By Steve Hynd
Privilege is literally "private justice". If you or I had committed even one of the 288 violations of export laws Blackwater just paid to have swept under the carpet, we'd likely have gone to jail. Blackwater's officials don't have that worry.
The company formerly known as Blackwater violated U.S. export control laws nearly 300 times, ranging from attempts to do business in Sudan while that country was under U.S. sanctions to training an Afghan border patrol official who was a native of Iran, the State Department said Monday.
The alleged violations were spelled out in documents released Monday by the State Department as part of a $42 million settlement with Blackwater that will allow the company, now known as Xe Services LLC, to continue receiving U.S. government contracts.
The agreement appears to spell the end of a three-and-a-half-year, multi-agency federal probe into Xe Services' unauthorized exports of defense technologies and services. While elements of the case were presented to a federal grand jury, the company and its currently serving officers have avoided criminal prosecution.
Not only that, but Blackwater also got away with obstruction of justice and perjury.
The company "did not fully cooperate" during the first 18 months of the State Department investigation, which began in February 2007, and made several false statements to the government that it later revised, the documents said.
And in a final laugh at the justice system, Blackwater is being allowed to use $12 million of that fine to strengthen its export control compliance programs!
I'd love to see Joe Schmuck try to argue in court that 30% of his fine for owning an unregistered handgun should go towards his attending classes in gun law. How do you think that would work out? The judge would probably add a bit to his sentence for the bare cheek of it. But, of course, Blackwater officials were never going to get anywhere near a judge or court.
This is American corporatocracy in action. Blackwater has impunity from the law - it is literally privileged - and can pay any laughable fines from the chump change of the money it made from breaking the law in the first place.
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