Criminal Probe

Kidney dialysis provider DaVita Inc. said Chief Financial Officer Denise Fletcher resigned amid federal probes of the company's finances, patient services and acquisitions. Fletcher's resignation was effective Friday. DaVita said Executive Vice President Tom Kelly would take over temporarily. The Justice Department has demanded information on patient services and financial arrangements in connection with a civil and criminal probe.

The Justice Department has abruptly ended without taking action its nearly 2-year-old criminal investigation of allegations raised in a whistle-blower lawsuit of accounting irregularities at Coca-Cola Co., the world's biggest soft-drink maker said Monday. Separately, the Atlanta-based company said it had reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over its business practices in Japan.

Oregon's attorney general opened a criminal investigation Wednesday into allegations that Democratic voter registration forms were destroyed or discarded by a political consulting firm working for the Republican National Committee.

Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona's nonprofit charity has spent or pledged more than $5 million since its inception five years ago to help thousands of disadvantaged youths, buying bicycles and soccer balls, providing trips to summer camp, and helping pay for college. Carona said he hopes those good deeds will overshadow and outlive the negative publicity about his Mike Carona Foundation, which he says is off-base and undeserved.

Last spring, the outlook for Diebold Election Systems Inc. couldn't have been brighter. The Texas-based company was the nation's leading producer of touch-screen voting machines and appeared likely to tap billions of dollars in federal and state funding set aside to replace the nation's aging and disparaged punch-card voting systems.

The Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into allegations that Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee improperly accessed computerized memos by their Democratic counterparts between 2001 and 2003, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's top Democrat, said Monday. The department has assigned the investigation to David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, Leahy said.

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, whose administration has been under fire amid criminal probes into city contracting, announced the creation Thursday of a citizens commission to review contracting at the airport, harbor and Department of Water and Power. "I think we want to make sure the three proprietary departments have absolutely the best practices," Hahn said in an interview.

Federal prosecutors announced a criminal investigation into the crash of a Staten Island commuter ferry on Oct. 15 that killed 10 people and injured dozens of others. Roslynn Mauskopf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said her office would try to determine if there was criminal liability and, if so, hold those involved accountable. Michael Gansas, the captain of the ferry that crashed into a pier, has been ordered to appear before the federal court in Brooklyn on Nov. 5.

Federal prosecutors have informed four former executives of Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. that they are targets of a criminal probe of possible securities fraud, according to court documents. Prosecutors made the disclosure as part of a motion in federal court in Los Angeles to temporarily delay a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against former Chief Executive Henry Yuen and former Chief Financial Officer Elsie Leung. The filing this week by the U.S.