Immigration courts are too backed up to provide speedy trials for tens of thousands of immigrants, according to a USA Today study released this weekend. Based on a review of court cases between 2003 and 2008, the study found that almost 90,000 accused illegal immigrants had to wait at least two years to have their case heard before a judge and 14,000 had to wait nearly five years. A spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association said that U.S. immigration courts, which only employ 224 judges, simply do not have enough resources. San Francisco immigration judge Dana Marks told USA Today, “you could have a case that would take an hour (to hear). But I can’t give you that hour of time for 14 months.” (USA Today)
A nonprofit business ethics organization filed a lawsuit against AIG executives on behalf of company shareholders late last week. The shareholders involved in the suit claim that they collectively lost $200 billion due to economic mismanagement and misleading statements made by AIG executives in the past eight and a half years. The suit targets current and formerAIG execs including Maurice Greenberg, Martin Sullivan and Edward Liddy along with more than ten others. (Associated Press)
Antiguan prosecutors are considering beginning a criminal investigation into Sir Allen Stanford, the alleged mastermind of an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. U.S. officials have as yet filed no criminal charges against Stanford, but Antiguan Attorney General Justin Simon said that the island country’s police could review Stanford’s purchase of 1,500 acres of land on an offshore Antiguan island. After Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer blocked Stanford’s attempt to buy the land for $22 million, he bought a controlling stake in the island’s owner, Asian Village Antigua Limited, for $68 million. Simon is concerned that the island showed no “development at all - certainly nothing to justify the difference in price.” (Financial Times)
A Government Accountability Office report released recently found consistent and widespread fraud among programs participating in the government-funded Small Business Administration Business Zone program. The investigation reviewed 36 companies in four different cities, and found that more than half did not meet program requirements due to falsified addresses or employees located outside of the Business Zone location. The report revealed that one company which received nearly a million dollars in U.S. Army contracts between 2006 and 2007 had not employed on-site workers for over a year, subcontracting to larger companies in violation of SBA rules. (Wall Street Journal)
Scott Polakoff, the acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, will be on leave until the government completes its probe into whether OTS officials helped IndyMac and other banks falsify records to dupe investors, the OTS announced Friday. Documents released recently by Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson said that OTS officials did not adequately assess the risk of IndyMac’s failure. Thorson’s assistant Marla Freedman told ABC News that the OTS “kept the public from knowing earlier than it otherwise should have or would have” that IndyMac would fail. (ABC News)
A list of people targeted for campaign contributions by former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich includes four Illinois Democrats he considered appointing to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat last December, according to a document obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. On the list are J.B. Pritzker, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Luis Guiterrez, and Blago’s final choice Sen. Roland Burris, along with six Blago appointees to other state boards and local jobs. Prosecutors say that Blago was attempting to raise as much dough as possible before new ethics laws went into effect in January. The report says that none of the candidates contributed to Blago’s campaign. (Chicago Sun-Times)
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