Late Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne lied to federal investigators about gift to UAW official
By
Marcus Day
17 August 2018
Former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne, who died on July 25 following complications during surgery to treat cancer, lied to federal investigators in 2016 about whether he had given a luxury Italian watch to United Auto Workers Vice President General Holiefield, according to a report Thursday morning in the Detroit News.
The report is the second this week in the ongoing UAW corruption scandal, which since last summer has revealed that money from the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center was funneled to union officials in return for pushing through pro-company contracts.
On Monday, attorneys for indicted former FCA executive Alphons Iacobelli filed a memorandum asserting that the conspiracy to bribe union officials “started long before” 2009, the year to which investigators have thus far nominally traced the scheme.
An autoworker with nearly six years at FCA’s Kokomo, Indiana, transmission plants—where workers recently voted nearly unanimously to authorize a strike over hundreds of health and safety violations—told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that the latest revelations should raise questions about the forced bankruptcy of the company in 2009. During that time, the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama, with the collaboration of the UAW, oversaw the bankruptcy of both Chrysler and GM and rammed through a brutal restructuring of the auto industry, shuttering numerous plants and slashing the pay of all newly hired autoworkers in half.
“With this newest information, maybe they should go back before the bankruptcy and find out why Chrysler was in the shape it was…