Posted on 08/11/2009 10:46:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A former Kraft Foods purchasing manager was sentenced to two years and three months in prison Tuesday for taking $158,000 in bribes from a broker for a Central California tomato processor, the first prison term imposed in a federal investigation of corruption in tomato products sales.
Robert Watson, 59, of White Plains, N.Y., pleaded guilty in January to defrauding his company by accepting the bribes between January 2004 and April 2008 from Randall Rahal, then a sales broker for SK Foods of Lemoore (Kings County).
In exchange, prosecutors said, Watson made sure that Kraft bought processed tomato products and other items from SK Foods. He also allegedly provided inside information to SK Foods that allowed it to sell 230 million pounds of products to Kraft at inflated prices.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento ordered Watson to pay $1.85 million to Kraft as restitution for its losses.
Prosecutors have described SK Foods as a racketeering enterprise but have not filed charges against the company or any of its top executives. A lawyer for the firm says it has done nothing wrong.
Rahal of Ramsey, N.J., pleaded guilty in December to racketeering, bid-rigging and price-fixing and admitted bribing purchasing agents at some of the nation's largest food companies.
Rahal is awaiting sentencing, along with former purchasing managers from Frito-Lay and B&G Foods, who admitted accepting bribes from him, and two former SK Foods employees who pleaded guilty to other charges.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Tomato scandal?
This stuff goes on all the time, I don’t think there is any more corrupt business than the vegetable business.
I could go on for hours citing abuses and you can file PACA on them and the government does nothing or they go out of business and create a new company the next day. WalMart has turned out to be one of the worst when it started out as one of the best, I won’t buy produce from them.
Good to see justice catsup with him.
You wouldn’t believe how much ‘loose’ money gets shuffled around in the food industry - a lot less than the pharma industry, but...
If you stripped all the loaded money out of products - they’d be a heck of a lot cheaper.
More corruption in Big Tomato.
Seriously, though, I had not followed this. Glad the juicetess department is doing something here.
Caught red-handed?
Oh no u didnt.
how does the company get away without bribery charges?
I guess they really put the squeeze on him.
dev8nt...
..and the’yre going to throw their Heiniez in jail.
guilty of various and sundried crimes, no doubt...
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