Tag: Corpor

Dominican sugar imports tied to forced labor rejected by US

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it will detain all imports of sugar and related products made in the Dominican Republic by Central Romana Corporation, Ltd. amid allegations that it uses forced labor.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigation found that the company allegedly isolated workers, withheld wages, fostered abusive working and living conditions and pushed for excessive overtime, the agency said in a news release.

“Manufacturers like Central Romana, who fail to abide by our laws, will face consequences as we root out these inhumane practices from U.S. supply chains,” said AnnMarie Highsmith with the CBP’s Office of Trade.

A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately return a text message seeking comment. La Central Romana, which has long faced those types of accusations, is the Dominican Republic’s largest sugar producer.

The announcement was cheered by activists who have long decried the treatment of tens of thousands of workers who live and work on sprawling sugarcane fields, many of them Haitian migrants or descendants of them.

“This is needed to improve their situation,” Roudy Joseph, a labor rights activist in the Dominican Republic, said in a phone interview. “We’ve been asking for improvements for decades.”

The Associated Press last year visited several sugarcane fields owned by Central Romana where workers complained about a lack of wages, being forced to live in cramped housing that lacked water and restrictive rules including not being allowed to grow a garden to feed their families since transportation to the nearest grocery store miles away was too costly.

Joseph noted that at least 6,000 workers also are demanding pensions they never obtained despite paying their dues.

Sugarcane workers also have organized several protests this year to demand permanent residencies after working for decades in the Dominican Republic as the country cracks down on Haitian migrants under the administration of President Luis Abinader in a move that has drawn heavy international criticism.

Central Romana produced nearly 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of sugar in the harvest period that ended last year after grinding more than 3.4 million tons (3 million metric tons) of cane, according to the company.

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November 23, 2022
Trump Org.’s longtime CFO testifies at company’s fraud trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief took the witness stand Tuesday at the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial, making his long-awaited turn as the star prosecution witness after pleading guilty to evading taxes on $1.7 million in company-paid perks, including a Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.

Allen Weisselberg, a senior adviser and former chief financial officer at Trump’s company, has intimate knowledge of the company’s financial dealings from his nearly five decades working there. But he is not expected to implicate Trump or any members of the Trump family in his testimony.

Weisselberg’s testimony is required as part of a plea agreement he reached in August. If he testifies truthfully and meets other terms of the deal, he’ll be sentenced to five months in jail and could be released with good behavior after about 100 days. Otherwise, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.

Weisselberg will remain free on bail until he is formally sentenced following the company’s trial.

The Trump Organization — the entity through which former President Donald Trump manages his real estate holdings, marketing deals and other ventures — is accused of helping some top executives avoid paying income taxes on compensation they got in addition to their salaries over a 15-year span.

Prosecutors argue that the Trump Organization — through its subsidiaries Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. — is liable for the scheme because Weisselberg, the longtime finance chief, was a “high managerial agent” entrusted to act on behalf of the company and its various entities.

In pleading guilty, the 75-year-old Weisselberg pinned blame for the scheme on himself and other top company executives, including senior vice president and controller, Jeffrey McConney, who testified for the trial’s first five days.

The Trump Organization has denied wrongdoing. Its lawyers allege that Weisselberg concocted the scheme on his own, without Trump or the Trump family’s knowledge, and that the company didn’t benefit from his actions. If convicted, the company could be fined more than $1 million.

The company’s lawyers spent part of Monday and Tuesday’s court sessions attempting to preempt Weisselberg testimony, using their cross-examination questioning to underscore their assertion that others at the company, including Trump, knew nothing about the scheme.

The first two prosecution witnesses — McConney and company accounts payable supervisor Deborah Tarasoff — portrayed Weisselberg as a rogue agent who stressed secrecy about his various financial arrangements.

Both witnesses worked under Weisselberg, and both testified that they aided him in hiding benefits — telling jurors that they were just following orders. Tarasoff agreed with a defense lawyer’s description of Weisselberg as an exacting, authoritarian but deeply trusted micromanager.

