Showing posts with label Prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prison. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

When There Are Six Women Chasing One Man




When There Are Six Women Chasing One Man


Read the following extract from a recent report from the U.S.

Real life is more complicated, of course, but this simple model illustrates an important truth. In the marriage market, numbers matter. And among African-Americans, the disparity is much worse than in Mr. Harford’s imaginary example. Between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are excluded from the dating pool. And many women also steer clear of ex-cons, which makes a big difference when one young black man in three can expect to be locked up at some point.

Removing so many men from the marriage market has profound consequences. As incarceration rates exploded between 1970 and 2007, the proportion of US-born black women aged 30-44 who were married plunged from 62% to 33%. Why this happened is complex and furiously debated. The era of mass imprisonment began as traditional mores were already crumbling, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the contraceptive pill. It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace. These factors must surely have had something to do with the decline of marriage.

But jail is a big part of the problem; argue Kerwin Kofi Charles, now at the University of Chicago, and Ming Ching Luoh of National Taiwan University. They divided America up into geographical and racial “marriage markets”, to take account of the fact that most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively close to them. Then, after crunching the census numbers, they found that a one percentage point increase in the male incarceration rate was associated with a 2.4-point reduction in the proportion of women who ever marry. Could it be, however, that mass incarceration is a symptom of increasing social dysfunction, and that it was this social dysfunction that caused marriage to wither? Probably not. For similar crimes, America imposes much harsher penalties than other rich countries. Mr. Charles and Mr. Luoh controlled for crime rates, as a proxy for social dysfunction, and found that it made no difference to their results. They concluded that “higher male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry…and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away from women and towards men.”

http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15867956


In Nigeria, there over 50,000 men in prison and these men left behind girlfriends and wives who are now desperately seeking companionship from other men. So they join the pool of hundreds of thousands of other single women who are searching for men to date and marry.

Let us add the girlfriends and widows of the thousands of Nigerian Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) soldiers killed during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Then include the thousands languishing in hellish police cells all over Nigeria. All these unfortunate victims of foreseen and unforeseen circumstances had sweethearts who must continue with their lives.

Then finally, how can millions of jobless single women date and marry millions of equally jobless single men in Nigeria?
Therefore, the millions of jobless single women are desperately chasing the gainfully employed single or married men to make ends meet.
So a gainfully employed single man is now facing 6 to 10 single women who have no other man available to date or marry.

There is scarcity of eligible bachelors and the cause has nothing to do with the SPIRIT OF LATE MARRIAGE or whatever many opportunistic pastors have been using to lure desperate single women to their churches and milk them dry of their hard earned money in the guise of sowing for the miracle of getting married.
Tell the pastors to go and set the bond men in jail free and then give jobs to the millions of jobless single men first and stop preaching lies to single women in Nigeria.

For every single woman who gets married, there is another woman with a broken heart caused by the same man you are calling husband.

There are more single women than single men in these interesting times of economic, social and political vicissitudes.
We cannot escape from the present realities in Nigeria and the U.S.

We do not have enough eligible single men for our single women.

Six single women may have to share one man or languish in loneliness.

SHARING IS CARING.


~ By Ekeneyerengozi Michael Chima


Friday, January 29, 2010

Former Willbros International Executives Sentenced to Prison for Their Roles in $6 Million Nigerian Bribery Scandal

29 Jan 2010 00:46 Africa/Lagos


Former Willbros International Executives Sentenced to Prison for Their Roles in $6 Million Foreign Bribery Scheme

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two former executives of Willbros International Inc. (WII), a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc. (Willbros), were sentenced today for their roles in a conspiracy to pay more than $6 million in bribes to government officials of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and officials from a Nigerian political party, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and Acting Assistant Director in Charge John G. Perren of the FBI's Washington Field Office.


