A U.N. torture expert said Saturday that the United States has an obligation to prosecute CIA officers who used harsh interrogation tactics to question detainees in the War on Terror. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, told the AP that the U.S. had to abide by the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture illegal and seek justice against those who used it. Nowak criticized President Obama’s logic in the decision announced Thursday not to prosecute CIA officers who used the tactics — including waterboarding. “The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility,” Nowak said. (AP)
For more than twenty years, officials of Crestwood, a small suburban town in Illinois, pumped water contaminated by carcinogenic toxins to the town’s 11,000 residents to cut costs, a Chicago Tribune investigation found. Even after state environmental officials warned town officials that the water was contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals and twice cited the town for violating environmental laws, officials continued to use the poisoned source. The officials said in 1986 that they would get all of their tap water from Lake Michigan but continued using the poisoned well for as much as twenty percent of the town’s drinking water, until state environmental officials shut down the well in 2007 after testing it for the first time in twenty years. The state’s environmental protection agency and Attorney General are investigating the matter. (Chicago Tribune)
One of the country’s largest labor unions is calling for Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to be fired for poor performance. The 2-million strong Service Employees International Union released a video Thursday alleging that Lewis promotes unsustainable business practices and fails to provide adequate employee services. Among other complaints, a spokesman for SEIU said that B of A pressures employees to cross-sell credit cards to customers, which they say pushes clients further into debt. Lewis became a Wall Street villain earlier this year when B of A approved massive bonuses to top executives at Merrill Lynch after receiving billions in federal bailout dollars. (Financial Times)
Ezra Merkin was warned on multiple occasions that the profits claimed by Bernard Madoff’s accounts were not possible, according to court documents released Friday by a New York State judge. The documents show that Merkin received e-mail messages from Victor Teicher, who managed Merkin’s funds in the late 1990s after being convicted of securities fraud in 1992, warning that Madoff’s claims were likely false. New York University is suing Merkin — who has also been charged by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo — for shirking his fiduciary duty by concealing that he invested $24 million of the school’s endowment with Madoff. (New York Times)
If at first you don’t succeed… ask again. In court documents filed on Sunday, Sir Allen Stanford asked a judge to release $10 million in assets so that he can hire criminal defense lawyers. Stanford’s civil lawyer Jack Nickens — who was hired last week — said that keeping the assets frozen makes it impossible for Stanford to defend himself against “an avalanche of allegations in civil actions not just across the country, but around the world, not to mention a possible criminal indictment.” Stanford, who has been charged with running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, has spoken to high-profile criminal attorney Dick DeGuerin about possible representation. (Reuters)
Former Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom was indicted Friday by a state grand jury. Sansom is charged with sending government funds to campaign donors, including the president of of a state college in northwest Florida. After Sansom diverted $6 million to the college, it funded a $1 million private airport hanger for another Sansom donor in an apparent direct quid pro quo. (examiner.com)
