Ex-managers at plant may have fled, officials say
By TONY LEYS, tleys@dmreg.com
DesMoines Register
November 22, 2008
Federal agents bearing a fresh indictment arrested one Agriprocessors Inc. supervisor Friday, but officials said they suspect that two others have fled to Israel.
Former poultry-line managers Hosam Amara and Zeev Levi were named in the new indictment, but their whereabouts were unknown, officials said. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Cedar Rapids said investigators suspect both men are now in Israel.
Dean Beebe, 51, who was identified as the Postville meatpacking plant's operations manager, was arrested Friday at the plant, prosecutors said.
He faces 10 charges handed up by a grand jury in Cedar Rapids. Beebe was accused of harboring illegal immigrants and helping them gain false documents.
Amara, 44, and Levi, whose age was unavailable, each face four similar charges.
During a related court hearing Wednesday, prosecutor Peter Deegan told a judge that he strongly suspected Amara was in Israel. Deegan said Amara contacted associates in the United States as recently as this week.
Prosecution spokesman Robert Teig said Friday that his office would not discuss what the government is doing to find the two men.
Friday's charges were just the latest in a stream of terrible news for Agriprocessors, which is in bankruptcy and has suspended production.
The company used to be Postville's dominant employer and the nation's largest producer of kosher meat. But its slide began with a May immigration raid in which nearly 400 illegal immigrants were arrested. The raid was one of the largest single-site raids by U.S. officials.
The new indictment adds immigration-related felonies and a second bank-fraud charge to the previous counts filed against former company executive Sholom Rubashkin, 49. He now faces up to 107 years in prison if convicted on all the federal charges. Rubashkin has been in jail since his arrest last week.
The indictment also adds immigration-related counts to previous charges against former human-resources official Karina Pilar Freund. Freund, 29, remained free on bond Friday.
The indictment also names the Agriprocessors company, which could face millions of dollars in fines.
Besides the federal charges, the company also faces millions of dollars in proposed state fines related to allegations that it hired underage workers and made bogus deductions from workers' wages.
The underage-worker allegations also led the state to file thousands of misdemeanor charges in September against Rubashkin, Freund, two other human-resources employees and Aaron Rubashkin, who is Sholom Rubashkin's father and the company's owner.
Baruch Weiss, Sholom Rubashkin's lawyer, said Rubashkin would plead not guilty to the new charges, as he has to previous charges. Weiss said his client had not decided whether to appeal a federal judge's ruling Thursday that he should be denied release on bail. His trial is set for late January, but Weiss predicted it would be pushed back.
A spokesman for Agriprocessors did not respond on Friday to a request for comment.
A former human-resources employee and two former foremen have pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to testify in future trials.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081122/NEWS/811220344/-1/ENT05
