prosecutions?

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George W. Bush just admitted that he specifically authorized waterboarding, which is unequivocally torture under US law:

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled “Decision Points,” Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was “Damn right” and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation techniques – a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods – after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal. “I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Vice President Richard B. Cheney acknowledged in a television interview in February.

George W. Bush has just confessed publicly to a criminal conspiracy, and Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder need to (God I hate this term) “Man Up” and begin a criminal investigation.

What we also need to understand that in both Bush’s and Cheney’s talk about torture, the never suggest that they got actionable intelligence, nor that they even expected to get actionable intelligence from torture.

There are vague claims of “saving lives”, but if those were true, they would have been declassified or leaked years ago.

They didn’t authorize torture because there was a ticking bomb, there wasn’t.

They didn’t get actionable intelligence, because they would have trumpeted it.

They had no belief that it would generate actionable intelligence.

They did this because they it mad them feel tough. They deliberately authorized the infliction of pain in order to derive pleasure and self worth.

This is the very definition of Sadism.

So After Months of Evidence That Their Lawyers Were Corrupt Bastards…

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The GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have finally fired the foreclosure mill and forged document factory that is the law offices of David J. Stern:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac terminated their relationships with a top Florida foreclosure attorney on Tuesday, one day after the companies began taking back loan files from the firm that has processed thousands of evictions on behalf of the mortgage-finance giants.

Fannie and Freddie dispatched employees on Monday afternoon to begin removing loan files from the law offices of David J. Stern in Plantation, Fla. Those files are needed to process foreclosures, which must be done through courts in Florida.

………

The Stern law firm has been at the center of allegations by the Florida attorney general’s office of improper foreclosure practices and is one of four firms under state investigation. The office has released depositions of former law-firm employees who have alleged that the firm forged notarized documents and that employees signed files without reviewing them in an effort to speed through foreclosure filings.

In those depositions, former employees testified that the firms would go to great lengths to conceal improper practices during regular audits by Fannie and Freddie. A lawyer for Mr. Stern has dismissed the allegations as falsehoods made by disgruntled employees.

Well, it’s a start, though even the most tepid investigation of foreclosure fraud, which is all what Barack Obama would do, is sure to be sabotaged by the new Republican majority in the house, because:

  1. They will favor the banks even when they break the law because laws are for little people.
  2. They favor the Andrew Mellon school of dealing with the economy, foreclosure, and the financial crisis. As Hoover’s Treasury secretary, he suggested, “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”

So all that Daniel J. Stern, Esq. will see is a few bucks less profit, as opposed to disciplinary action from the bar or a criminal investigation.

Nothing to see, move along.

Prosecution Doing Back-Flips For Goldman Sachs in High Frequency Trading Trial

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If there was any doubt that the federal prosecutors in New York prosecuting Sergey Aleynikov for theft of trade secrets weren’t in Goldman Sach’s Pocket, those doubts have been allayed:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has always closely guarded the secrets of its lucrative high-speed trading system. Now the securities firm is getting a help from an unusual source: federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan this week asked a federal district judge to seal the courtroom at the forthcoming trial of a former Goldman computer programmer accused of stealing the firm’s computer code. The move was a formal request to empty the courtroom of the general public when details of Goldman’s trade secrets are being discussed. The trial is set to start to late November.

Prosecutors also asked that any documents related to Goldman’s trading strategies remain under seal.

Such requests are common when proprietary corporate information could be exposed in a trial, lawyers say. This case is unusual in that it involves secrets about a potentially lucrative trading system, rather than, say, ingredients in a soda formula.

What is also unusual is that this code is almost certainly obsolete, and almost certainly has no value to a competitor.

The software almost certainly has to be updated regularly, probably monthly, possibly weekly, which means that the algorithms and code are almost certainly obsolete, but still they want the court sealed.

This is not about protecting trade secrets, this is about concerns by the vampire squid* that if the details on how they conducted business came out, they would have people calling for their scalps for front-running the markets.

Basically, Goldman, and the prosecutors, are trying to conceal activity by Goldman that is either illegal, or would lead to changes in regulations that would make it so if the details came out.

My earlier posts on this are here.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

Appeals Court Allows DADT Expulsions to Continue

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They have made their temporary injunction against the judge’s ruling permanent, so DADT, and separations from the military, continue until probably at least next June:

With one judge dissenting, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of the injunction of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy issued by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, pending the outcome of the government’s appeal of Log Cabin Republicans v. United States.

The immediate impact of the ruling, which was not unexpected by legal observers, means that — absent congressional or executive action — DADT will remain in effect through at least Spring 2011. The practical timeline for the appeal, however, means it actually would remain law much longer.

Damn.

So they Torture a Little Boy, Admit the Testimony Thereby Extracted, Use it to Coerce a Confession, and Sentence Him to 40 Years in Prison

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Only he will actually be out in less than 3 years, since Omar Khadr will be transferred to Canada, and released for time served:

A United States military commission at Guantánamo Bay has sentenced a former child soldier for Al Qaeda to 40 years in prison for war crimes — but he might be released in less than three years, the Defense Department said.

A panel of seven military officers at the American military base in Cuba determined on Sunday that the child soldier, Omar Khadr, 24, should be imprisoned — for terrorism-related offenses he committed in Afghanistan when he was a teenager — until he nearly reaches retirement age.

But that sentence was theoretical. Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Khadr will serve no more than eight years. Moreover, after one year, Mr. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is likely to be transferred to a prison in Canada, where he would be eligible to apply for parole after serving two years and eight months.

Seriously.

The was a show trial, with a predetermined result specifically to allow face saving on the idea of military commissions.

The proceedings are a travesty of the law and basic decency, and every individual up the chain of command who allowed this case to proceed is guilty of conspiracy to violate both US anti-torture statutes and international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.

Not feeling hopey changey right now.

Well, Alaska Just Got Weird

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With polls showing Lisa Murkowski in the lead, and the board of elections, in a transparent attempt to help her campaign, putting out a list of “registered write-in candidates,” for the first time in history, which is in court, but the Alaska Supreme Court is allowing the decision to stand for now pending arguments.

In response, Joe Miller and the Alaska Teabaggers have flooded the election office to register hundreds of write ins to be added to the list.

With Miller firmly in 3rd place in the latest polls, and these polls were before the release of his personnel files, I can understand why they want to move votes from Murkowski to him, but this would appear to move votes from Lisa Murkowski to Lisa Martini, or Lisa Murkin, or Lisa Murrow, which has the effect of boosting Democrat Scott Adams.

Pass the popcorn.

Heh.

Better Than I Expected

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Elana Kagan just cast her first vote on the death penalty, and actually her very first vote as a Supreme Court Justice, and she voted to stay an execution:

Washington…Justice Elena Kagan cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday, joining the liberals in dissent when the high court cleared the way for the execution of an Arizona murderer.

The 5-4 ruling overturned orders by a federal judge in Phoenix and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had stopped the execution by lethal injection of Jeffrey Landrigan.

His lawyers, in a last-ditch appeal, had raised questions about one of the drugs used in the execution. Since the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental had suspended production, Arizona officials said they had obtained a supply of the drug from a British company.

A judge had put the execution on hold because she said she was “left to speculate” whether this drug was safe for its intended use.

Hopefully this indicates that she was not quite the squish that I thought she might be when Barack Obama nominated her.