Richter Indicted In Adm Scandal

Reinhard Richter, the former head of Mexican operations at Archer Daniels Midland Co., has been indicted for allegedly conspiring to swindle the company out of $171,000.

Richter was a colleague of Mark Whitacre, the former ADM executive whose secret tapes mired the company in a price-fixing scandal.

The federal indictment, unsealed last week and announced by the Justice Department on Wednesday, is the latest development in Whitacre’s fall from FBI informant to criminal defendant.

Whitacre’s secret tapes of his fellow ADM executives helped persuade the Decatur, Ill.-based company to plead guilty to price fixing last October and pay a record $100 million fine.

But in a public falling-out with their former star witness, prosecutors first indicted Whitacre for price fixing, then charged him with stealing more than $9 million from ADM and trying to hide the money in foreign accounts.

The eight-count indictment accuses Richter of conspiring to defraud ADM and evade income taxes in a bogus invoicing scheme.

Richter, a German national now believed to be living in Mexico, was Whitacre’s subordinate in ADM’s BioProducts division.

He later became head of ADM’s Mexican operations.