The Hajj — the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca — has become a source of corruption in Indonesia.

Every year the Southeast-Asian nation, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, sends the most pilgrims to Mecca of any country in the world. But according to New York Times story published Thursday, Indonesian government officials and politicians are misusing money deposited by some 1.2 million pilgrims on a government waiting list for the trip to the Saudi Arabian city.

According to government investigators and anti-corruption groups, Indonesian officials exploit the wide-ranging requirements of the state-run Hajj, dipping into the nearly $2.4 billion deposited by pilgrims on the waiting list for personal gain. In turn, this had contributed to food shortages and cramped accommodations for pilgrims.

Veteran bureaucrats and lawmakers have formed a “Hajj mafia,” using annual negotiations over the cost of the pilgrimage to extract bribes for themselves, the Times said. This year, Indonesia’s national Parliament and officials at the Ministry of Religious Affairs recently settled on the price of the Hajj, after officials agreed to share $2.8 million in bribes from the ministry.

According to the Times, ministry officials and lawmakers deny the accusations, defending themselves by citing the fact that the cost of the pilgrimage had been lowered by $80 to $3,342, compared with last year. Anti-corruption groups say that without graft and mismanagement the cost would be several hundred dollars lower.

In 2006, senior ministry officials were convicted for misusing Hajj funds and bribing state auditors to validate the ministry’s accounts. A recent report by the Corruption Eradication Commission, the government’s main anti-corruption agency, identified 48 practices in Hajj management that could lead to corruption. Despite these developments, advocates say the Hajj system remains corrupt.

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia has announced the creation of two leadership positions within his Alexandria, Va.,-based office, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported today.

Neil MacBride (DOJ)

U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride promoted Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lytle to be the office’s public integrity coordinator and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Connolly to be the deputy chief of the Alexandria division’s fraud unit.

Lytle prosecuted former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), who was convicted last year of taking bribes. MacBride said he created the public integrity coordinator position as part of an effort to better handle cases involving corruption by government officials, according to the newspaper. The number of corruption cases filed in the Eastern District of Virginia rose from  from 11 in 2005 to 21 in 2009, according to the Times-Dispatch.

“The Eastern District of Virginia must play an integral role in ensuring that those who hold public office live up to the public’s trust,” MacBride said in a statement to the newspaper.

Connolly, who has served as a federal prosecutor since 2002, was promoted to help expand the office’s efforts to prosecute economic crimes, according to The Associated Press. MacBride is also in the process of hiring three additional Assistant U.S. Attorneys to handle financial crimes including mortgage and securities fraud, the Times-Dispatch said.

Another development in the DOJ’s prosecution of individuals under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act took place Thursday, as two former managers of the oil, gas, and power contractor Willbros each were sentenced to slightly more than a year in prison for their roles in the company’s payment of more than $6 million in bribes to government officials from Nigeria.

Jason Edward Steph, 40, received 15 months in prison; Jim Bob Brown, 48, got 12 months and one day. Both had previously pleaded guilty to charges they helped coordinate bribes to Nigerian officials to help the Houston-based Willbros obtain, and retain, the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS) Project, valued at approximately $387 million. Additionally, Brown admitted to his role in another plot to bribe Nigerian revenue officials in exchange for reduced federal and state tax obligations.

Also, Brown admitted to making at least $300,000 in corrupt payments to Ecuadorian government officials affiliated with PetroEcuador and PetroCommercial,in order to obtain and retain business, including the Proyecto Santo Domingo project.

“I allowed myself to be influenced by the corrupt nature of the international business community. It’s no excuse,â€� Brown told U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III, as reported by The Houston Chronicle.

“I didn’t know how wrong it was, but I knew it was wrong,â€� added Steph.

Meanwhile, U.S. citizen Kenneth Tillery, the former president of Willbros International, remains a fugitive in Nigeria, and Nigeria remains a hotbed of corruption.

Attorney General Eric Holder gave a strong speech in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday condemning international corruption, calling it a “scourge on civil society.” Read his remarks here.

Speaking at the Sixth Global Forum on Combating Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity, Holder said corruption “strikes hardest at the poor and vulnerable, siphoning scarce resources away from those most in need.� He said the United States would continue to focus on asset recovery, helping countries repatriate stolen monies.

He also called for ratification of the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption, noting that “seven years after it opened for signature, several of the world’s largest economies – including several of our close partners in the G-20 – still have not ratified the Convention.�

Germany, India, Japan, and Saudi Arabia have signed but not ratified the convention, according to the United Nations. And G-20 member Russia – one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, according to Transparency International – hasn’t even signed.

