Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Legislature Continues to Sweep Evidence of Possible Bribery Under the Rug

Open Letter to All Legislators Regarding Suspicions of Bribery

--- by Ray Metcalfe

Lesil McGuire signed a contractual agreement with one of Alaska's largest companies who agreed to pay her $10,500 for assisting them in securing seven million dollars in appropriations.

Here's a link to the contract.

The $10,500 was paid and the appropriations were made. Bribery by definition is when someone outside of government pays a legislator to assist them with an appropriation or other legislation.

Two years ago, I hand delivered copies of McGuire’s contract and her invoices for “services” to the office of Alaska’s Attorney General and Senator Lyda Green. I also provided same to APOC in the form of a complaint. APOC chose only to pass the information to the Senate Subcommittee of the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics, who chose to do nothing. In their dismissal, Legislative Ethics referenced a two year statute of limitation for ethics complaints. They made no mention of the fact that the statute of limitation begins to run at the conclusion of the final related act. The final related appropriation, in the series of appropriations that McGuire contracted to help secure, passed the Legislature in May of 2006, one year and nine months before the commission received APOC’s referral. Well within the two years.

Senate Ethics also made no reference of any referral of the matter to the office of the Attorney General nor did they mention that the statute of limitation for bribery is five years. There are now, from the date of this letter, two years left for a grand jury to indict.

As evidenced by eleven Federal convictions, Alaska is an extremely corrupt state. However, State Prosecutors have yet to find a single cause for an indictment. Just as with Ben Stevens and Veco, State Prosecutors have demonstrated that they have no intention of investigating the evidence of McGuire’s bribery which I hand delivered to their desks.

In 1982, Bethel Senator George Hohman was expelled from the Senate and sent to prison for simply suggesting that the backers of a project were likely contributors. Today, no one other than you has more responsibility to ask why such far more egregious acts are tolerated by our Legislators and ignored by our Prosecutors.

Here is a link to a PDF
that includes:

1. McGuire’s Contract, (See Exhibit A page 9 of the PDF, and the contract to which Exhibit A was an attachment, pages 10-16)
2. APOC’s dismissal, (See pages 33-34)
3. Copy of three appropriations totaling $7,000,000 as referenced in McGuire’s letter, and (See pages 1-8)
4. See the Senate Ethics dismissal. (See pages 33-34)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your definition of bribery is not correct. The definition is: the acceptance of compensation, to which the public official is not entitled, taken with the understanding that it is in return for some official action. The three key elements are 1) unentitled compensation; 2) understanding of the quid pro quo; and 3)expected official action. Very different from your definition.

Maeve said...

I can't get the documents to open without an account and password.