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- <text id=92TT1613>
- <title>
- July 20, 1992: Fall of the Mighty
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- July 20, 1992 Olympic Special
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 15
- NATION
- Fall of the Mighty
- </hdr><body>
- <p>The law snares an S&L swindler, an ex-envoy and a careless airline
- </p>
- <p> Taxpayers, elderly investors, grieving relatives and
- individuals triumphed last week as a number of powerful
- interests came before the bar of justice. The legal actions
- included the following:
- </p>
- <p> LINCOLN SAVINGS. A federal jury in Tucson awarded $3
- billion in damages against Charles Keating Jr. and three
- co-defendants for swindling thousands of savings and loan
- investors. The huge award may end up being more a symbol of
- public anger about the S&L debacle than a collectible judgment.
- The jury found that developer Conley Wolfswinkel, the Saudi
- European Investment Corp. and Continental Southern conspired
- with Keating and officers in American Continental and its
- Lincoln Savings subsidiary to mislead government regulators.
- Keating, 68, is in prison in California on state criminal
- charges stemming from the same transactions.
- </p>
- <p> LOCKERBIE LIABILITY. In a victory for the families of the
- 270 people who died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
- over Lockerbie, Scotland, a federal jury in New York City found
- the defunct airline and two of its subsidiaries guilty of
- willful misconduct in allowing a bomb to be smuggled aboard. Two
- Libyans were indicted for the bombing last year, and Pan Am
- argued unsuccessfully that it should not be held responsible for
- the work of terrorists. Damages are still to be assessed; the
- plaintiffs are seeking more than $300 million, which would be
- paid by the airline's insurers.
- </p>
- <p> HUD SCANDAL. As the virtual queen of the Department of
- Housing and Urban Development from 1984 to 1987, Deborah Gore
- Dean administered programs intended for the poor to favor
- well-connected real estate developers and Republican
- consultants. Broadening a two-count indictment issued against
- her in April, a federal grand jury indicted Dean, 37, on 13
- criminal charges of fraud, perjury and conspiracy. The
- indictment accused her of using her position to dispatch
- $230,000 in HUD funds to John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's Attorney
- General.
- </p>
- <p> THE SPOILS OF WAR. In a federal indictment in Denver,
- former Ambassador to Bahrain Sam Zakhem and two associates were
- charged with accepting $7.7 million from Kuwait in 1990 to help
- win American public support for military action against Iraq.
- Zakhem, 56, who made an unsuccessful bid this year to become the
- G.O.P. Senate nominee from Colorado, was accused of failing to
- register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents
- Registration Act and of avoiding U.S. income taxes.
- </p>
- <p> EXXON VALDEZ. The Alaska court of appeals overturned a
- misdemeanor conviction against Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the
- tanker that ran aground in Prince William Sound in 1989, causing
- the nation's worst oil spill. The court found that the state
- used tainted evidence against Hazelwood, but acknowledged that
- its decision was likely to be "a bitter pill for many Alaskans
- to swallow."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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