Eideard

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Italian prosecutors have asked a court to sentence former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to five years in prison if he is found guilty of corruption charges.

Berlusconi is charged with bribing a British lawyer, David Mills, to secure favorable testimony in legal cases. Prosecutors requested prison time as they summed up their case against him…and the three-judge court is expected to issue a verdict by late February.

The former premier’s lawyers have argued that the statute of limitations in the case has expired, and Mills’ conviction in the case was overturned in 2010. And even if convicted, the 75-year-old Berlusconi may never serve time due to appeals and his age — under Italian law, judges can suspend sentences for convicts over 70.

The 75-year-old Berlusconi dominated Italian politics for a decade and a half before resigning amid a financial crisis in November. He has survived a series of political, corruption and sex scandals over the years, involving allegations of embezzlement, tax fraud and bribery.

In addition to the Mills case, he also faces trial on charges that he hired an underage prostitute and later tried to pull strings to get her out of jail when she was arrested for theft.

Jail time for Berlusconi? Overdue.

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Warm sun, white beaches, and million-dollar mansions notwithstanding, Miami has captured the dubious distinction of being the most miserable city in the United States, according to a new poll.

The playground of the rich and famous is home to a crippling housing crisis, one of the highest crime rates in the country, and lengthy daily commutes for workers, all of which have propelled it to the No. 1 position in the Forbes.com list.

“Miami has sun and beautiful weather but other things make people miserable. You have this two-tier society: glitzy South Beach attracts celebrities, but the income inequality has skyrocketed in recent years”.

The rankings are based on factors including jobless rates, violent crime, foreclosures, income and property taxes, as well as considerations like weather, commute time and political corruption…

“We’re trying to judge cities where residents have a lot of complaints. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t terrific things there,” said Kurt Badenhausen. And for the haves Miami’s charms remain undiminished.

“The one percent in Miami is doing fantastic. But for the vast majority, who make less than $75,000 a year, Miami can be a challenging place,” he said. “Forty-seven percent of homeowners sit on underwater mortgages. That’s tough.”

The complete list can be found at: tinyurl.com/75clrr9

Why am I not surprised? Florida voters keep professing their love for politicians devoted to screwing them to a wall of poverty, overextended budgets and reliance on corrupt bureaucrats.

Told you Carlo – make waves, you’re history!

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

The show “The Untouchables” on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.

The Vatican…confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing “sadness over the publication of reserved documents…”

Vigano…said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices…

In another letter to the pope…Vigano says he discovered the management of some Vatican City investments was entrusted to two funds managed by a committee of Italian bankers “who looked after their own interests more than ours.”…In one single financial transaction in December, 2009, “they made us lose two and a half million dollars.”

The program interviewed a man it identified as a member of the bankers’ committee who said Vigano had developed a reputation as a “ballbreaker” among companies that had contracts with the Vatican, because of his insistence on transparency and competition…

On March 22, 2011, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone informed Vigano that he was being removed from his position, even though it was to have lasted until 2014…

In early April, Vigano went over Bertone’s head again and wrote directly to the pope, telling him that he had worked hard to “eliminate corruption, private interests and dysfunction that are widespread in various departments…”

Despite his appeals to the pope that a transfer, even if it meant a promotion, “would be a defeat difficult for me to accept,” Vigano was named ambassador to Washington in October of last year after the sudden death of the previous envoy to the United States.

The pope is “inspired” by Vigano’s efforts to clean up corruption. Which brings up the question — how does such inspiration lead to taking Vigano off the inspiring job he was doing?

Sorry, papa — sounds like the same old saw from the capo of a deposed and corrupt group of bankers — whining about the new guy who was destroying all the benefits they worked hard to create, lining their pockets.

Photo taken when Kruger was surrendering to the FBI
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State Senator Carl Kruger, who for months had insisted on his innocence, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal corruption charges, admitting that he conspired to accept nearly $500,000 in bribes, which prosecutors have said supported a lavish lifestyle.

Mr. Kruger, an influential Democrat and 16-year legislator, stood before Judge Jed S. Rakoff in United States District Court in Manhattan and pleaded guilty to four of the five counts in the indictment against him. He sobbed and mumbled unintelligibly as he admitted his crimes. The charges included two counts of fraud conspiracy, for which he could face up to 20 years in prison each, and two counts of bribery conspiracy, which carry a maximum term of five years each…

The broad corruption investigation, which also resulted in the arrests of Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr., two hospital executives, a lobbyist and a developer, indicated that Mr. Kruger used the money to live beyond his means; a prime example of that, prosecutors said, was his mansion in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, where he lived with two gynecologist brothers and their mother…

