Bribe

BAGHDAD,Iraq -- The trial of Saddam Hussein saw a moment of high drama yesterday when the judge read statements from four defense witnesses recanting their testimony and swearing that the former Iraqi leader's defense team had bribed them to lie in court. Khalil Dulaimi, one of the lead defense attorneys, paid hundreds of dollars and promised lifelong salaries to the witnesses in exchange for false statements favorable to the defense, the statements said. During clandestine meetings in Syria and in Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, Dulaimi and others conspired with the witnesses, telling them what to say in court, according to the statements.

A Bel Air man was sentenced yesterday to three years' supervised probation, ordered to complete 200 hours of community service and pay $10,000 in fines for his role in a bribery scheme in the Baltimore school system's maintenance department. David Joseph Clemons, 59, the owner of Polar Bear Heating and Air Conditioning Inc., pleaded guilty in Baltimore Circuit Court to bribing the former head of the school system's facilities and maintenance department, Rajiv Dixit, so that Dixit would award more contracts to Clemons' firm, according to a statement released yesterday by the state prosecutor's office.

The securities class action law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman was charged yesterday with several criminal counts, including obstructing justice, perjury, bribery and fraud. The 20-count indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, represents the most prominent confrontation between the government and a law firm in years. While federal regulators won multimillion-dollar settlements from big corporate law firms over their role in the savings and loan scandals, no major law firm has faced a criminal indictment in recent memory.

A Baltimore City police officer was arrested on charges that he took bribes from a suspect in return for failing to appear at the man's criminal trial, according to court records. Police charged Officer Walter Jackson-Hill, 35, with theft, bribery, extortion, obstruction of justice and other counts Friday after a six-month internal investigation revealed that he allegedly took a total of $1,150 from a man he had arrested. Jackson-Hill also agreed to try to get the suspect sentenced to probation rather than prison, according to the records.

SAN DIEGO -- A judge rejected Randall "Duke" Cunningham's tearful bid for mercy yesterday and sentenced the war hero and disgraced former congressman to eight years and four months in federal prison for bribery. Looking thin and haggard, with head downcast, Cunningham listened as U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns imposed the sentence. "You've undermined the opportunity [that] honest politicians have to do good," Burns said. Burns ordered Cunningham to pay $1.8 million in restitution and refused his request for a week to say goodbye to his family.

Rep. William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, sought bribes, jobs for his children and other favors for providing political support to a company setting up Internet service in Nigeria, according to a guilty plea entered by a former aide to the congressman yesterday in federal court in Alexandria, Va. In an alleged conspiracy that began in 2004, Jefferson, in exchange for providing political help, demanded payments and favors from a Northern Virginia company...

SAN DIEGO -- A tearful and trembling Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, resigned yesterday after pleading guilty to receiving $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and evading more than $1 million in taxes. Bribery charges involving a sitting member of Congress are relatively rare. The money involved makes Cunningham's the largest such case since several members of Congress were convicted of bribery in the early 1980s. The downfall of Cunningham, an eight-term congressman and decorated Navy fighter pilot in the Vietnam War, began with revelations about the sale of his house in Del Mar Heights to a defense contractor at an inflated price two years ago. But in a plea agreement, Cunningham admitted a pattern of bribery going back to 2000, with contractors supplying him with Persian carpets, silver candelabras, a Rolls Royce, antique furniture, travel and hotel expenses, use of a yacht and a lavish graduation party for his daughter.

The man whom state prosecutors called the "ringleader" in an elaborate scheme to steal $4.2 million from the city school system over 12 years was sentenced in Baltimore City Circuit Court yesterday to five years in prison and three years of supervised probation. Rajiv Dixit, 53, of Reisterstown was led out of Judge Roger Brown's courtroom in handcuffs as his wife cried, despite the efforts of his defense team to paint him as a man who had paid dearly for his crime and whose life had been marred by mental illness.

A federal grand jury accused a Democratic former state senator from Baltimore County yesterday of accepting bribes from a local construction company president vying for millions of dollars worth of state contracts. The long-expected indictment against Thomas L. Bromwell, his wife, Mary Pat, and former Poole and Kent Co. President W. David Stoffregen outlines a complex scheme of payoffs and contract fraud that abused a system intended to help companies run by women or minorities. Over five years, the Bromwells were paid almost $300,000 by Stoffregen in the form of free home construction work and a salary to Mary Pat Bromwell for a no-show job at a "front" company posing as a female-owned subcontractor, according to the indictment.