Privatization & Procurement

Many of the military generals who directed the war in Afghanistan over the last two decades have taken up lucrative jobs as members of the boards of directors of major military contractors that take in billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon every year. Read More

In mid-December 2020, Romana Knezevic, a nurse at the AK St. Georg hospital in Hamburg, Germany, gave an interview to Hamburg Journal on NDR television, over working conditions at the hospital. “The patients sometimes lie in their protective pants for hours,” she said. “Patients die alone in their rooms.” Her remarks sparked a massive scandal as well as a movement. Read More

An inspection of Chilton Meadows, a care home for elderly people with dementia in Stowmarket, Suffolk, in March 2021, found a number of residents with "distressed behaviours" including one using a walking frame the wrong way round. The home also had radiator pipes carrying scalding hot water with no protective covering to protect residents who might have fallen on them. Read More

Oracle, one of the world’s largest software companies, has been marketing surveillance technology to Chinese police forces, according to a series of reports by the Intercept. In doing so, Oracle is joined by a number of other major U.S. companies like Intel, Hewlett Packard, Seagate Technology and Western Digital. Read More

The Cotacachi indigenous community is suing ENAMI EP, Ecuador’s national mining company, and Cornerstone Capital Resources, of Ottawa, Canada, over Río Magdalena, a proposed copper-gold mining project in Los Cedros Protected Forest in the Llurimagua area of Ecuador. Read More

Three major global consulting firms - Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey Consultants & PricewaterhouseCoopers - have been implicated in helping Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the former president of Angola, become a billionaire allegedly by plundering state coffers. Read More

The city of Denver, Colorado, recently voted 8-4 not to renew $10.6 million in contracts with CoreCivic and Geo Group, the two largest prison contractors in the U.S. The vote was a response to local concerns over human rights abuse at for-profit prisons and undocumented migrant detention centers. Read More

A Brazilian judge has ordered Vale to compensate families of some 300 people killed at the company’s Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine when a dam built to hold waste collapsed on January 25, 2019, near the town of Brumadinho in the state of Minas Gerais. Read More

CoreCivic, one of the largest U.S. private prison companies, has shelved a proposal to build a detention facility for undocumented migrants in Indiana after a series of community protests. The company is hoping for a $100 million contract from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Chicago office. Read More

Nine recommendations for action by President Obama to reverse his deadly legacy of drone warfare, surveillance and entrapment, including revealing flawed government contracts with companies like AT&T & Yahoo. Read More