GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION

Government Corruption

Government Corruption

Salvatore DiMasi was born in 1945, a former Democratic State representative in Massachusetts. He was the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He had joined state legislature in 1979 as a member of the Democratic Party. Voices were raised against him over the issue of government corruption. He resigned from his post in January 2009. He was indicted with several Federal charges, due to involvement in corruption.

Salvatore DiMasi with his friends carried out a conspiracy and made a scheme to pocket thousands of Dollars. The court had indicted Dimasi and his two friends Richard McDonough and accountant Vitale. They conspiracy consisted of two separated schemes including illicit bribes given in favor of DiMasi through his law associate Steven Topazio, as well as Kickbacks to McDonough and Vitale in exchange for DiMasi's legislative (Dinga, 2011).

DiMasi, Vitale and McDonough carried out a conspiracy from 2004, when DiMasi became the speaker. The conspiracy lasted till the year 2008, when news reports and other experts started raising questions about the actions of DiMasi and his friends. DiMasi also used his power to win legislative approval to provide capital to the state software contracts. He also used his power to assist Cognos Corp, which is Canadian based Software Company to get a deal of $4.5 million in 2006 and the Patrick administration approved a deal of $13 million in 2007. According to the deal, DisMasi received $65,000 in return, while McDonough received $300,000, and Vitale received $600,000 according to the different roles. All the three men are charged on account of conspiracy, three counts of honest services mail fraud, and the last one was four counts of honest services wire fraud. DiMasi initiated the deal and was most influential in the deal; hence he was also charged with a count of ...