The world may be riveted to the Olympics in London these days, but Austria’s former top Olympics official probably isn’t sharing in the joy.
The only place 61-year-old Heinz Jungwirth will be working out is in the prison yard – he received a five-year sentence Tuesday on corruption charges. He was convicted of embezzling nearly $4 million from the country’s Olympic committee.
Jungwirth headed Austria’s Olympics efforts for 26 years, but resigned in 2009 after concerns were raised about his misdeeds, Reuters reports. The judge in the case didn’t mince words in sentencing Jungwirth – calling his behavior evidence of a “revolting old Austrian functionary mentality.”
Sweep to Former Austrian Olympics Chief Jailed for Corruption
With the U.S. presidential election in its final hundred days, a newly released USA Today/Gallup poll suggests American voters consider government corruption to be a top issue for the next president to tackle.
When asked to rate 12 issues as priorities for the winning candidate to address, reducing corruption ranked second only to job creation. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said reducing corruption in the federal government was either extremely or very important.
That compares to “creating good jobs,” which 92 percent of those surveyed cited as extremely or very important. Other top concerns included reducing the debt, terrorism threats and the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare.
The poll’s results suggest that outrage over corruption is not a partisan issue: While supporters of President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney differed on several key issues, corruption concerns were a shared priority. Forty-six percent of Obama supporters said reducing corruption was “extremely important,” while 45 percent of Romney supporters felt similarly.
Sweep to Americans want next president to prioritize jobs, corruption
An Indian television channel is crying foul over what it alleges are corrupt practices by rating agency Nielsen dating back nearly a decade.
The Indian channel NDTV is suing Nielsen in a U.S. court, seeking a minimum of $810 million for fraud and $580 million for negligence over claims the rating agency skewed its numbers to favor channels that bribed the company.
As the Times of India reports, NDTV alleges that a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar Media Research manipulated its ratings and colluded with certain channels to falsely boost their numbers. That included giving “plasma TVs to homes where their ‘people meter’ was installed” and leaking lists of metered homes to channels in exchange for bribes. (Normally, the identities of people selected as Nielson homes are kept strictly confidential.)
Sweep to NDTV sues Nielsen for fraud, negligence
Diana Jean Schemo
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