Former attorney general Eric Holder stated on behalf of Uber that fingerprint checks are an unfair way to screen job candidates and potentially discriminatory. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

TRANSPORTATION

Holder helps Uber in opposing legislation

Former U.S. attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. has written to lawmakers on behalf of Uber to argue against the use of fingerprint-based background checks as they mull how to regulate ride-hailing service drivers.

A letter from Holder making the case that fingerprint checks are an unfair way to screen job candidates and potentially discriminatory was sent last week to lawmakers in New Jersey and Chicago.

Holder’s firm advises the company on safety matters, and Uber asked him to write the letter, company spokesman Craig Ewer said. Uber and rival Lyft, both based in San Francisco, pulled out of Austin last month after voters decided against overturning city requirements requiring the checks.

New Jersey lawmakers are debating two different bills to regulate the industry. A state Assembly measure includes the fingerprint rule, while a state Senate version would not require it.

Chicago’s proposal would require ride-sharing drivers to get a chauffeur’s license and undergo a criminal background check and fingerprinting.

Holder wrote that because of deficiencies in the FBI’s database, fingerprint checks can prevent people from getting jobs even if they were never convicted of crimes. He said requiring fingerprint checks can discriminate against minorities.

— Associated Press

FEDERAL COURTs

N.Y. union chief faces fraud charges

The head of the nation’s largest municipal jail guard union was paid tens of thousands of dollars in cash, in exchange for steering $20 million in union money to a hedge fund, according to a criminal complaint.

Norman Seabrook, president of the 9,000-member New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, and Murray Huberfeld, the hedge fund’s founder, were arrested by FBI agents on conspiracy and fraud charges Wednesday.

Seabrook “made decisions about how to invest the nest egg for thousands of hardworking civil servants based not on what was good for them but on what was good for Norman Seabrook,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

The complaint says a scheme by Huberfeld to hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to Seabrook in exchange for the investments in his fund, Platinum Partners, was facilitated by someone not identified who has pleaded guilty.

The court papers do not name the cooperator. But two people with direct knowledge of the case identified him as Jona Rechnitz, a businessman who has contributed to Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaigns, was friendly with top police officials and has been captured on FBI wiretaps in a related gifts-for-favors probe.

Seabrook ultimately was paid $60,000 by Rechnitz, the complaint says.

The complaint says the middleman stashed the cash in an $820 bag bought at “one of Seabrook’s favorite stores, Salvatore Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue,” before handing it to the union boss at a meeting in New York in December 2014.

— Associated Press

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