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[Linkark07]

Wealthy politicians and businessmen suspected of corruption in their native lands are fleeing to a safe haven where their wealth and influence shield them from arrest.

They have entered this country on a variety of visas, including one designed to encourage investment. Some have applied for asylum, which is intended to protect people fleeing oppression and political persecution.

The increasingly popular destination for people avoiding criminal charges is no pariah nation.

It’s the United States.

One of the most prominent cases involves a former president of Panama, who was allowed to enter the United States just days after his country’s Supreme Court opened an investigation into charges that he had helped embezzle $45 million from a government school lunch program.

Ricardo Martinelli, a billionaire supermarket magnate, had been on the State Department’s radar since he was elected in 2009. That year, the U.S. ambassador to Panama began sending diplomatic cables warning about the president’s “dark side,” including his links to corruption and his request for U.S. support for wiretapping his opponents.

The United States has explicit policies that bar issuing visas to foreign officials facing criminal charges in their homelands. In 2004, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation designed to keep the United States from becoming a haven for corrupt officials. Proclamation 7750, which has the force and effect of law, directed the State Department to ban officials who have accepted bribes or misappropriated public funds when their actions have “serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.”

Under the rules implementing Bush’s order, consular officers do not need a conviction or even formal charges to justify denying a visa. They can stamp “denied” based on information from unofficial or informal sources, including newspaper articles, according to diplomats and State Department officials interviewed for this report.

More here:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article119785488.html

All I can say is, what happened? Why now in the Obama's administration the US let these... criminals to live there? How can somebody allow a person who didn't care killing children with poisoned food just for get more money live in Florida and avoid jail time? This is quite disappointing.

 

[Ulysses 31]

Doesn't the US have a history of giving refuge to wealthy war criminals?

Didn't it provide a safe haven for certain nazis?

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s

 

[XGRaViSmOrSX]

All the gov't cares about at the end of the day, is gettin paidddd.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

They'll be in good company with all those corrupt domestic politicians in Trump's cabinet.