Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. said Abramoff, who has been jail for two years now, is no longer relevant to the affairs of the CNMI.
“Jack Abramoff has had no contract or association with the CNMI government for more than six years now — perhaps for nearly a decade already,” he told Variety when asked to comment about the news of Abramoff’s sentencing.
After Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud charges in 2006, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial asked the federal judge assigned to the case for leniency and vouched for the disgraced lobbyist’s good natured character.
In the late 1990s, Abramoff, through then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, successfully blocked legislation that would have applied U.S. immigration and minimum wage to the islands — a measure that was backed by the Clinton administration and the U.S. Senate.
The bill was opposed by the Saipan garment industry. Fitial used to be an executive of the island’s largest garment manufacturer.
The CNMI government paid Abramoff’s lobby firms up to $11 million from 1995 to 2001
In 2006, the Fitial administration sought restitution from Abramoff’s former employers — Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and Greenberg Traurig — claiming the commonwealth government was also a “victim.”
Reyes said he would have to ask the Attorney General’s Office for an update regarding that issue.
“It is time for federal policy makers to consider the CNMI in the context of current facts and current economic considerations, objectively and impartially, with the best interests of our island residents in mind,” he said. “Jack Abramoff is no longer relevant to federal policy considerations in the CNMI.”
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle sentenced Abramoff to serve four years in jail, according to the Associated Press.
The AP said Abramoff has come to symbolize corruption and the secret deals cut between lobbyists and politicians in back rooms, on golf courses or private jets.
The Abramoff scandal shook Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Capitol Hill and contributed to the Republicans’ loss of Congress in 2006.
During the sentencing hearing, Abramoff appeared remorseful and described himself as a “broken man.”
“I’m not the same man who happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political and business corruption,” he said and added, “My name is the butt of a joke, the source of a laugh and the title of a scandal.”
Already two years into a prison term from a separate case in Florida, Abramoff, 49, will have spent about six years in prison by the time he is released, far longer than he and his attorneys expected for a man who became the key FBI witness in his own corruption case, the AP reported.
With Abramoff’s help, the Justice Department won corruption convictions against former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and several top Capitol Hill aides.
Former CNMI Labor Secretary Mark Zachares also pleaded guilty to accepting a $10,000 bribe from Abramoff.
