Word: junketeer
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Last summer Roberta accompanied Beyoncé on a press junket to Madrid to launch the new Emporio Armani fragrance, Diamonds. Several weeks earlier, she says, she was in Cannes dressing "a lot of stars. At the after party at the Hotel du Cap in Cannes, I looked around the room, and there were five tables?George Clooney's table, Scorsese's table. And I thought, These are real friendships, not just product placement...
...Court papers detail Ney's acknowledgment of exchanging official acts for benefits, including an August 2002 golf trip to Scotland, paid for by Abramoff and his clients. The junket, which included a White House procurement official as well as Ney's then chief of staff, cost in excess of $160,000, according to the papers...
...Volz weren't the only trip members who were doing favors for Abramoff around the time of the Scotland trip. Two days before Abramoff sent Safavian the schedule for the junket, he asked him for some help in finding a location for a Jewish orthodox school he was looking to build in Maryland for his children to attend. Abramoff wanted to get land from the government, and Safavian, as chief of staff for the General Services Administration, the agency that controls government property, advised him that he should get Congress to order GSA to sell or lease the land...
...while the free meals, luxury sky box tickets and other gifts Abramoff spread around Washington have gotten a lot of powerful people in trouble over the last year, one junket that he arranged is proving particularly damaging. In August 2002, Abramoff flew Reed, Safavian, Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, and Ney's former chief of staff, Neil Volz, on a rented Gulfstream II jet to St. Andrews, Scotland, for five days of golf, food and merriment. In the last few weeks, court action and new e-mails have tainted all four guests on the trip...
...Trouble is, there?s always been plenty to see, and more examples are rolling in daily - from the CEO perks disclosed in SEC filings to the corporate misdemeanors that surely will occur across Junket City this week. The truth is, no one stops it - and they never will...