And the schemes were lucrative, according to the charges. Mr. Kruger collected at least $1 million in bribes, the authorities initially said, in return for all manner of political favors, like helping hospitals seeking to merge, getting state money for real estate developers and even expanding the business hours of liquor stores. The bribes, according to prosecutors, financed a four-door Bentley Arnage and the Mill Basin home, which was originally built for a boss of the Luchese crime family…

Mr. Boyland, a Democrat, who was tried separately before Judge Rakoff last month, was acquitted of conspiring to take $175,000 in bribes in return for using his influence on behalf of a health care organization that operates hospitals in Queens and Brooklyn…

In September, another defendant, David P. Rosen, the former chief executive of the health care organization, MediSys, was convicted of conspiring to bribe Mr. Boyland — as well as Mr. Kruger and a third legislator, Anthony S. Seminerio, a Democratic assemblyman from Queens — in return for favorable treatment for MediSys.

Poisonally, I would throw away the key. This man crapped on the voters who elected him. He conspired to break the law to benefit medical corporations feeding off the healthcare of Brooklyn taxpayers.

My only regret is that the scumbags who lobbied the healthcare changes to drug regulations through Congress for George W. Bush – before officially going to work for the Pharmaceutical industry – aren’t going to be sharing a cell with Kruger.

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Street artist Banksy has installed a vandalised sculpture of a priest in a gallery in Liverpool.

Cardinal Sin is a bust with its face sawn off and replaced by blank tiles, designed as a response to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church.

In a statement, Banksy said: “I’m never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one.”

The sculpture was unveiled at the Walker Art Gallery, where it is sitting alongside 17th Century religious art. The bathroom tiles have been put in place of the priest’s face to create a pixelated effect…

“The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse…”

This is only the second time that the secretive artist, known for his subversive images on street walls, has created work for a gallery…

Cardinal Sin has been loaned indefinitely by the artist to the Walker Gallery.

As much as I dislike graffiti, I love Banksy.

B&B run by a convent in Rome – tax free to the church

The Roman Catholic Church in Italy is under growing pressure to start paying taxes on its massive property portfolio, in a move that could raise up to 800 million euros a year and help bail the country out of its economic crisis.

Campaigners, most prominently parties on the centre left, say it is deeply unfair that Church-owned properties with a commercial function — for instance convents and monasteries that charge paying guests similar rates to four-star hotels — are exempt from property tax.

As the new technocrat government of Mario Monti seeks to slash the nation’s 1.9 trillion euro debt, attention is turning to the estimated 65,000 buildings owned by the Church.

They include around 50,000 cathedrals, churches and chapels — which would retain their tax-free status — but 11,000 schools, universities and libraries as well as nearly 5,000 hospitals, clinics and other commercial properties would face the tax.

The Monti administration has announced that Italians are to be taxed on their primary residences, reinstating a levy that had been abolished by Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned from his third term in office last month…

With millions of people facing a bleak era of austerity, politicians are now calling for the enormously rich Church to play its part in shouldering the burden.

The potential windfall is enormous. According to an estate agency, Gruppo RE, a fifth of publicly owned properties in Italy are directly or indirectly controlled by the Church.

RTFA. No doubt you anticipate the rationales, whinge and whine, excuses offered by our Lady of Perpetual Hand Grenades.

The tax is just, fair – and overdue.

An Indian government ‘peon’, on £50 a month, has been arrested on suspicion of corruption after police found he was a millionaire with a property empire and had a home laden with gold and jewels.

To the outside world, Narendra Deshmukh was a lowly ‘peon’ or local government messenger boy. For more than 30 years he was posted outside the office doors of more senior officials in Ujjain, Central India, where his job was to run errands and bring in the business cards of visiting callers.

Detectives said in 31 years of working for the Ujjain Municipal Corporation, where he had started on a salary of less than £2 a month, he had earned a total of just under £19,000.

They believe only corruption can explain the fortune they uncovered in their dawn raid this week: evidence of properties worth around £500,000, a fleet of cars and motorbikes, including an SUV, a Chevrolet Avio, a truck, two motorbikes and a scooter.

They discovered a commercial property empire, including a five hectare chicken farm, butcher’s shop, and a £200,000 chicken processing business, deposit receipts for £30,000, thousands of pounds worth of consumer electronics, jewellery worth £3,000 and twenty bank accounts they have yet to open…

Detectives now believe that while he was officially working as a peon, he had in fact been given executive duties by senior officials they suspect were involved in a wider corruption scandal.

Corruption is endemic in Indian government and it is common for even low level employees to share in the spoils from bribes paid for licences, permissions and ‘no objection certificates.’ What has surprised detectives however is the size of fortune Mr Deshmukh acquired from such a lowly position…

“He was in a position in the department with no responsibility, yet he was disbursing power and acting as an executive. We have seized many official tender processing documents during the raid.

