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Papi_Chulo

Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)

Bottles of Cristal and steak dinners mark UAW corruption probe as prosecutors detail lavish use of union funds


Kinda a long article so I'll just post some excerpts here:


The (UAW) official was allegedly in Palm Springs, California early for the UAW’s five-day annual conference in January and the festivities that night started with a $6,599.87 dinner at LG Prime Steak House that included $1,942 in liquor, $1,440 in wine and four bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne for $1,760. The wait staff was generously rewarded; the tip was $1,100.

A $2,000 purchase at the Indian Canyons golf pro shop earlier that day paid for an assortment of polo shirts, shoes, jackets, hats and “Men’s Fashion Shorts.”

The shopping, wining and dining was expensed to the UAW’s Region 5 Conference that was more than week away.

The arrest and charges against a UAW board member Thursday accuse union officials of living luxurious lifestyles that included high-end liquor, private California villas, lavish dinners and golf outings — all paid for with money meant for or collected largely from the blue-collar union workers at Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler they were supposed to represent.

During the raids, agents “seized hundreds of high-end liquor bottles, hundreds of golf shirts, multiple sets of golf clubs, a large quantity of cigars and related items, humidors and tens of thousands of dollars in cash,” Donohue said in the complaint.

Donohue, in the filing, said Pearson and other unnamed union officials conspired to embezzle UAW money by concealing personal expenditures as costs for UAW Region 5 conferences held in California and Missouri.

That includes renting expensive villas for weeks or months, instead of days, for union conferences at the Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel where union leaders controlled a “master account” that allowed them to “deposit UAW funds up-front and run a tab” for just about everything — clothing, golf equipment, meals, liquor, expensive cigars and offsite villas with private pools and hot tubs, according to the complaint.

All told, the union paid the resort more than $1 million between 2014 and 2017, prosecutors said. More than $600,000 of that money was used to pay other businesses in Palm Springs, including vacation home rental companies, local restaurants and the Indian Canyons Golf Resort. Between 2014 and 2018, the resort paid more than $60,000 on the UAW’s behalf to the Tinder Box cigar shop.

“The investigation has established that the conspirators used the Master Account as a way to conceal the embezzling of union funds for their own personal use,” Donohue said, adding that more than $60,000 of UAW funds were also used for meals at Palm Springs-area restaurants between 2016 and 2018, including on dates “far outside” the timing of the union conferences.

Cooperating witnesses, according to Donohue, said such expenses were lumped together without exact descriptions at the request of union leaders.

Federal officials, according to Donohue, also identified a similar pattern regarding other UAW Region 5 events, including a Four Seasons hotel in Lake Ozark, Mo., where officials allegedly using UAW funds for thousands of dollars to purchase golf clubs that were “concealed within larger bills for Region 5 UAW conferences.”

Donohue also said agents developed “significant information concerning the ‘culture of alcohol’ that exists in the senior ranks of the UAW.”

The allegations include using union funds to buy custom wine bottles, high-end bottles of liquor and allowing union leaders to purchase unlimited amounts of alcohol in Palm Springs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/uaw-corr…