The U.S. Department of Double Standards

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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13183/the_u.s._department_of_double_standards

Corporate criminals go free while the Justice Department targets those without expensive lawyers and lobbyists.
BY LEONARD C. GOODMAN

On April 21, The New York Times reported that Wal-Mart de Mexico paid $24 million in bribes to local land use officials in exchange for allowing the company to build stores in virtually every corner of the country, and to make environmental objections vanish. Although its top executives apparently approved of and helped conceal the bribery scheme – in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – the chances that any of them will face criminal prosecution is remote.

It’s not that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) doesn’t criminally prosecute people who pay bribes to avoid land-use restrictions on their property. Rather, the feds prefer to bring such cases against people who don’t have access to corporate lobbyists – or even to private lawyers. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, just one in five felony defendants has private counsel.

Consider the case of Dumitru Curescu, a former janitor who recently faced two federal trials for the crime of paying $10,000 to an expediter for help obtaining a permit to build two additional garden apartments in his 13-unit building on Chicago’s North Side. Curescu, an immigrant from communist Romania who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, was advised by his architect in 2006 to hire the expediter Catherine Romasanta, when he did his first renovation project. But when he called her again in 2007, she was working as an informant for the feds and recording their calls.

In the fall of 2007, Curescu paid Romasanta the agreed-upon fee and received his building permit. Seven months later, with the renovations nearly complete, federal agents arrested Curescu and his wife Lavinia and seized their building. The feds charged both husband and wife with five counts of bribery and conspiracy.