Just In: All Lindsey Defendants Convicted On All Counts

The jury handed down guilty verdicts today on all counts against all of the defendants on trial in the Lindsey case.

Lindsey Manufacturing, its CEO Dr. Keith Lindsey and CFO Steve K. Lee, and the wife of Lindsey's Mexican sales representative Angela Aguilar, were convicted after just a day of jury deliberations.

Aguilar, a Mexican citizen, was convicted on one count of conspiracy to launder money.

Lindsey Manufacturing, Keith Lindsey, and Steve Lee were each convicted on one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and five substantive FCPA violations.

The government said Aguilar and her husband helped arrange millions in bribes from California-based Lindsey Manufacturing to Nestor Moreno, an official at the Mexican state-owned electric utility Comisión Federal de Electridad. The bribes were allegedly paid in exchange for contracts to Lindsey from CFE.

"We are very disappointed by the jury's verdict," said Jan L. Handzlik, lawyer for Lindsey Manufacturing and its CEO Keith Lindsey. " We continue to believe in our clients' innocence and will pursue our motion to dismiss the indictment on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct."

Before the trial started, the Lindsey defendants mounted the strongest challenge yet to the DOJ's so-called expansive view of who's a "foreign official" under the FCPA. But Judge Matz upheld the Justice Department. He found that Mexico's CFE is an "instrumentality" of the government. Therefore, he said, the CFE officer who allegedly received bribes was a "foreign official" under the FCPA.

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Judge A. Howard Matz presided over the Los Angeles trial -- U.S. v. Noriega et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Western Division - Los Angeles), Case #: 2:10-cr-01031-AHM-4.

Comments

[CEGideon]

This is a terrible miscarriage of justice. The evidence does not support this conviction and the government lied and obfuscated to achieve this end because they want to preserve FCPA as a terrible weapon. Now everyone in America doing business is subject to prosecution depending on what the government alleges their overseas representatives do. How could the jury have possibly found that there was a motive to bribe someone when Lindsey is the only company in the world which makes the product???? Who else was the utility going to purchase it from? And why bribe Moreno? Moreno wasn’t even in a position to influence the awarding of contracts – he was in the generation department at CFE, not the transmission department! The contracts were for things only in transmission and have nothing to do with generation!! The testimony shows that CFE was a longtime customer of Lindsey – well before the alleged bribes! So you bribe an ‘official’ in a department that has nothing to do with buying your product, in order to make sure the utility that already buys your product keeps on buying it when you’re the only one who makes it???? Huh? This is an outrage!!!

[franccesca]

what would be the time served by these people?

[InfiniteRegress]

With regards to the first comment, actually the claim that Lindsey were the only company making IEEE standard emergency restoration towers was pure obscurification on the part of the defense counsel. Despite claims to the contrary, both a Canadian company and a Swiss manufacturer were making similar (and interchangeable) towers at the same time as LMC.
The same applies to Nestor Moreno. The aforementioned Canadian company had already employed Enrique Aguilar as a sales agent specifically because of his close ties with Moreno, something known to both Steve Lee and Keith Lindsey, as was the fact that bribing Moreno would ensure contracts. LMC actually fired their agent in Mexico and replaced him with Aguilar when their attempts at legitimate inquiry into why they were losing contracts to companies who were direct-selling inferior, and seemingly more expensive, product imploded.
Essentially, there seems to have been a 'if you can't beat them, join them' mentality at LMC. Certainly, it appears they tried to do things 'correctly' initially, but when that didn't pan out they chose the path of least resistance. Unfortunately for them, they got caught.
The real sympathy here should be reserved for Aguilar's wife. The extremely broad, Orwellian judicial definition of the term 'conspiracy' means that, although her conviction is technically valid, she is guilty more because of a Draconian representation of what it means to be a 'conspirator', rather than committing what most of us would consider a serious white collar crime.
Her husband, on the other hand...

[Justice? What Justice?]

To InfiniteRegress, you obviously don't understand the technical side to this argument - Lindsey was, and still is, making the Lindsey 1070 tower. The Canadian company made a 412 tower. The number represents the 'footprint' or surface area required for the tower. To say that the Canadian company made the same tower as Lindsey, would mean saying a Toyota Corolla is the same as a Chevy Tahoe.
If you are a customer and need to tow a boat, are you going to purchase the Corolla or the Tahoe?? Yes, they are both cars, and yes the Lindsey tower and Canadian tower are both towers, but obviously one is more appropriate (and superior) for the customer needs.
Also, as someone who sat through over half of the trial and heard much of the evidence, this is truly a travesty, specifically with the jury. SHAME ON THE JURY!!
At the beginning of the prosecutions closing arguments, they specifically said DO NOT consider lawyer argument as evidence. Well obviously the jury did not take this advice, as on one website the jury was 50/50 before the prosecution weaved its poisonous fairytale during closing arguments. CLOSING ARGUMENTS ARE NOT EVIDENCE!
Small businesses of America beware - big brother is coming after you!