It sounds like Maroun operates with impunity, and has disregard for all interest but his own. Nightmare backups, not complying with inspection procedures, bribing officials, allowing certain carriers of dangerous goods to get through disallowed at other ports ..... It's completely understandable why govt's on both sides are angry that he first scuttles a proposed workaround to the congestion and security worries, then reneges on his part of the proposed solution. Now he's in jail, where he should be, imo.
"Judge Prentis Edwards ordered Moroun, 84, to be held in the Wayne County jail, along with his right hand man, Dan Stamper, president of the Detroit International Bridge Co., until they comply with his order to finish building ramps that connect the bridge to nearby expressways. The bridge company agreed to the plan under a 2004 contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation to ease border crossings.
The state held up its end of the $230 million joint Gateway project by upgrading the I-75 and I-96 expressways. But instead of building the necessary access ramps, the bridge company built a roadway that directs traffic past its own lucrative duty-free store and fuel pumps, and onto local roads in southwest Detroit."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/01/12/billionaire-bridge-owners-greed-lands-him-in-jail/
This is from the earlier 2004 story:
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/01/17/why-one-rich-man-shouldnt-own-an-international-bridge/
Fed up with such obstinacy, some say Moroun should lose his monopoly. Six weeks after 9/11 a Canadian venture called the Detroit River Tunnel Partnership announced a plan to convert an existing 100-year-old train tunnel to truck use. Displaced trains could pass through a new tunnel that would be bored downriver. The group, a partnership of the Canadian Pacific Railway and a subsidiary of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund, hopes to fund the entire $600 million project with $170 million in government spending and $430 million in private financing.
The group is led in the U.S. by a well-liked Michigan pol, Margaret (Marge) Byington, who has lined up the support of more than a dozen leaders in business, trade and government–and a few old enemies of Moroun, such as Teamsters President James P. Hoffa. “We are facing a gridlock crisis at the world’s busiest border crossing,” Hoffa says. “We must increase capacity across the border.”
Tunnel proponents say Detroit could have a new crossing by 2009. Moroun’s guys counter that a new crossing isn’t needed so soon; U.S. Customs is to blame for the delays, and the Ambassador is at less than 60% of capacity, they argue.
So Matty’s men have mounted a counterassault. In November 2002 a bridge employee cofounded a well-financed antitunnel group. In April 2003 Moroun’s staff persuaded the head of a small nonprofit home builder in Detroit to come out against the tunnel proposal, in exchange for rights to two small properties near the bridge that the nonprofit wanted to redevelop.
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