Tag Archives: bargain
Osaka Govt’s Bottom Line Gets Boost – From Undies
Items confiscated from delinquent taxpayers – from brand-name lingerie to a model locomotive – are turning into a gold mine for cash-strapped local governments, who are auctioning them on the Internet.
In fiscal 2007, final auction prices for such items totalled nearly 4.68 billion yen (S$60 million), according to Yahoo Japan, which runs a special auction site for seized items and other government assets, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
That tidy sum is 100 times more than what similar auctions fetched in fiscal year 2004, when Yahoo Japan started the service.
Make Punishment Fit The Crime
What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library?
There was a rare answer here on Friday: Require him to give $250,000 to a foundation that helps the families of injured Chicago police officers.
Joseph Pannell, 58, who admits that he shot a police officer here in 1969, will serve just 30 days in jail and two years’ probation as part of a plea bargain that legal experts called extremely unusual.