Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Tonight a story of big money and bribery we first saw in the New York Times. Sounds like
something of the movies, but today the man at the center of an alleged tomato bribery
was arraigned in federal court, here's ABC's Lisa Stark.
A salesmen walks into a corporate conference room, at the table a buyer.
The salesman drops a one hundred dollar bill on the floor. 'It this yours?' he says.
If the buyer nods he knows he'*** pay-dirt.
He was a sensually bragging about how he could kind of
hook recipients and reel them in. At the center of the scandal SK Foods
in California,
which turned vast quantities of tomatoes into paste selling it as an ingredient in major
food makers.
Prosecutors say over a decade company owner Scottsdale York, working with the middle man
who stuffed cash into envelopes
and wrote checks labeled art payment,
bribe purchasing managers
at some of America's biggest food companies,
including Kraft, Frito-Lay,
Safeway, B and G Foods,
bribed them into buying as case tomato products
one buyer made more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bribes.
What is unusual in this case
is the scope and duration of the conduct and the high levels they went to
within SK Foods. To make matters worse, the tomato paste that SK Foods
were pushing was sometimes moldy and out of date it should normally never have
been sold. Food makers say they unknowly turn the bad tomato paste into
sauces, ketchup, salas, soups,
sold acrossed the country
and nobody caught on
and luckily nobody got sick.
SK foods certainly demonstrates that
the culture of corruption is unfortunately alive and well in the food industry industry.
Scott's lawyer says he's innocent,
but authorities say this man who made millions
was planning to flee the country when they closed in.
Lisa Stark ABC news
Washington