Property, Tourism & Transportation

Volkswagen's subsidiary in Brazil has been accused of providing material support for torture conducted by the military dictatorship during its 21 year reign from 1964 to 1985. Details of the role of the German car manufacturer emerged in the final report of a national Truth Commission issued last month. Read More

Thomson Safaris, a Massachusetts company that runs the luxury Enashiva tourist camp near the Serengeti wildlife park in Tanzania, has been sued over 10,000 acres of land that the company allegedly acquired illegally from Maasai tribes. Read More

Toyota is expected to announce a billion dollar settlement with the U.S. government for failing to disclose complaints by drivers that its cars were accelerating unintentionally. News of the negotiations were reported by the Wall Street Journal. Read More

Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm, has bought up 200,000 houses in cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown. They hope to profit by renting homes to poor people and securitizing the cash flow - the very plan that caused the crisis in the first place. Read More

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been accused of bribing doctors in China in order to boost sales. Chinese government officials say they have uncovered evidence of a bribery scheme involving 700 travel agencies who were used to funnel as much as three billion yuan ($480 million) in payments. Read More

Spain will inject emergency capital into the country's biggest ailing bank, Bankia, as it puts into place reforms to allow loss-making banks to receive eurozone bailout money. Read More

Serengeti national park is under threat from Ortello Business Corporation in a deal that could displace 48,000 indigenous Maasai and open it up for hunting of lions and leopards. An urgent action by Avaaz, an international campaigning group, has gathered close to a million signatures to protest the scheme. Read More

Two global institutions - the United Nations and the Olympic Games - face charges that they are using "unaccountable and out of control" private security contractors. One of the companies at the heart of both controversies is G4S, a private security company in the UK. Read More

Rio Tinto has been named as early front-runner for the Greenwash Gold award for the worst Olympic sponsor, with BP in second place and Dow Chemical third. The three corporations have paid millions to stick their names all over Olympic promotional material and activities. Read More

The United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil concluded this past weekend with no new government pledges. On the other hand, multinationals scored a public relations victory by claiming that they will implement $50 billion of sustainable changes to help save the environment. Read More