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USA: Former Baltimore mayor sentenced to three years in prison for fraud

2020-02-27T19:48:25.167Z



The former mayor of Baltimore, a city on the east coast of the United States, was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison for embezzlement involving children's books of his conception.

Catherine Pugh, a 69-year-old African-American Democrat, was also ordered to return approximately $ 1 million, according to a statement from the Maryland federal prosecutor. She had pleaded guilty in the fall to tax evasion and tax evasion, in particular, for having made hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling her educational books to local entities to which she was linked, sometimes without delivering them.

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"I accept all responsibility," said the former elected official in a video transmitted to the justice system and broadcast by the local media, in which she regrets having tarnished the "image" of Baltimore, a port city plagued by problems. and whose reputation has already been tarnished by several corruption scandals. "I have still not heard an explanation that holds," replied Judge Deborah Chasanow on Thursday, pronouncing the sentence. "It was not a small mistake, an error in judgment, it became a very big fraud," she said, according to remarks reported by the Baltimore Sun.

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The daily broke the scandal in March 2019 by revealing that the University of Maryland health network (UMMS) paid $ 500,000 between 2012 and 2018 for the purchase of copies of Ms. Pugh's books, while she was part of its management committee. After denouncing a "witch hunt", the mayor admitted at the end of March a "regrettable error" and reimbursed part of the money. But other contracts were then discovered. The insurance company Kaiser Permanente notably confirmed that it paid more than 100,000 dollars for the purchase of books between 2015 and 2018. However, Kaiser had won in 2017 a contract of 48 million dollars for the health coverage of the municipal employees of Baltimore .

Pugh, elected mayor of Baltimore in 2016 with the ambition to stem crime in this city among the most violent in the country, had finally resigned in May.

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Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-02-27

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