Free Republic

France’s longest-running political and corporate corruption scandal ended yesterday with prison sentences and fines for 23 former executives at the Elf oil company and their associates.Loik le Floch-Prigent, 57, Elf’s chief executive between 1989 and 1993, authorised the embezzlement of £210 million while Elf was state-owned. The money went on bribes for politicians and middlemen and lavish lifestyles for senior Elf executives.He was jailed for five years and fined £260,000.Nadhmi Auchi, a British billionaire, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and fined £1.4 million. Auchi, who fled his native Iraq under Saddam Hussein, was found guilty of accepting illegal...

Jabir Herbert Muhammad — son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad and former manager of boxing great Muhammad Ali — died Monday afternoon at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.Mr. Muhammad, 79, had undergone open-heart surgery last week, said Joseph Morris, a Muhammad family attorney. Mr. Muhammad had been in the news last year because of a lawsuit he filed against convicted political fund-raiser Tony Rezko to stay in his South Side mansion, a home built by the late Elijah Muhammad.In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last year, Mr. Muhammad said Rezko had “embezzled” him out...

Suit says Rezko, doctor stole man's mansionS. SIDE | More legal woe for fund-raiser in corruption trial BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters March 23, 2008 The Muhammad suit involves only the mansion, in the 1100 block of East 49th Street. (Brian Jackson/Sun-Times) Political fund-raiser Tony Rezko, whose corruption trial has been making headlines for weeks, has a new legal headache: A son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad is suing Rezko and the chief urologist at Cook County's Stroger Hospital, claiming the two of them bilked him out of his South Side mansion. Jabir Muhammad --...