For years, the United States stood virtually alone on the international stage against corruption. The U.S. enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977. But Europe didn’t start to get on board until a series of bribery scandals in the early 1990s kicked started the effort there.

Corruption “erodes trust in government and private institutions alike; it undermines confidence in the fairness of free and open markets; and it breeds contempt for the rule of law,� Holder said.

He added: “There is no gentle way to say it: When kleptocrats loot their nations’ treasuries, steal natural resources, and embezzle development aid, they condemn their nations’ children to starvation and disease.�

The Justice Department is no longer investigating former Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) over a 2003 golf trip to Scotland with convicted ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, The Hill reported Saturday.

Tom Feeney (Gov)

The ex-congressman’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, told The Hill that federal officials informed him that DOJ has dropped its probe. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment to Main Justice.

Feeney served in the House from 2003 until 2009. Feeney lost in November to Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.), who railed against the ex-congressman over his connections with Abramoff.

“Everybody that loves Tom is glad that it’s over with but still feel a lot of frustration that it dragged out as long as it did and cost him his seat in Congress,� former Feeney Chief of Staff Jason Roe told The Hill.

The former member of Congress agreed to pay $5,643 to the Treasury for his trip after he was scolded by the House ethics committee.

The DOJ investigation became public after the FBI asked several Florida newspapers for information about Feeney.

The Department of Justice has responded to an ethics group’s request for an investigation into whether Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) engaged in criminal violations of federal campaign finance law by suggesting that the group forward its complaint to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The ethics group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), sent a letter on July 9 to Attorney General Eric Holder and Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch urging an investigation into Ensign’s failure to report severance payments made to his former employee and mistress Cynthia Hampton when he fired her from his campaign and political action committees.

In his response, Welch told CREW’s Executive Director Melanie Sloan that she should provide any information she has to the FBI, which will decide whether a federal investigation is warranted. Sloan did as she was told, but threw in a not so subtle jab at Welch in her forwarded complaint to the FBI:

In a letter dated July 16, 2009, Mr. Welch advised me that the FBI, not the Public Integrity Section, will determine whether a federal investigation is warranted.  Mr. Welch’s deferral of jurisdiction is surprising, given that the Public Integrity Section’s own website indicates the section “monitors the investigation and prosecution of election and conflict of interest crimes.”  http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/pin.  Perhaps in the aftermath of the mishandling of the prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), the Public Integrity Section is not eager to investigate another sitting senator.

Ouch.

Sloan went so far as to tell TPMMuckraker that the Public Integrity Section “punted” on the complaint.

In week three of the reality show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!,” Patti Blagojevich continued using her appearance as an opportunity to present her defense.

Patti and Rod Blagojevich (Getty Images)

The wife of indicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) started off with the standard, “In politics you develop enemies, and they’re out to hurt you and hurt your reputation.”  Then she argued she can’t go to jail because she has kids. Then she said maybe U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald would be so aggravated by her appearance on the reality show that he’d try to pack her off to prision anyway.

Said Patti, according to the Chicago Sun Times:

“Are you aggravating the U.S. attorney, and then they indict me too? You know it’s coming in about a year… ‘We’re going to indict your wife unless you come plead guilty.’ It’s like, yeah, well go ahead and do it then. You gonna make our kids orphans?”

There is no justice, she said. “They squeeze people to say things that aren’t true. It’s a terrible thing. They get people that have done things wrong and they tell them, ‘Would you be comfortable saying this?’”

Well, you certainly don’t want to aggravate Patrick Fitzgerald.

The investigation of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) is now focusing on the defense contractor Mountaintop Technologies.  The company had been selected by Murtha in a series of earmarks to issue grants and monitor them.  Oftentimes, the company would give $10 million dollars in Justice Department grants to small police departments in southwestern Pennsylvania, just before fall elections.  The firm has received $36 million over the last eight years in military contracts and earmarks.  Mountaintop also hired a lobbying firm that, coincidentally, was the employer of Murtha’s brother.  You can read the detailed Washington Post story here.

Ex-U.S. District Judge U. W. Clemon urged Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegleman, The Associated Press reported this evening.

Clemon wrote in a letter to Holder that the case brought by Alabama U.S. Attorneys Leura Canary and Alice Martin was the “most unfounded criminal case” the former judge ever presided over, according to The AP. Siegelman was sentenced in June 2006 to seven years in federal prison on corruption charges, but is out on bond pending an appeal.

The ex-judge from Alabama said he did not have direct knowledge of the former governor’s conviction and prosecution in a corruption case, but has been critical of a failed effort to prosecute Siegelman for mail fraud, The AP said.

Martin told AP that Clemon’s letter was “inappropriate.”