Last Refuge of a Scoundrel?

[vladimir]

No, not patriotism; the Maldives! Here's an excerpt from an entertaining article on corrupt politicians in the NY Times:

Then there was David Friedland, a state senator from New Jersey, who disappeared after staging a fatal scuba diving accident in 1985 as he was awaiting sentencing for fraud. In 1988, he was caught on the Maldives, a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, where he had built a successful chain of dive shops, and served about nine years of a 15-year sentence.

“He was really too successful,” said one federal investigator. “If he had elected to become low profile, he might still be at large.”

I guess integrity is not one of the prerequisites for success in the dive industry there.

(Or in politics here.)

 

[widget]

I wonder what the chain of shops was called, I dived in the Maldives often in the 80's and 90's but I cant remember a "chain" of shops, most were really small independants. Unless he was involved with the big hotel groups and had a "shop" so to speak in each hotel.?

Would be very interesting to know.