HuffPo | Charles Koch, the billionaire chairman and CEO of Koch Industries and leading conservative mega-donor, has set his sights on a new goal: reforming America's criminal justice system.
In an interview with The Wichita Eagle
published Saturday, Koch said his own experiences in courts --
including the time a federal grand jury indicted Koch Industries on 97 counts of environmental crimes
in 2000 -- prompted him to study the justice system at both the state
and federal level. In that particular case, centered on a Koch Petroleum
Group refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, prosecutors eventually dropped
all but one of the charges after the corporation agreed to pay a settlement.
According
to Koch's chief counsel Mark Holden, the case made the billionaire
industrialist wonder "how the little guy who doesn't have Koch’s
resources deals with prosecutions like that," the Eagle reports.
Koch and his brother David have gained notoriety as the bankrollers
of Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group that backs
candidates who favor slashing taxes and shrinking government. But the
brothers have also quietly backed criminal justice reform for years, and sponsored a forum on the issue earlier this year. Charles Koch said he plans to ramp up his reform efforts in 2015.
"Over
the next year, we are going to be pushing the issues key to this, which
need a lot of work in this country," Koch told the Eagle. "And that
would be freedom of speech, cronyism and how that relates to
opportunities for the disadvantaged."
