Não tem santo mesmo:Bourne escreveu:Qual empresa do setor ou que oferece esse tipo de produtos nunca esteve?
Não que a Saab seja uma santa ou as qualquer uma das outras. O que é inadmissível é tentar colar esse tipo de procedimento apenas sobre a Saab.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/24/news/ ... lge.t.html
Dassault Chief Is Also Convicted : Ex-Head of NATO Sentenced In Belgian Bribery Scandal
By Barry James
Published: Thursday, December 24, 1998
Belgium's highest court sentenced the former secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Willy Claes, to a three-year suspended prison term Wednesday for corruption, effectively ending his political career and casting a moral judgment against the corruption-riddled past of the nation's powerful Socialist parties.
The court also convicted Serge Dassault, head of the Dassault Aviation company, for paying a bribe to obtain a contract to re-equip Belgian Air Force F-16 fighters with new electronics. It sentenced him to a two-year prison sentence, but suspended it.
Both men had pleaded not guilty.
In what political observers interpreted as a condemnation of much of Belgium's French- and Dutch-speaking Socialist elites, the court also handed down two-year suspended sentences against Guy Spitaels, 67, a former Socialist president and several times deputy prime minister, and former Defense Minister Guy Coeme, 52. Eight former aides and associates were convicted and received suspended sentences of up to two years.
The sentences mean a loss of civil rights.
The court affirmed that Dassault and the Italian helicopter company Agusta SpA paid a total of 110 million Belgian francs ($3.188 million) into Socialist coffers to secure contracts.
Dassault was awarded the 6.5 billion franc contract to equip the F-16s over a rival bid from Litton Industries Inc. of the United States, which was preferred by military commanders. Agusta won an 11.97 billion franc contract, over Aerospatiale of France, to supply 46 helicopters to the Belgian Air Force.
The court ordered Mr. Claes, 60, and three aides to repay an amount almost equivalent to the bribes.
The observers said the verdict could affect general elections next year, although in Wallonia, the French-speaking southern half of this linguistically divided country, the Socialists are solidly entrenched through patronage and bossism.
Mr. Claes held the top NATO post for 13 months until October 1995, when he was forced to resign at the height of the Bosnia crisis because of the bribery allegations. Since then, Mr. Claes, an amateur composer and conductor, has been employed as head of the Flemish navigation board. He earlier told the court that he thought a payment of several million francs that passed through his bank account had come from his wife's personal savings.
Mr. Claes was minister of economic affairs at the time the contracts were awarded in the late 1980s. He was closely associated with the Belgian royal family, was long the leading power broker in the Dutch-speaking wing of the Socialists, and was a party co-president with the leading Walloon politician, Andre Cools.
Mr. Cools was assassinated in 1991, and investigations into his murder led to discovery of the bribes. In June, two Tunisian hitmen hired by the Italian Mafia received 20-year jail sentences in Tunisia for killing Mr. Cools. The motives for the assassination have never been revealed, although there has been a great deal of press speculation that Mr. Cools knew too much about the Socialists' involvement in alleged financial chicanery.
Another death connected with the bribery allegations was that of General Jacques Lefebvre, the chief of staff of the air force at the time of the bribes, who apparently committed suicide in a Brussels hotel in March 1995. The chief prosecutor in the case, Eliane Liekendaal, making her last court appearance before retirement, shot to national prominence when she used her summing-up to issue a devastating critique of the culture of corruption in Belgian politics, where parties and regional governments vie for influence across language lines.
At the time the payments were made, it was not illegal to make corporate donations to political parties; the practice has since been outlawed. But the court found that the size of the payments in this case, their dubious funneling through banks in Luxembourg and Switzerland, and the fact that they were closely connected in time to the awarding of the contracts amounted to corruption.
The court's presiding judge, Marc Lahousse, said it was possible that before the awarding of the helicopter contract, Mr. Claes "gave his assent to his chief cabinet aide to accept the offer made by Agusta."
Mr. Claes said he would appeal the verdict to the European Court of human rights, since he has no further recourse in Belgium. The verdict was handed down by the Court of Cassation, which normally reviews the decisions of appeals courts, but is empowered to hear cases against acting or former government ministers.
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