US ‘freezer cash’ lawmaker jailed

A former US congressman famously caught with $90,000 (£54,000) in cash in his freezer, has been sentenced to 13 years for bribery and money laundering.

William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who served for nearly 20 years, was convicted in August of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.The 62-year-old was also found guilty of trying to get millions more for brokering business deals in Africa.Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence him to at least 27 years.

Jefferson’s defence lawyers had argued that he was acting as a private business consultant in making the deals, and sought a sentence of less than 10 years.The veteran politician had been under investigation since the spring of 2005.In August that year, FBI agents found the money in his freezer, wrapped in foil and hidden in boxes of pie crust.Jefferson was voted Louisiana’s first African-American congressman in 1991.He was re-elected in 2006 even after news of the bribery scandal broke, but narrowly lost his re-election bid in 2008 to a Republican rival. -BBC