Now this is shameful for the United Kingdom. Its a British man, who was corrupt to hell and beyond. And he had to be extradited to the USA to face corruption charges? Why couldnt he be prosecuted in the UK? When was the last time you heard of anybody big convicted of corruption here in the UK? Of course not, we are all very nice and comfy here, all whiter than white. I quote:
Jeffrey Tesler pleaded guilty to two counts related to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a court in Houston, Texas
A London lawyer pleaded guilty on Friday to taking part in a huge international bribery conspiracy that lasted a decade.
Jeffrey Tesler, 62, who operated from shabby offices in Tottenham, north London, admitted helping to steer bribes worth more than $130m (£80m) to Nigerian officials and politicians to land big energy contracts.
He pleaded guilty to two counts related to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when he appeared in a courtroom in Houston, Texas, on Friday.
Tesler will be released on a $50,000 cash bond and required to live in the Houston area until he is sentenced on 22 June. He faces up to five years in prison on each count.
Tesler had been sent to the US from his north London home after losing a long legal battle against his extradition. The high court rejected his argument that the alleged crimes did not have a substantial link to the US.
He is the second Briton to be extradited from the UK to the US and plead guilty over the same corruption scandal.
It marks another success for American prosecutors, who have been delving into the corruption allegations for many years. The US prosecutors have compelled three companies implicated in the scandal to pay fines and penalties totalling more than $1bn to settle the cases against them. The US prosecutors make vigorous efforts to crack down on the payment of bribes by executives to win contracts.
In this case, the corrupt payments were made between 1994 and 2004 to secure contracts worth $6bn to build a gas plant on Bonny Island off the coast of Nigeria.
Tesler acted as the middleman for a consortium of four construction firms and funnelled the payments via bank accounts in Monaco and Switzerland.
At one point, Tesler arranged for $1m in $100 notes to be stacked into a pilot's briefcase and delivered to a politician's hotel room to fund a Nigerian political party.
The second Briton, Wojciech Chodan, a 72-year-old retired sales executive for one of the firms, MW Kellogg, pleaded guilty in December after losing his extradition battle and is due to be sentenced on 27 April. Chodan, who lived in the Somerset village of Nunney, faces five years in prison and has agreed to forfeit $720,000 to the US authorities.
The Americans can prosecute corrupt people, but we, supposedly the birthplace of modern law making, are crap at doing this. Our entire political system stands condemned of being a completely useless bunch of wankers. Disgusting.
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