DETROIT _ General Motors has confirmed that Alphons Iacobelli, who faces criminal charges for allegedly diverting UAW-Fiat Chrysler training money for a personal spending spree, was fired this year.
GM hired Iacobelli after FCA fired him in 2015. When the charges were filed against him, GM suspended him in July. Iacobelli is charged with funneling at least $4.5 million meant for the UAW-FCA Training Center to himself, now-deceased UAW Vice President General Holiefield and Holiefield's wife, Monica Morgan. Morgan also is charged in the case.
Thursday, GM disclosed that Joe Ashton, a retired UAW vice president, was leaving its board of directors. Ashton took a seat on the GM board in August 2014 as a representative of the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which is GM's largest shareholder.
The FBI's investigation that led to the charges against Iacobelli, Morgan, retired UAW director Virdell King and former FCA financial analyst James Durden, now includes GM and Ford, which jointly operate similar training programs with the UAW.
Ashton is not accused of wrongdoing, but reports have said the investigation's scope may now encompass his time as head of the UAW's General Motors department, as well as that of his successor in the job, Cindy Estrada.
At the heart of the investigation is whether money meant to train autoworkers at all three companies was secretly funneled through charities to union officials and company executives who used them for personal gain.
Federal investigators are trying to determine whether management allowed the illegal diversion of funds to benefit the bottom line. They are also scrutinizing charities controlled by union officials that may have received money from the training centers _ a practice the UAW says it prohibited.
Iacobelli and Morgan are accused of siphoning millions of dollars from a UAW training center and spending it on themselves.
It is not clear that anything happened at the UAW training programs with GM and Ford on the scale of what the FBI says it found at FCA.
FCA executives and UAW officials ran a sophisticated money-laundering scheme, investigators say. The executives are accused of stealing money from the training center, and then funneling it to themselves through various organizations, including a children's charity called the Leave the Light On Foundation and the Hospice of Metropolitan Detroit.
Prosecutors alleged in court documents that the scam was part of a scheme to keep UAW officials "fat, dumb and happy."
Iacobelli is accused of steering $1.2 million in training funds to Morgan, Holiefield and others, $1 million for himself. Morgan's photo business allegedly received $70,000 from a charity that was supposed to help troubled children. The government claims the charity was a sham, set up by Holiefield and Iacobelli.
King is accused using credit cards that were issued through the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center.
Durden was a financial analyst at FCA who allegedly helped conceal the fraud. He pleaded guilty to his role and faces up to five years in prison.
