Corruption

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is under pressure from the international community to do more to battle corruption, has issued an ambitious list of government reforms that orders his ministries, prosecutors, and judiciary to fight bribery, nepotism, and cronyism. Karzai's 23-page decree also instructs officials to clear the attorney general's office and the courts of languishing corruption-related cases and do more than talk about bringing crooked figures to justice.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is under pressure from the international community to do more to battle corruption, has issued an ambitious list of government reforms that orders his ministries, prosecutors, and judiciary to fight bribery, nepotism, and cronyism. Karzai's 23-page decree also instructs officials to clear the attorney general's office and the courts of languishing corruption-related cases and do more than talk about bringing crooked figures to justice.

NAIROBI, Kenya - A scathing report written for the U.N. Security Council says that systematic misappropriation, embezzlement, and outright theft of taxpayer funds have become a system of governance in Somalia. The nearly 200-page report lists numerous examples of money intended for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) going missing, saying that for every $10 received, $7 never made it into state coffers. The report, written by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and obtained Monday by the Associated Press, says government revenues aren't even clear: The Ministry of Finance reported revenues of $72 million in fiscal year 2011, while the accountant general reported revenues of $55 million.

HARRISBURG - A former state representative and Pennsylvania revenue secretary was convicted of corruption Wednesday in what could be the final trial from a five-year-old state investigation. A Dauphin County Court jury found Stephen Stetler guilty on six felony counts stemming from his alleged participation in a scheme to use public employees to do illegal campaign work. His case was the last of 25 defendants in the state attorney general's legislative corruption probe to be resolved.

A Hatboro-Horsham High School cross-country coach is charged with corrupting a minor after allegedly plying a 17-year-old girl with alcohol multiple times, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office. William Ryan Lichtner, 24, of Ambler, also faces a charge of supplying liquor to a minor while he was the girl's coach. The girl, a senior, told a guidance counselor on May 24 that Lichtner had supplied her with alcohol, according to District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.

A century after the journalist Lincoln Steffens attached the embarrassing epithet "corrupt and contented" to the City of Brotherly Love, we have not only failed to clean up our act; we seem to have successfully exported our crooked style of governance to the rest of the commonwealth.   The recent sentencing of former State Sen. Jane Orie to 2½ to 10 years in prison is another sad addition to the record of one of the most criminally prosecuted legislatures in America. The fact that our government is sending more of its members to prison than most Mafia families should not be blithely disregarded as trivial.

Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning today sentenced former state Sen. Jane Orie to a prison term of between 2 1/2 and 10 years on corruption charges. She was immediately taken into custody after the sentencing hearing today in Downtown Pittsburgh. Orie, a Republican, made no statements. She had tears in her eyes as she was led away. Manning called her actions a "flagrant and disgraceful violation" of the lawyers' oath. Orie, 50, was found guilty in March of five felonies and nine misdemeanors.

CAIRO - Former President Hosni Mubarak got a life sentence Saturday for failing to stop the killing of protesters during Egypt's uprising. But he and his sons were cleared of corruption charges, setting off protests for greater accountability for 30 years of abuses under the old regime. By nightfall, as many as 10,000 people were back in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising, to vent anger over the acquittals. Similar protests went on in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and Suez on the Red Sea. "Justice was not served," said Ramadan Ahmed, whose son was killed on Jan. 28, the bloodiest day of last year's uprising.

After almost nine days of deliberations, jurors in the corruption trial of John Edwards reached a not guilty verdict on just one of the six felony counts. On the other five charges the judge declared a mistrial. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Eagles had urged jurors to continue deliberating on the remaining counts against the former U.S. Senator and two-time Democratic presidential candidate until the deadlock was apparent. Edwards, 58, was indicted by a federal grand jury last June on six felony charges in a case involving nearly $1 million provided by two wealthy political donors - the late lawyer Fred Baron and heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon - to help him hide his pregnant mistress as he sought the White House in 2008.

Nine city workers who were supposed to be cleaning up neighborhoods instead ransacked homes in Northeast Philadelphia between 2006 and 2008, stealing cash, guns, family heirlooms, furniture and TVs while on the job. Last year they pleaded guilty to the crime. A grand-jury report said the former workers, who were assigned to the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP), "used their jobs as a license to steal the entire contents of houses" and were "abetted by a total lack of oversight.