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2 American businesses fronts for Saddam
w A^HINU 1UN (AP) - The Treas
ury- Department said Monday that two
American businesses are among 52
“front” companies it has identified as
part of Saddam Hussein’s worldwide
financial and arms trading network.
The department also named 37
individuals, none based in the United
States, whom it said acted as middle
men for the Iraqi government in using
the companies to hide billions of dollars
that Saddam’s family skimmed from
Iraq’s oil revenues. The front compa
nies were used to buy weapons, tools,
spare parts and raw materials for
Saddam’s war machine, officials said.
The Treasury said U.S. companies
and citizens are prohibited from doing
any business with Iraqi front compa
nies and middlemen without the de
partment’s permission. Convictions
of violating the prohibitions could
mean criminal penalties of up to 12
years in prison and $ 1 million in fines.
Civil penalties of up to $250,000
also may be imposed, the Treasury
said.
“We want the network exposed
and we want it neutralized,” Treasury
Deputy Secretary John Robson said
at a news conference. “We arc put
ting the world on notice that when
you deal with them, you deal with
Saddam.”
Robson added there are “many more
cases that are under investigation,”
but he declined to give details.
The two U.S. companies are Bay
Industries Inc.,an engineering firm in
Los Angeles, and Matrix Churchill
Corp., the American machine tools
subsidiary of a British corporation.
There were no answers to repeated
phone calls to Bay Industries in Santa
Monica and no immediate comment
from Matrix Churchill.
Treasury agents seized the assets
of Bay Industries on March 22, along
with those of Anees Wadi and his
wife Shamsaban al-Hayderi. Wadi
controls Bay Industries, and the gov
ernment alleged that all three had
helped Saddam procure arms for Iraq.
The government shut down Ma
trix Churchill’s Cleveland, Ohio, plant
last September while the U.S. Cus
toms Service investigated allegations
that it was involved in arms ship
ments to Iraq. The plant was a front
for Saddam to disguise the flow of
technical expertise and items from
the United States to Iraq, a Customs
official said at the time.
The Treasury also listed Iraqi Air
ways offices in Los Angeles; South
field, Mich, and New York City as
being among the front companies. It
has been illegal for U.S. citizens to
fly on Iraqi Airways since President
Bush instituted an embargo and asset
freeze against Iraq following its inva
sion of Kuwait last Aug. 2.
Commonwealth
Johnson pleads guilty to federal charges
VIVlrt"A irtrj - A iormer Commonwealth
Savings Co. deputy receiver pleaded guilty
Monday to charges stemming from the theft of
nearly $1.3 million from the receivership.
Kent Johnson, 33, appearing in U.S. District
Court in Omaha, pleaded guilty to federal
charges of bank fraud, interstate transportation
of stolen property, money laundering and filing
a false tax return.
U.S. District Judge William Cambridge didn’t
accept the guilty pleas, pending a pre-sentence
investigation. Cambridge set a sentencing date
for July 1.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Thalken
said he expected Cambridge to accept the guilty
pleas on that date. Not accepting the guilty
pleas is a formality, Thalken said.
Johnson entered his pleas with no outward
show of emotion. He appeared in court accom
panied by his father, Charles.
The Johnsons declined to comment on the
case.
Thalken said that in exchange for the guilty
pleas, prosecutors agreed not to file further
charges against Johnson in the case.
Johnson also was expected to appear in
Lancaster County District Court in Lincoln to
plead guilty to stale charges of two felony
counts of second-degree forgery, Lancaster
County Attorney Gary Lacey said last Thurs
day.
The state charges allege that Johnson forged
former deputy receiver John Queen’s signature
on a $10,000 receivership check in July 1984
and a $ 1,000 receivership check in April 1986.
With one exception, prosecutors had no
reason to believe that theft at the Common
wealth receivership went beyond Johnson,
Thalken said.
Johnson served as a deputy receiver for
Commonwealth from the time of its closing
until he was arrested by the FBI in Los Angeles
on Aug. 14, 1990.
The maximum penalties for filing a false tax
return is up to three years in prison and a
$250,000 fine, Cambridge said. The other
maximum penalties are 20 years in prison and
a $1 million fine for bank fraud; 10 years in
prison and a $250,000 fine for interstate trans
portation of stolen property; 20 years in prison
and a $500,000 fine for money laundering.
The maximum penalty for each of the for
gery charges is 20 years in prison and a $25,000
fine.
Commonwealth was the largestofthcstate’s
industrial loan and investment companies. It
failed on Nov. 1, 1983, and the other compa
nies filed for bankruptcy soon after.
Since the failures, depositors in the compa
nies have struggled to get their deposits back.
In a unanimous ruling Friday, the Nebraska
SupremeCourt said a $33.8 million payback to
depositors passed in the Legislature in 1990 is
unconstitutional.
