Last week’s bombshell indictments may only be the tip of the iceberg as more ex-UAW leaders appear to be under FBI investigation.
Following last week’s shocking revelations that a former top UAW official had been part of a multi-year bribery scheme, it appears that more former UAW officials are being investigated by the FBI.
“It is unclear what impact the alleged collusion may have had on union negotiations,” reports Automotive News, “but according to the indictment, Durden, Iacobelli and two other FCA executives gave UAW leaders credit cards with liberal spending policies to keep them ‘fat, dumb and happy.'”
But federal investigators appear to think the situation involved more than two people. In addition to the eight unnamed FCA executives or UAW leaders in the indictment, “other” groups of people are referenced.
The document says Bob King, who was UAW president from June 2010 to June 2014, told Iacobelli and Holiefield in 2011 that they could “go to jail” for giving union and charity business to Morgan, Holiefield’s girlfriend at the time. They married in 2012.
One of the former UAW leaders being looked at, according to the Detroit News, is Virdell King, a retired UAW Associate Director who served under former UAW V.P. Holiefield in the UAW’s Chrysler division.
Retired UAW Associate Director Virdell King has hired a criminal defense lawyer amid questions about personal purchases made through a UAW-Chrysler National Training Center credit-card account, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. The training center funds are supposed to benefit blue-collar workers.
The focus on King provides a partial roadmap of additional people who could be charged in a high-profile criminal case that alleges FCA and union leaders spent more than $1.2 million on luxury items instead of using the money to benefit training of Fiat Chrysler hourly workers. The indictment references, but does not identify, a handful of other union and automaker officials accused of participating in a scheme to pay off UAW officials.
It is unclear, at this time, how many more current or former UAW officials are being investigated.
[This story may be updated.]
