Seems Tom DeLay's best buddy, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is in trouble on a number of issues. The latest to surface outlines his firm's
failure to perform on a lobbying contract for the Northern Mariana Islands.
WASHINGTON - A lobbyist under investigation for billing Indian tribes tens of millions of dollars was at the center of an earlier inquiry that said his firm hadn't justified roughly $1.2 million it charged the Northern Mariana Islands.
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Jack Abramoff, who has ties to President Bush and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, is the lobbyist being investigated. He was the lead lobbyist for Seattle-based Preston Gates & Ellis when it worked on behalf of the U.S. territorial islands to keep them free from certain federal labor and immigration laws during the last half of the 1990s, according to reviews conducted by the Pacific islands' public auditors.
One audit concluded that about $1.2 million in government payments to Preston Gates was "not adequately supported." The charges included travel, telephone, photocopy, computer research and outside-professional fees. Auditors said Preston Gates improperly billed the government $2,000 for a June 1996 golf tournament.
The auditors said some payments to Abramoff's firm were made illegally, the documents show.
Abramoff moved to a new firm and took the account with him -- without proper bidding -- apparently in violation of Mariana law:
Abramoff was the lead lobbyist for the islands for Preston Gates through 2000, then took the account to a new firm, Greenberg Traurig.
The audit reports said the island's lobbying costs fell after Abramoff changed firms, but they also questioned why the island awarded the new contract to Greenberg Traurig without competitive bidding.
The auditors concluded the islands' government broke its own laws when it paid Preston Gates just over $3 million from October 1996 to October 1997 after the contract had expired, and they questioned whether the islands got their money's worth.
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The audits showed that between October 1993 and September 2001 the Preston Gates firm reaped about $6.7 million from the commonwealth's government, about 72 percent of the government's overall lobbying payments. The Mariana Islands government was one of the firm's biggest clients, the audit said.
And what kinds of issues were Abramoff and his firm going to lobby our government for on behalf of the Marianas?
The new firm was to lobby the U.S. government "to
preserve the commonwealth's current independence from certain aspects of United States immigration, customs, and labor laws, to provide representation of commonwealth's issues during the transition to the new Bush administration, and to advance other commonwealth interests."
The firm told the commonwealth government its 2001 lobbying included fighting proposals to apply a minimum wage to the Mariana Islands and to change immigration rules, working on legislation on "Made in the USA" clothing labeling rules, and educating the incoming Bush administration about Mariana Islands issues.
What a great guy Abramoff is! It's nice to find someone who cares so deeply about the people of the Marianas... and not just the big companies that run sweat shops there in order to create cheap clothing with "Made in USA" tags.
He's all heart...