Renzi indicted on 36 corruption counts

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Republican Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona was indicted Friday morning on 36 corruption charges, and an order for his arrest has been issued. The Justice Department began investigating Renzi last year, and Renzi's former chief of staff resigned and began secretly assisting the probe.

The indictment comes one day after Renzi, who had already announced his intentions to step down from Congress at the end of the year, buried his father, Army Maj. Gen. Eugene Carmen Renzi.

Renzi and two other men, James W. Sandlin and Andrew Beardall, were charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and insurance fraud. Sandlin was a real estate investor and business associate of Renzi, as well as a major financial backer of his congressional campaigns, while Beardall was an attorney who served as president and general counsel of an insurance company owned by Renzi.

According to the indictment, Renzi included property owned by Sandlin in a 2005 federal land transfer, the proceeds of which would help Sandlin pay off a $700,000 debt that Sandlin owed to Renzi. Renzi "was having financial difficulty throughout 2005 and needed a substantial infusion of funds to keep his insurance business solvent and to maintain his personal lifestylye," states the indictment. Renzi threatened to block the land transfer unless Sandlin's property was included in it, telling officials from Resolution Copper Corp., which was seeking a land transfer for a copper mine, "no Sandlin property, no bill," according to the indictment.

Sandlin later sold his property to a different investment group, the Petrified Forest Group, according to an April 2007 story in the Wall Street Journal. Renzi said that a land exchange that Petrified Forest would get a "free pass" if it bought the Sandlin property. Sandlin eventually received $2.6 million for the sale, plus another $2 million note. According to the indictment, "Renzi and Sandlin used a variety of means to conceal the nature and purpose" of $733,000 that Sandlin paid Renzi.

Renzi also allegedly "misappropriated $400,000 of insurance premiums" from December 2001 to June 2003, money that was then moved into the Rick Renzi for Congress campaign account. Renzi and Beardall then lied to Florida and Virginia insurance regulators looking into problems at Renzi and Co., an insurance agency owned by the congressman.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/020...i_indicted.html