"Industry standard methods of estimating liquidation value of a company
show that the reasonably expected liquidation valued of Agriprocessors,
absent government interference with the bankruptcy sale, would have been
tens of millions of dollars higher," Rubashkin attorney Paul Rosenberg
wrote in a court filing that argues for a new sentencing hearing for
Rubashkin.
Sholom Rubashkin
Originally published at 9:07 pm CDT 10-1-2013
Rubashkin Appeal Alleges Government Forfeiture Move Caused Longer Sentence, Says Government Withheld Exculpatory Evidence At Trial
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Sholom Rubashkin’s latest attempt to reduce his 27-year fraud, money laundering and perjury sentence is to claim prosecutors “interfered” with the sale of his family’s Agriprocessors glatt kosher slaughterhouse, causing it to be sold for “tens of millions” of dollars less than market value, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.
"Industry standard methods of estimating liquidation value of a company show that the reasonably expected liquidation valued of Agriprocessors, absent government interference with the bankruptcy sale, would have been tens of millions of dollars higher," Rubashkin attorney Paul Rosenberg wrote in a court filing that argues for a new sentencing hearing for Rubashkin.
Rubashkin was convicted on 86 counts, lost every appeal he has filed and had the US Supreme Court decline to hear his case.
Rubashkin employed a workforce of approximately 1,000 employees on May 12, 2008 when federal, state and local law enforcement raided Agriprocessors and found that approximately 750 of those employees were undocumented, several dozen of them children. Almost 400 undocumented workers working in the plant at the moment of the raid were arrested and most of them were eventually deported after serving prison terms. The other undocumented workers were not working when the plant was raided and escaped.
The government later uncovered a large bank fraud scheme whose origin dated back years before the raid and which was headed by Rubashkin. It also discovered Rubashkin had been systematically looting Agriprocessors for several years, taking at least $1.5 million for his own personal use. (Later evidence showed that Rubashkin had also transferred millions of dollars of Agriprocessors’ money to Chabad charities in the months preceding Agriprocessors’ bankruptcy.)
The government moved to seize Agriprocessors under forfeiture law, successfully arguing that Agriprocessors was an ongoing criminal enterprise, not a legitimate business.
But in order to prevent the collapse of the small Iowa town where Agriprocessors was located, the government relented and decided to allow a bankruptcy sale of Agriprocessors to take place, with the caveat that the government would vet potential buyers to make sure they had no direct connection to the Rubashkin family.
When Agriprocessors was put up for sale, an Israeli buyer put in a straw bid of $40 million but later withdrew it when it was reportedly unable to make sense out of Agriprocessors’ books.
Buyers close to the Rubashkin family later attempted to buy the plant for much less, but failed.
It was purchased in mid 2009 by Canadian haredi businessman Hershy Friedman for $8.5 million.
Agriprocessors was filled with damaged and poorly maintained equipment that had to be replaced and had many other physical problems, and to this day it is not operating at pre-raid levels.
Rosenberg is arguing that the lower sale price was caused by government ‘interference’ and was then used against Rubashkin to lengthen his sentence, which was in part based on the losses his lenders suffered.
The appeal also claims that prosecutors did not provide the defense with exculpatory evidence from “witnesses who said Rubashkin's transferring of money between different accounts was routine cash management and not a sign of fraud,” the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.
It is unlikely that either part of the appeal will be successful.
Rubashkin had hoped to claim jurors were anti-Semitic or biased against him, but illegal interviews with jurors failed to produce any evidence of bias, according to Rubashkin's attorneys, and they were in any case barred by the judge from using any information gathered from that illegal questioning of jurors.