An aide of former Tinian Mayor Herman Manglona has been charged at the federal court for allegedly trying to influence and intimidate a grand juror into voting against the indictment of the former municipal chief who is facing corruption charges.<\/p>\n
Charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office was James King Manglona, also known as Jose Hofschneider.<\/p>\n
According to FBI investigation, Hofschneider approached the grand juror last Aug. 25 and offered to “reward” her if she would vote “no” to the indictment of Manglona, who is now a senator representing Tinian.<\/p>\n
The case against Hofschneider is connected to that of businessman Tito Sablan, who pled guilty last week to charges of bribery.<\/p>\n
Sablan admitted to bribing Manglona on several occasions in 1996 to win favors from the Tinian Mayor’s Office, particularly the award of contracts for municipal projects.<\/p>\n
Sablan, according to court documents, paid a total of $14,500 between January and December 1996.<\/p>\n
The US Attorney’s Office charged that Sablan was awarded contracts for federally funded projects.<\/p>\n
The CNMI, according to court documents, received an excess of $10,000 in federal funds during the period covered.<\/p>\n
Sablan, who is facing a maximum of 10 years of imprisonment, is scheduled for sentencing on Nov. 30.<\/p>\n
According to FBI investigation, Hofschneider offered to pay the grand juror for the information she would give him about what transpired at the grand jury proceedings.<\/p>\n
The grand juror, whose name was not identified in the court document, told investigators she was “afraid” of Hofschneider “because of his association” with Manglona.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider was charged based on his taped conversation with the juror, which was translated from Chamorro to English by a US Marshall agent. (MCM)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An aide of former Tinian Mayor Herman Manglona has been charged at the federal court for allegedly trying to influence and intimidate a grand juror into voting against the indictment of the former municipal chief who is facing corruption charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}