Written by
Nick Blenkey
Flash again to September 2022: Mugshot taken when Leonard Glenn Francis was detained in Venezuela when making an attempt to board a flight to Russia
When Leonard Glenn Francis, the person on the middle of the “Fats Leonard” bribery case that rocked the Navy, final surfaced in public, it was again in September 2022 when he was arrested on the Simon Bolivar Worldwide in Caracas, Venezuela. As we reported at the moment, he was detained on the premise of an Interpol pink discover to await extradition to the USA.
It usually supposed that Venezuela’s Maduras regime wouldn’t pace up the extradition however would grasp on to Francis as a bargaining chip. Which is precisely what occurred – and now he’s being handed over to the U.S., as a part of a bigger prisoner swap deal.
In a background briefing on the swap, earlier this week, a senior administration official had this to say about Leonard:
“As a part of this association, Leonard Francis, who’s often known as ‘Fats Leonard,’ can be extradited from Venezuela [arrested and returned to the United States] and can be on a aircraft, hopefully very quickly, on his method again to a federal detention facility.
“For these of you who should not acquainted with Leonard Francis’s case, he oversaw probably the most brazen bribery conspiracies within the U.S. Navy’s historical past from 2004 till his arrest till 2013. It was a long-running conspiracy to bribe U.S. Navy officers and workers and different federal workers who have been public officers.
“Francis pled responsible. As a part of his responsible plea, he admitted that he required his Navy contacts to make use of their affect to profit his firm by steering contracts to it, by scheduling and directing Navy ships to numerous ports favored by the corporate, and by advocating for and advancing the corporate’s pursuits with the Navy with respect to the ships’ husbandry points, and in addition admitted that he bribed ‘scores‘ of U.S. Navy officers with tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in fraud and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes and presents, together with money, prostitutes, and luxurious journey, issues like Cuban cigars, Kobe beef, and Spanish suckling pig.
“Whereas he was pending sentencing on home arrest, he lower off his ankle monitoring bracelet and fled to Venezuela, the place he was arrested and has been detained as he was about to board a aircraft to Russia. And his return to the USA will now guarantee that he’s held totally accountable for his crimes in addition to for his makes an attempt to flee from justice.”
