A well-known Brooklyn pastor with close ties to New York City Mayor Eric Adams is a con man, a Manhattan federal prosecutor told jurors Monday, one who lied to lenders, stole from an elderly parishioner and claimed his connections to City Hall could result in millions of dollars in profits from a real estate deal.
Counsel for a former Vitol Group executive told a New York federal jury in closing arguments Thursday that his client wasn't aware of bribes being paid to officials in Ecuador and Mexico in order to obtain $500 million in state contracts, while a prosecutor insisted that the former oil trader was the linchpin to the corruption scheme.
Former Vitol Oil Group trader Javier Aguilar was convicted Friday of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering violations, after nearly two months of trial over claims that he bribed officials in Ecuador and Mexico in order to win $500 million in business deals for the global energy and commodities company.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco on Wednesday said the U.S. Department of Justice will seek harsher penalties for crimes committed with the aid of artificial intelligence, calling the technology a "double-edged sword" that can be exploited by criminals but utilized by prosecutors with the right controls in place.
A former executive of a unit of Mexico's state-owned oil and gas company on Tuesday told a Brooklyn federal jury of how he and a colleague agreed to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Vitol Group, in exchange for confidential information to help the Geneva-based energy-trading giant win a $200 million gas contract.