“Without the help of many officials in the department, it would not have been possible for him to amass the sum. We have seized more than 15 fixed deposit certificates in the name of the Commissioner of Ujjain municipality, which is being probed separately,” Police Superintendent Arun Misra added.

Not an unusual tale in many bureaucracies. What stands out is the size of the wealth he accumulated. Some of this may have grown from what he acquired over time – but, no investment accounts were found. Just lots of goodies.

If you don’t stick to the script I’ll let Cheney have you!

BONN, Germany — As dozens of nations and organizations met here on Monday to plan a transition beyond the withdrawal of American and other international forces from Afghanistan in 2014, the Afghan government had a new deadline in mind: 2024.

President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials here called for political and military support for at least another decade — and financial assistance that would not end until 2030. That would be nearly three decades after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 that led to the international intervention in Afghanistan.

While Mr. Karzai and others celebrated the strides made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban — 60 percent of Afghans now have mobile phones, he said, compared to none — the conference highlighted the multiple challenges facing a fragile government undermined by corruption and threatened by a resilient insurgency…

Instead, as the months have passed, the tempo of the war has shown little sign of winding down, despite an optimistic assessment from NATO that it had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgents…

Even though President Obama and other NATO leaders created a timetable for withdrawal by 2014, few officials now expect any reconciliation talks to even begin by then. That has raised questions about security and the stability of Mr. Karzai’s government once international troops steadily begin to withdraw.

Mr. Karzai’s government presented a paper to the conference outlining Afghanistan’s plans for developing an economy now almost entirely dependent on international military and development spending…

…Just meeting the cost of Afghanistan’s military forces — which by 2014 are expected to total 400,000 soldiers — is estimated to cost $3.5 billion to $6 billion a year. By then, Afghanistan, the world’s 40th largest country, would have the world’s 12th largest military.

Thanks, George.

Please, let us remember come Election Day how many lies we listened to over the years from the cesspool of corruption that is political Washington.

Reuters found a Japanese banker who is a key figure in the Olympus Corp accounting scandal at a luxury apartment block in Hong Kong on Sunday, where he exploded in anger at finally being tracked down.

Akio Nakagawa’s boutique U.S. investment firm earned a $687 million fee from Olympus for a 2008 deal that made it the biggest advisory payment in history, and which the Japanese camera maker now admits was used to hide investment losses.

The whereabouts of the former PaineWebber banker had been unknown until Sunday. Nakagawa looked startled when a reporter introduced himself outside the building, located in a high-priced area near the financial district on Hong Kong island.

“Get out of here. Get out of here,” Nakagawa yelled in English at the Reuters reporter who approached him. The banker, who appeared in his 60s and was with a middle-aged woman, was walking into the marbled foyer with some grocery bags.

“I don’t want him here,” Nakagawa said, turning to a concierge, when asked to answer questions about the scandal, which has brought the once venerable maker of endoscopes and cameras to its knees.

Nakagawa was tanned, tall and slim. He wore large, dark round glasses and a sky-blue polo shirt and carried two plastic shopping bags with Japanese writing on them.

When asked about the advisory fee, he told the concierge: “Please contact the police…”

It is the first time Nakagawa has been found and asked by the media for his side of the story since former Olympus chief executive Michael Woodford blew the whistle last month on the advisory fee and several other dubious deals…

Sources have told Reuters that Nakagawa had business ties with Olympus stretching back three decades, including his time at PaineWebber in the 1990s when he helped the firm temporarily shuffle securities losses off its books in a practice known as “tobashi” that was common in Japan at the time.

Tobashi roughly translates as “to make fly away.”

Terrific job by James Pomfret and Reuters. I expect business news reporters – even some of the crappola mainstream networks – to be buzzing about this tomorrow morning.

Wonder how many will credit the Reuters crew?

At the peak of the United States’s war in Iraq, the U.S. military had more than 170,000 troops, 500 bases replete with tents and toilets, kitchens and motor pools, and an airline that flew hundreds of times a day across the country.

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq after nearly nine years of war is believed to be one of the largest removal jobs in history. At the start of the year logistics experts calculated there were nearly 3 million pieces of equipment to be moved, from airplanes, helicopters and tanks to laptops and lights…

Since September 2010, around 2 million pieces of equipment have been redeployed, U.S. officials say, some back to the United States, others to Afghanistan or other locations…

“Someday I truly believe that future military classes … will study the logistics (of our) move out of Iraq.”

What will be studied is the lies accepted as mandate. Agitprop given greater weight than historic fact. No-bid contracts and supply streams whose size, content and volume were determined by cronyism and donations to the Republican Party.

Never before has such a volume of death and destruction been wasted to satisfy the greed and corruption of so few.

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