CorpWatch Exclusives
 | Wall Street Giants – JP Morgan and SAC – Hauled Up On Fraud Allegations by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog March 15th, 2013 JP Morgan - the Wall Street investment bank - and SAC - a major hedge fund - were hauled up Friday for alleged fraud. JP Morgan was questioned at a U.S. Senate hearing about hiding trading losses while SAC agreed to pay $614 million to settle insider trading charges. |
 | U.S. Prosecutors Build Case Against Steve Cohen, Hedge Fund Billionaire by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog February 24th, 2013 SAC Capital is one of the most profitable hedge funds in history with $15 billion in assets averaging 30 percent in annual profits for 20 years running. Today Wall Street is watching nervously as U.S. government lawyers work on a case against billionaire founder Steven Cohen for insider trading. |
 | Sweet Nothing: UK Food Giant Avoids Taxes on Zambia Sugar by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog February 15th, 2013 Associated British Foods (ABF), a UK company that makes Silver Spoon sugar, pays almost no taxes on its profitable Zambian sugar subsidiary, according to a new ActionAid report. The authors allege ABF has avoided estimated taxes of $27 million since 2007, enough to put 48,000 Zambian children in school. |
 | Medical Trial Data Activists Score Win Over Glaxo by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog February 7th, 2013 All data on completed medical experiments are to be made available to the general public by GlaxoSmithKline, the biggest UK pharmaceutical company. The announcement is a major win for the AllTrials campaign mounted by healthcare activists as well as researchers that has gathered widespread support. |
 | Smokeless Tobacco Lobbyists Set Off European Alarms by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog November 23rd, 2012 A clandestine lobbying effort at the European Union (EU) by Swedish Match company to get legislators to lift a ban on a special kind of smokeless tobacco has forced the resignation of a top European bureaucrat and prompted renewed calls to strengthen rules on undue business influence in Brussels. |
 | U.S. Sues Bank of America for $1 Billion in Bad Mortgages
by Puck Lo, CorpWatch Blog October 29th, 2012 Federal prosecutors are suing Bank of America for selling fraudulent loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored mortgage finance companies. The government alleged that the multinational sold over $1 billion in bad mortgages that led to numerous foreclosures. |
 | Seven Banks Under Investigation for Global Interest Rate Scandal by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog August 16th, 2012 Seven international banks have been served with subpoenas over the global interest setting scandal. Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS – have been asked to provide relevant “documents and communications” to the New York attorney-general. |
 | Private Hedge Fund "Alpha" Surveys Allow Wealthy Clients to Profit From "Insider" Views by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog July 17th, 2012 BlackRock and Two Sigma Investments – both major hedge funds - have been conducting regular private surveys of brokers for wealthy clients. The practice has raised red flags because of Morgan Stanley's role in the Facebook stock market flotation, as well as insider trading scandals at Goldman Sachs. |
 | Forgiving Siemens: Unraveling a Tangled Tale of German Corruption in Greece by Lena Mavraka and Vasilis Papatheodorou, Special to CorpWatch June 11th, 2012 To understand the pervasive corruption in Greek politics, it is necessary to examine the company that has probably paid the biggest bribes to both major parties: Siemens from Munich, Germany, a company with contracts in practically every ministry from culture to telecommunications. |
 | U.S. Congressional Wartime Commission Targets Armed Contractors by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch June 23rd, 2010 This week, almost a decade after the U.S. "War on Terror" began, the Commission on Wartime Contracting held two days of hearings into the role of private contractors in conducting and supporting war. The Congressional witness table included Aegis, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Curiously, Blackwater was not called; and the CEO of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions failed to appear. |
 | Afghanistan, Inc.: A CorpWatch Investigative Report (2006) by Fariba Nawa, Special to CorpWatch April 30th, 2010 The recent boom in humanitarian aid has an underbelly largely invisible to charity sector outsiders. “Easy money: the great aid scam," packs a biting critique (Linda Polman, The Sunday Times Online, April 25). In 2006, CorpWatch’s "Afghanistan, Inc.", cited by Polman, drilled down on reconstruction dollars, in what’s become known as “Afghaniscam.” We bring our report to you again. |
 | Afghanistan Spy Contract Goes Sour for Pentagon by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch March 16th, 2010 Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have hired a company called International Media Ventures to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a complaint filed by the CIA and revealed by the New York Times on March 15. |
 | Agility Attempts to Vault Fraud Charges by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch February 1st, 2010 Agility, a Kuwait-based multi-billion dollar logistics company spawned by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, is facing criminal charges for over-billing the U.S. taxpayer on more than $8.5 billion worth of food supply contracts in the Iraq war zone. If the lawsuit is successful, the company could owe the U.S. government as much as $1 billion. |
 | Is Halliburton Forgiven and Forgotten? Or How to Stay Out of Sight While Profiting From the War in Iraq by Pratap Chatterjee, TomDispatch.com June 3rd, 2009 At Halliburton's recent annual shareholders meeting in Houston, all was remarkably staid as the company celebrated its $4 billion in 2008 operating profits, a striking 22% return at a time when many companies are announcing record losses. Just three months ago, however, Halliburton didn't hesitate to pay $382 million in fines to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the settlement of a controversial KBR gas project in Nigeria in which the company admitted to paying a $180 million bribe to government officials. |
 | GEO Group, Inc.: Despite a Crashing Economy, Private Prison Firm Turns a Handsome Profit by Erin Rosa, Special to CorpWatch March 1st, 2009 While the nation’s economy flounders, business is booming for The GEO Group Inc., a private prison firm paid millions by the U.S. government. Behind the financial success and expansion of the for-profit security company, there are increasing charges of negligence, civil rights violations, abuse and even death. |
 | A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Michael Deibert, Special to CorpWatch June 26th, 2008 In the DRC, a nation rich in natural resources yet confounded by civil war and endemic poverty, artisanal mining communities are struggling for their livelihoods as foreign multinationals like AngloGold Ashanti rush to cash in. |
 | Ecuador's Yasuni Park: Oil Exploration or Nature Protection? by Agneta Enström, Special to CorpWatch March 20th, 2008 Permission for Petrobras of Brazil to drill for oil in Yasuni National Park, one of the most biologically diverse places in the world, has been suspended, but some damage has already been done by Swedish construction giant Skanska. Unless new money is found to protect the forest, exploration may resume. |
 | Burying Indonesia’s Millions: The Legacy of Suharto
by Andreas Harsono, Special to CorpWatch February 15th, 2008 Over the last 50 years, a network of cronies helped former Indonesian president Suharto build a business empire and amass a multi-billion dollar fortune. Today his successors face an uphill battle to recover the money even after his death. |
 | QinetiQ Goes Kinetic: Top Rumsfeld Aide Wins Contracts From Spy Office He Set Up by Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch January 15th, 2008 A Pentagon office that was reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists, has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to QinetiQ, a British company that employs Stephen Cambone. Cambone, a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld, helped create the very office that issued the contract. |
 | Sunshine Laws to Track European Lobbyists by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch October 11th, 2007 Some 15,000 lobbyists work in Brussels where they meet secretly with European Union officials to try and influence the rules that govern the 27 countries that together form the world’s most powerful economic bloc. New guidelines will attempt to make this lobbying more public and reveal conflicts of interest. |