Westbury Mayors offers to

 provide Nassau OTB  President with a good Italian restaurant for the Carle Place Branch of Nassau OTB. Offer is declined. Let them eat VLT s.

Civil Litigation

Teamsters Freed of Strict Oversight in Deal With U.S. Prosecutors

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• Justice Department

• Preet Bharara

• teamsters

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• Jacob Gershman
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Teamsters President James P. Hoffa speaking in Detroit in 2011.

Associated Press

Federal prosecutors and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday said they’ve struck a deal that will free the union of more than two decades of government control dating back to a settlement intended to purge its leadership of corruption and alleged Mafia influence.
“This is a historic day for our Teamsters,” Teamsters President James Hoffa said in a prepared statement. “After decades of hard work and millions of dollars spent, we can finally say that corrupt elements have been driven from the Teamsters and that the government oversight can come to an end.”
A judge is expected to approve the agreement on Feb. 11, according to WSJ.
Alleging organized-crime influence, the U.S. government in 1988 brought a civil suit against the Teamsters, accusing union leadership of depriving union members of their rights through a “campaign of fear” that allegedly included number of shootings, bombings and beatings, extortion and theft. The government crackdown generated headlines for then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, who would go on to become New York City mayor.
In 1989, just hours before a trial was set to begin, the Teamsters union reached a settlement, agreeing to broad reforms, including long-term oversight by a court-appointed review board.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Wednesday said his office’s latest agreement with the 1.3 million-member union “seeks to strike the appropriate balance.” It recognizes “the significant progress that has been made” in ridding the Teamsters of organized crime and corruption, while “providing an avenue for the union to demonstrate its ability to preserve these gains through its own independent disciplinary and electoral systems,” he said.
Under its terms, the review board will be phased out over five years and the union will establish an “effective and independent disciplinary enforcement mechanism” led by disciplinary officers approved initially by the government.
The pact came about months after the Teamsters asked a federal judge to pull the plug on the consent decree. As WSJ reported in June, a prosecutor for Mr. Bharara’s office indicated the government would support scaling back government control over the union but not eliminating the measures.
At the time, federal prosecutors seemed to take a dimmer view of the union’s progress.
“[C]orrupt and undemocratic practices persist at all levels of the Union, and the objectives of the Decree have not yet been achieved,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara La Morte wrote in a June 12 letter to U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska.
President Barack Obama, while campaigning for president in 2008, said he favored ending the consent decree.