Free Republic

Documents from an inspector general’s probe last June allege that a top-level USAID official interfered with an investigation of possible contract rigging by the foreign-aid agency’s general counsel. The alleged obstruction occurred while the inspector general’s office was investigating whether former USAID general counsel Lisa Gomer had worked with former chief financial officer David Ostermeyer to design a contract that would go to Ostermeyer after he retired. The inspector general’s office said in an internal memo that Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, who ranks No. 2 at the U.S. Agency for International Development, told investigators that their efforts to gather information...

The new CEO of EADS North America acknowledged Friday that a new Air Force refueling tanker contract is “critical” to the European aerospace conglomerate’s business in the United States. Sean O’Keefe, a former NASA administrator, made his comments after EADS’s tanker partner, Northrop Grumman, recently threatened to pull out of the tanker competition. EADS fully agrees with Northrop that without changes to the selection criteria, that team should not bid for the contract, worth at least $40 billion. With the prospect of not competing for the multibillion-dollar contract, EADS could be curtailing its chance to an aggressive and fast growth...

WASHINGTON—Two Baltimore businessmen were indicted today for conspiring to rig bids at tax lien auctions in Maryland for more than five years, the Department of Justice announced today. The one-count felony indictment filed today in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore alleges that Harvey M. Nusbaum and his business partner, Jack W. Stollof, participated in a conspiracy to rig bids in tax lien auctions conducted by the city of Baltimore and various counties in the state of Maryland beginning in or around the Spring of 2002 and continuing until at least Aug. 9, 2007. The indictment alleges that Nusbaum, Stollof...

RALEIGH -- The State Attorney General's Office will refund hundreds of thousands of dollars to unsuspecting homeowners and creditors after a scheme to keep public auction prices artificially low was uncovered. Last week, the office's consumer protection team filed 10 lawsuits against 26 people and companies accusing them of making or accepting payments not to bid on properties being auctioned at courthouses in Wake, Durham, Orange and Johnston counties. Defendants in nine of the cases have agreed to repay sellers nearly $800,000 for money lost because of unfair bidding and have agreed to stop the illegal bidding. The complaints allege...

...Eliot Spitzer divines such a "conflict" in the fact that insurance companies pay "contingent commissions" to brokers who bring them new business or get clients to renew policies. As in previous Spitzer cases, this one began with a press release citing snippets from one company's e-mails.... And as with previous Spitzer press releases, the media dutifully described the New York AG's unproven charges against a few as industry-wide "scandal." CBS Marketwatch spoke of contingent commissions being "at the center of a growing scandal in the insurance industry."... Allegations of inadequate disclosure of the terms of commission agreements could be easily...

...Mr. Spitzer has discovered bad behavior in so-called bid-rigging by insurance brokers.... Soliciting fake bids to drive up prices is a crime, and Mr. Spitzer has already won two guilty pleas from employees of AIG. At least in this case the New York AG has charged people for breaking the law. This is a prosecutor's main duty, but in his previous financial crusades Mr. Spitzer has used public mau-mauing to scare his targets into a settlement rather than prove something to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But bid-rigging aside, Mr. Spitzer's goal seems to be nothing short of altering...