Jason Edward Steph, 40, was sentenced today to 15 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Simeon T. Lake III in Houston. In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Lake ordered Steph to serve two years of supervised release following his prison term and to pay a $2,000 fine. The court acknowledged at the sentencing hearing the assistance Steph provided in ongoing investigations.


Jim Bob Brown, 48, was sentenced today to 12 months and one day in prison by Judge Lake. In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Lake ordered Brown to serve two years of supervised release following his prison term and to pay a fine of $1,000 per month while Brown is on supervised release. The court acknowledged at the sentencing hearing the assistance Brown provided in ongoing investigations.


Steph and Brown both had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) before Judge Lake in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. In pleading guilty, Steph and Brown admitted that Willbros, a publicly traded company that provides construction, engineering and other services in the oil and gas industry, conducted its international operations through WII and that they were both employees of WII. Steph admitted that beginning in approximately late 2003, he conspired with others to make a series of corrupt payments totaling more than $6 million to various Nigerian officials and officials from a Nigerian political party to assist Willbros in obtaining and retaining the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS) Project, which was valued at approximately $387 million.


Steph also admitted that in early 2005, he, along with former WII executive Brown and others, arranged for the payment of approximately $1.8 million in cash to government officials in Nigeria to further the conspiracy. Steph admitted that in order to make these payments, he obtained $550,000 in cash from another co-conspirator for the purpose of paying that money to Nigerian government officials. He also admitted that he obtained approximately $350,000 from a petty cash account, which was raised over several weeks by falsely inflating petty cash funding requests transmitted to Willbros and by covering the inflated amounts with invoices from fictitious vendors representing purportedly legitimate business expenses.


Brown admitted that in early 2005, he conspired with others to pay bribes to government officials in Nigeria for the purpose of retaining the EGGS Project. Brown admitted that to further this conspiracy, he, with the assistance of others, obtained a suitcase filled with $1 million in cash from WII's German construction company partner, which Brown then paid to another co-conspirator for the purpose of forwarding that money to Nigerian government officials.


Brown also admitted that in at least 1996 and continuing through at least 2004, he conspired with others to negotiate lower federal and state tax obligations in exchange for corrupt, "under the table" payments to Nigerian revenue officials, including officials responsible for auditing and enforcing taxes, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business and for securing an improper advantage. Brown admitted he also conspired with others to make corrupt payments to officials of the Nigerian judicial system in exchange for favorable action on pending cases, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business and for securing an improper advantage.


Additionally, Brown admitted to making at least $300,000 in corrupt payments to Ecuadorian government officials affiliated with PetroEcuador and PetroCommercial, for the purpose of obtaining and retaining business for Willbros, WII and others, including the Proyecto Santo Domingo project. In connection with the Ecuador transaction, Brown and others agreed to pay $150,000 to the Ecuadorian officials up front and $150,000 at the project's conclusion.


To date, in addition to Steph and Brown, the prosecution in this matter also includes:


On Nov. 12, 2009, former WII consultant Paul Novak pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and one substantive count of violating the FCPA, in connection with his role in paying bribes to Nigerian government officials. Novak's sentencing is currently scheduled for July 9, 2010.


On Dec. 19, 2008, an indictment was unsealed against former Willbros executive Kenneth Tillery, charging him with conspiring to make more than $6.3 million in bribe payments to Nigerian and Ecuadoran officials; two individual counts of violating the FCPA in connection with the authorization of specific corrupt payments to officials in those countries; and one count of conspiring to launder the bribe payments through purported consulting companies. He remains a fugitive.


On May 14, 2008, Willbros entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a $22 million criminal penalty, in connection with the company's payment of bribes to government officials in Nigeria and Ecuador.


This case was prosecuted by Assistant Chief Hank Bond Walther and Trial Attorney Laura N. Perkins of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section and investigated by the FBI's Washington Field Office squad that specializes in investigations of FCPA violations.


Source: U.S. Department of Justice

CONTACT: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs,
+1-202-514-2007, TDD +1-202-514-1888


Web Site: http://www.justice.gov/


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