By Lucy Komisar
Oct 15, 2012
If you have followed the stories here showing strong evidence that IDT, the Newark-based telecom, bribed officials of the Haitian phone company, Teleco, you will be interested in today’s SEC filing by IDT. It says that the SEC and the Justice Department are still investigating charges made in 2004 by former IDT employee D. Michael Jewett that the company had paid off Haitian officials in connection with (ie. to get) a contract to supply long distance service between the U.S. and Haiti. That would have violated the FCPA, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. At the time, IDT was run by James Courter, the former Republican congressman from New Jersey.
Jewett in November 2010 settled with IDT in return for his dropping a civil lawsuit that charged he was fired because he didn’t go along with the scam. But it appears that the story isn’t over. In May this year, a federal court in Miami handed down a nine-year sentence to Jean René Duperval, the Haitian Teleco official who allegedly took payoffs in the IDT deal, for taking bribes from several Miami phone companies in similar cases. Duperval would have a lot to say about the (alleged) IDT bribery. So, it’s interesting that the feds are still pursuing the case. Stay tuned. And watch for connections to former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Jewett says he got some of the purloined cash.
Here’s the excerpt from the filing:
| IDT CORPORATION IDT (NYSE) | ||
$10.78  |
Change: 0.16 (1.51%) | Volume: 43,547 |
| 04:01 PM EST | ||
Form Type: 10-K Annual Report.
Filing Date: 10/15/2012.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings.
On April 1, 2004, D. Michael Jewett, a former employee with whom we entered into a confidential settlement agreement in November 2010, sent a copy of the complaint he had filed against us to the United States Attorney‘s Office. In the complaint, Jewett had alleged, among other things, that improper payments were made to foreign officials in connection with an IDT Telecom contract. As a result, the Department of Justice, or DOJ, the SEC and the United States Attorney in Newark, New Jersey conducted an investigation of this matter. We and the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors initiated independent investigations, by outside counsel, regarding certain of the matters raised in the Jewett complaint and in these investigations. Neither the Audit Committee‘s nor our investigations have found any evidence that we made any such improper payments to foreign officials. We continue to cooperate with these investigations, which the SEC and DOJ have confirmed are still ongoing.
For articles on the case, click on IDT in the tag cloud.
AGAIN on Dec 10, 2012:
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| Form Type: 10-Q Filing Date: 12/10/2012 Description: Quarterly Report |
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