Fiat Chrysler Automobiles on Monday rejected General Motors’ attempt to revive his organized crime trial, two days after the former FCA leader condemned in the United Auto Workers corruption scandal GM’s tactics to those of the dishonest anti-communist witch hunt of Senator Joe McCarthy.
The legal drama between the two automakers is now in its ninth month, even though U.S. District Court judge Paul Borman downplayed the case in July. Perhaps an instructive reorder on Borman’s Monday stating that he is not looking for any other GM reaction.
GM had stepped up the allegations last week, claiming to have uncovered new evidence of offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and other countries designed to fuel a bribery scheme aimed at harming GM and alleging that former GM board member Joe Ashton, who is awaiting condemnation in the federal investigation, is in fact a paid mole. GM’s original lawsuit, filed in November, claimed that the FCA had corrupted the negotiation process, costing GM billions of dollars, in an effort to damage GM and force a merger, which never took place, of the two companies. Alphons Iacobelli, the former hard-working negotiator who then went checkered for GM and compared to McCarthy, and other FCA officials involved in the corruption investigation are also indicted, but GM also referred to others, adding Ashton, who was vice president of UAW. president and two former UAW presidents.
FCA, not surprisingly, said essentially that GM should not get another bite at the apple. And in keeping with the intrigue offered in GM’s effort to have its case reinstated, FCA offered its own bit of color and said GM has simply gone too far.
“THE amended complaint proposed by GM reads as a script from a third-rate spy movie, complete with absurd allegations that the FCA paid not one, but two, ‘mole(s)’ to infiltrate GM’s and’ advance internal data to (FCA) “hidden money” in a “vast network” of “secret accounts”. Arrangement.. None of this is true. That GM has prolonged its attacks on FCA officials and workers through crazy allegations that oppose them without factual evidence is negligible,” the FCA said in its reaction on Monday.
The company followed up with a statement that “GM’s proposed amended complaint is the latest example of the lengths it is prepared to go to, attacking a competitor that is winning in the marketplace with yet more baseless accusations. As we have said from the date this lawsuit was filed, it is meritless and we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves.”
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FCA also highlighted what is at stake for any of the corporations at a time when the automotive industry is under great stress and FCA is making a merger that would make it a component of a larger entity than GM.
“GM’s attempts to tarnish FCA’s reputation and that of FCA executives and individual workers will not distract us from our project to provide our consumers with exceptional and exciting cars, vans and SUVs or to supplement our historic agreement with (PSA Group),” FCA said in a supply through the FCA spokesperson. Jeff Bennett.
GM said it kept its argument.
“The FCA’s corruption in the collective bargaining procedure remains undeniable: a federal investigation is underway and there have already been several grounds for blame. New facts discovered through GM research that the FCA is looking to discard, add offshore accounts in several countries, involve many other people and provoke GM The RICO case is even stronger. GM is trying to figure out in court the full extent of the damage caused to GM through the FCA’s bribery scheme. Nothing in the defendants’ responses contradicts the importance of these accusations and the damage caused by the corruption of the defendants to GM, and the court deserves to amend his previous sentence and repair our record,” according to a GM facilitated through spokesman David Caldwell.
The UAW, which is not a defendant, said he was unans aware of the offshore accounts, but also sent an angry letter from Ron Gettelfinger, a former union president, who said GM forced him to break his silence. Gettelfinger, who did not worry about irregularities as a component of the broad federal investigation, however, named once in GM’s recent presentation, as in “payments through those foreign accounts to Ron Gettelfinger”.
But Gettelfinger denied GM’s claims, calling them a “malicious and utterly baseless attack.”
“I have never had a monetary account in a foreign country, nor any member of my family circle. Besides, neither I nor any member of my family circle has earned a penny from a foreign account as GM claims,” Gettelfinger said. he told me.
In addition to Gettelfinger, former UAW President Dennis Williams, who became involved as an anonymous union official in uncovered court documents, quoted GM.
In addition to the struggle between automakers, the case was notable for the way Borman J. had tried. At one point, he ordered GM and FCA CEOs Mary Barra and Mike Manley, respectively, to meet, but that didn’t happen. Borman had indicated that the case would be a waste of resources if it continued, and the country, shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic and angered by systemic racism after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, needed to heal.
Follow Eric D. Lawrence on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.