Alphons Iacobelli: The bad penny that keeps turning up

Nobody likes it when a former colleague joins a rival. And nobody will know what the late Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne thought when his longtime labor chief, Alphons Iacobelli, landed at General Motors in January 2016.

Today, Iacobelli, 60, is inmate No. 55817-039 in a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va., serving a five-and-a-half-year term for his role in the FCA-UAW corruption scandal. His sentence is scheduled to be complete Sept. 8, 2023.

Iacobelli was in charge of bribing top UAW officials and keeping them "fat, dumb and happy," according to federal prosecutors in the yearslong investigation into union corruption. He also kept plenty of the graft for himself, buying a $350,000 Ferrari and siphoning another $1 million in union workers' training funds to pay off his personal credit card debts.

GM's massive lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler this past week suggests more could be heard directly or indirectly from Iacobelli if the case gets any legs during litigation.

Iacobelli was GM's executive director for labor relations for more than a year and a half, according to his LinkedIn page. He was dismissed after he was charged for crimes committed when he was Fiat Chrysler's vice president of employee relations. He knew exactly what transpired there; he played key roles in all of FCA's dealings with the UAW.

So GM executives had several months when they could have gotten a full download. Did he say anything to anyone at GM? What do they know? Did any of that knowledge go into the lawsuit against FCA?

Iacobelli, through his attorney, declined to comment or answer questions about the GM suit against FCA and former employees, including Iacobelli himself.

Reading into the details of the bombshell lawsuit, GM's lawyers did their homework. And it's a good bet they used information from their former employee, Iacobelli. The lawsuit names Iacobelli 66 times in 95 pages. Curiously, when describing Iacobelli's role at FCA, GM's lawyers neglected to mention that he worked for GM after his criminal activity took place.

Apparently, GM's position is that his time at the company has nothing to do with his role in the scheme at FCA or his current residence in West Virginia. A GM spokesman declined to comment.

Previous government indictments seem to dance around Marchionne's involvement in the bribery scandal that Iacobelli helped orchestrate. But the GM suit paints him as the central figure.

His motive, according to GM, was to bribe the UAW into making sweetheart deals with FCA to pressure GM into merging with FCA. Industry consolidation was Marchionne's overriding mission during his later years, and he had repeatedly failed in his pursuit of a merger with GM.

The GM lawsuit contains details about Marchionne's mission that few others would ever share, or want to share.

The suit — citing evidence obtained through "information and belief" — goes into great detail about FCA's advantages over GM that were purchased from UAW executives during Iacobelli's tenure.

For example, the lawsuit cites secret deals related to lower-paid tier-two and temporary workers. The UAW allowed FCA to use more of these workers than GM. The UAW also looked the other way on potentially expensive worker grievances at FCA because of these secret deals.

The union and the company further had a secret "side letter" in 2014 allowing FCA to get more favorable prescription drug prices. Such a deal would have saved GM $20 million a year, the suit said, again citing "information and belief."

A good source for such "information and belief" could be the person who negotiated the deal.

FCA Chairman John Elkann and his lawyers can call this lawsuit nonsense and might even have the guts to file some kind of counterclaim. They might convince a judge to toss the whole thing out.

But they better be careful.

This litigation might take on the look of a football game where one team plays against another team whose coach has a copy of their playbook. GM could have all the evidence it needs to make FCA — and their suitors at PSA Group — very uncomfortable.

After all, someone with the ethics of Al Iacobelli could tell GM an awful lot over several months. As the old saying goes, he's the bad penny that keeps turning up.