Word: defraud
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Supporting the Nicaraguan rebels with profits from U.S. arms sales to Iran may have been a misappropriation of federal funds and a violation of the Boland amendment, as well as conspiracy to defraud the Government...
Participants could be charged with conspiracy to defraud the Government and obstruction of justice...
...against him, he can still be prosecuted on the basis of other evidence collected by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. In the view of legal experts, the testimony of witnesses to the Iran-contra committees has provided more than enough evidence to support indictments on such counts as conspiracy to defraud the Government and conspiracy to obstruct justice...
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh has already used that provision to convict two minor Iran-contra figures. Fund Raisers Carl Channell and Richard Miller have pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. of tax money; the pair solicited supposedly deductible contributions for the entirely nondeductible purpose of buying weapons for the contras. In negotiations with congressional investigating committees, Walsh has left no doubt that conspiracy is the main charge he intends to bring against many more prominent people. Says a source close to Walsh's investigation: "Conspiracy could take in the whole picture." That was pretty much...
...many ways, the law is a prosecutor's dream. Courts have interpreted its "defraud" section to apply to any conspiracy that interferes with the lawful functioning of Government, even if the plot did not result in any other provable crime. People who play widely varying roles in a conspiracy can be judged equally guilty, and only one defendant need be shown to have committed "any act to effect the object of the conspiracy." Thus the prosecutor does not have to focus on the narrow specifics of allegedly illegal acts; he can lay a long, complex story before the jury...