A Malaysian contractor on the centre of the US navy’s worst corruption scandal escaped home arrest in California over the weekend after slicing off his GPS anklet, federal brokers have stated.
Leonard Francis, often called “Fat Leonard”, who admitted to providing $500,000 in bribes to US navy officers, has reportedly gone on the run earlier than his sentencing in three weeks.
Police discovered his house within the metropolis of San Diego empty on Sunday morning.
Francis was arrested in 2013, accused of plying navy officers with money, costly meals and cigars, uncommon cognac and wild intercourse events in luxurious motels in alternate for contracts.
Two years later he pleaded responsible to bribing navy officers as a part of an enormous fraud and bribery scheme involving his ship-servicing firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, in Singapore.
Prosecutors stated he additionally redirected army vessels to ports that had been profitable for his firm and overcharged the US army by greater than $35m for providers.
Local officers and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are actually understood to be trying to find him.
Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Omar Castillo instructed the San Diego Union-Tribune, an area newspaper: “He was planning this out, that’s for sure.”
Francis’ neighbours reportedly noticed U-Haul shifting lorries going out and in of his house in current days.
Francis had suffered from ailing well being lately and was positioned underneath home arrest in 2018 whereas co-operating with investigators and appearing as a witness for the prosecution.
He was as a consequence of be sentenced on 22 September.
The US Justice Department beforehand known as Francis’ scheme a colossal fraud.
They later introduced expenses towards greater than 30 others.
Many of these charged have pleaded responsible or had been convicted at trial.
Source: information.sky.com”