Tarasoff said she prepared company checks for Weisselberg to pay his apartment rent and car lease payments. She said she prepared checks from Trump’s private account to pay tuition for private schooling for Weisselberg’s grandchildren.

In September 2016, as Trump’s presidential election neared, Tarasoff said Weisselberg ordered her to start deleting notations about some of the transactions in the company’s bookkeeping system. Tarasoff said she didn’t think Weisselberg was asking her to do anything illegal. But even if he had, she said: “I guess I would because he’s the boss and he told me to do it.”

Weisselberg is the only person to face criminal charges so far in the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of the company.

Weisselberg started working for the company in 1973, when it was run by Trump’s father, Fred. Following his July 2021 arrest, the company changed his title from CFO to senior adviser. The CFO position remains vacant.

Prosecutors alleged that the Trump Organization gave untaxed fringe benefits to senior executives, including Weisselberg, for 15 years. Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.

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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.

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November 15, 2022
Ex-PG&E execs to pay $117M to settle lawsuit over wildfires

OAKLAND, Calif. — Former executives and directors of Pacific Gas & Electric have agreed to pay $117 million to settle a lawsuit over devastating 2017 and 2018 California wildfires sparked by the utility’s equipment, it was announced Thursday.

The settlement was announced by the PG&E Fire Victim Trust, which was established to handle claims filed by more than 80,000 victims of deadly wildfires ignited by PG&E’s rickety electrical grid. The trust’s lawsuit, filed last year, alleged that former officers and board members neglected their duty to ensure the utility’s equipment wouldn’t kill people.

The complaint was an offshoot of a $13.5 billion settlement that PG&E reached with the wildfire victims while the utility was mired in bankruptcy from January 2019 through June 2020.

As part of that deal, PG&E granted the victims the right to go after the utility’s hierarchy leading up to and during a series of wind-driven wildfires that killed more than 100 people and destroyed more than 25,000 homes and businesses, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed much of the town of Paradise in Butte County.

PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for causing the fire and was fined $4 million, the maximum penalty allowed.

All told, PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people.

Those sued by the fire trust included two of PG&E’s former chief executives, Anthony Earley and Geisha Williams, who were paid millions of dollars during their terms, and former board members. They were covered by liability insurance secured by the utility, the trust has said.

PG&E is the nation’s largest utility, with an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California.

In a statement, PG&E said the settlement is “another step forward in PG&E’s ongoing effort to resolve issues outstanding from before its bankruptcy and to move forward focused on our commitments to deliver safe, clean and reliable energy to our customers, and to continue the important work of reducing risk across our energy system.”

The settlement money won’t go to fire victims. Instead, under a bankruptcy court order, the money will be used to satisfy “the vast majority” of claims made by federal agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service, that helped fight the blazes and assist the victims, said a statement from Frank M. Pitre, lead attorney for the trust.

That means the money won’t have to come out of funds earmarked for the trust, which has paid out $4.9 billion to victims.

The trust has said it faces a huge shortfall because half of the promised settlement consisted of PG&E stock that has consistently traded at less than what was hoped for when the deal was struck toward the end of 2019.

The stock closed Thursday at $12.38 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, down more than 30 cents.

Would-be investors might be spooked by PG&E’s continuing wildfire woes. In June, the company pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and other charges it faces after its equipment sparked the Zogg Fire, which killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes in Northern California two years ago.

Also earlier this year, PG&E agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two other major wildfires sparked by its aging Northern California power lines. But the company didn’t acknowledge wrongdoing in those cases.

And last week, federal investigators seized a utility transmission pole and attached equipment in a criminal probe into what started the Mosquito Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The fire that broke out on Sept. 6 destroyed nearly 80 homes and other buildings. The fire, which has burned nearly 120 square miles (311 square kilometers), was 85% contained Thursday.

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September 30, 2022