Hourly minimum wage, not adjusted
1940 1950 I960 1970 1980 1990
Chart does not Include Interim steps In
minimum wage tor workers brought under
coverage by amendments to the Minimum
Wage Act of 1938.
AP
Minimum-wage workers:
Raise not enough to help
The Associated Press
The federal minimum wage rose
to $4.25 an hour on Monday, a 45
cent-an-hour increase that will bol
ster the paychecks of at least 3 mil
lion Americans.
Some low^wage workers say it still
is not enough to live on.
“Does it help me? — no. I’ve got
another kid coming and it’s not going
to help me,” cashier Cam Thompson
said Monday from behind the counter
of a Taco Bell in Jefferson City, Mo.
Thompson, who is expecting her
second child in May, said the raise
from the previous minimum wage of
$3.80 an hour won’t make things any
easier. She said she can’t afford to
return to Taco Bell after she has the
baby.
At an Exxon gas station in Nash
ville, Tenn., cashier Dequila Howard
said she already made 10 cents an
hour more than minimum wage. Her
salary was increased to $4.35 an hour
as of Monday, but she said she still
moonlights, working three hours a
night at a bar to make ends meet and
support her children.
“I think it should have gone up
more, I’ve got so many bills,” she
said of the $18-a-week increase.
For Jeff Harper, 20, of Charleston,
W.Va., who is working at two fast
food chains and plans to gel a third
job at a toy store, the increase won’t
make much difference.
“You still can’t live on it,” he said
as he rang up customers at an Arby’s.
Jim Moore, who earns $3 a car at
the Mountaineer Hand Wash in Char
leston, said the minimum wage should
have been raised a long time ago.
“The only thing is, are they going
to raise every th ing else because mini
mum wage has gone up?” he said.
Business owners who normally
might want to pass on higher labor
costs to consumers say the sour U.S.
economy won’t allow it.
“There’s been so many layoffs and
other problems around here, price
increases are not an option,” said Pete
Williams, owner of a McDonald’s in
Altoona, Pa. “We’re trying to hold
that line ‘til we see the economy
moving again.”
In belter economic times, a mini
mum-wage increase couid help mil
lions of other, higher-paid workers
because theoretically, employers
would feel obliged to raise them, too.
Williams said most of his daytime
workers are adults making between
$4.50 and $5 an hour. He’d like to
give them the same pay raise that
teen-agers on his night crew will gel
as a result of the higher minimum
wage, but he said he can’t afford it.
Court: Juries cant exclude blacks
WASHINGTON (AP) - While
defendants are entitled to new trials if
convicted by juries from which blacks
were excluded because of their race,
the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said prose
cutors violate the Constitution if they
bar prospective jurors for racial rea
sons— even when the defendant and
the excluded jurors are of different
races.
The justices ordered further lower
court hearings to determine whether
blacks were barred unlawfully from
the Ohio jury that convicted Larry
Joe Powers, who is white, of two
murders.
In a separate criminal case, the
court granted a hearing to a convicted
Delaware killer who says the jury that
sentenced him to death wrongly look
into account his membership in a white
supremacist gang.
The court is expected to dre'de in
1992 whether the jury violated that
man’s First Amendment right to asso
ciate with whom he pleases. «•
In the Powers case, Justice An
“ 4* -
A criminal defendant
suffers a real injury
when the prosecutor
excludes jurors at his
or her own trial on
account of race.
Kennedy
Supreme Court justice
-tf -
thony Kennedy said for the court that
racial discrimination injury selection
violates the constitutional right of equal
protection under the law and could
undermine public confidence in the
judicial system.
“The purpose of the jury system is
to impress upon the criminal defen
dant and the community as a whole
that a verdict of conviction or acquit
tal is given in accordance with the
law by persons who are fair,” he said.
“A criminal defendant suffers a
real injury when the prosecutor ex
cludes jurors at his or her own trial on
account of race,” he added.
The ruling extends a 1986 deci
sion in which the court — in the case
of a black defendant and black jurors
— said that when prosecutors dis
qualify potential jurors based on their
race it violates the 14th Amendment’s
guarantee of equal protection.
At issue in both cases arc so-called
peremptory, or automatic, challenges
by prosecutors to prospective jurors.
If most or all such challenges are
used against people of one race, the
prosecutor must prove the exclusions
were not racially motivated.
Monday’s ruling requires the prose
cutor to prove an absence of racial
bias regardless of the race of the pro
spective jurors or the defendant. Legal
observers say the overwhelming
majority of cases in which racial bias
is alleged involves exclusion of blacks
from juries.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
General Motors ...“Putting quality on the road”
See the visions and concepts of General Motors:
DATE: April 2 and 3,1991
PLACE: Nebraska Union Plaza
TIME: 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM
General Motors and GMAC Financial Services are pleased
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