Law & Regulation

Caterpillar - one of the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment - used a subsidiary in Switzerland to avoid paying $2.4 billion in taxes over a period of 13 years, according to a new U.S. Senate report titled 'Caterpillar's Offshore Tax Strategy.' Read More

A whistleblower who previously worked for Ernst & Young, the international auditing firm, has alleged that his bosses turned a blind eye to discoveries that Kaloti Jewellery International - one of the world's biggest gold companies - dealt in minerals from undocumented sources that may have included conflict zones. 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

Three top executives at Anglo Irish bank are on trial for a secret scheme to buy their own bank's shares that eventually triggered the 2008 collapse of the Irish economy. The bankers allegedly hatched the plan to cover up bets made by Sean Quinn, once Ireland's richest man. Read More

Bolivia has been ordered to pay $41 million to Rurelec, a UK energy company, in compensation for nationalizing the Guaracachi power plant in May 2010. The order represents a small profit for Rurelec which bought a 50.1 percent stake in 2006 but substantially less than what the company demanded. Read More

Several major banks - notably Citibank, Deutsche Bank and HSBC - have suspended over a dozen global foreign exchange traders in a growing scandal over manipulation in the $5.3 trillion-a-day market. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered and UBS are also being investigated. Read More

Families of 12 Nepali workers killed in Iraq in August 2004 have been denied permission by a federal judge to sue KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton of Houston, in an abrupt reversal of a previous court decision. Read More

The U.S. Congress had a miserable record on resisting corporate influence in 2012, according to a new report card released today. The 2012 Corporate Accountability Coalition Report Card tracks Congressional action related to corporate accountability, transparency, and responsible business during the second year of the 112th Congress. Read More

A lawsuit against Victor Dahdaleh, a Canadian-British billionaire, for allegedly paying £39 million ($65 million) in bribes to win supply contracts worth £2 billion ($3.2 billion) from Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) has collapsed. Read More

AquaBounty, a U.S. biotechnology company based in Maryland, has secured approval from the Canadian government to export 100,000 AquAdvantage salmon eggs from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada to Chiriquí province in western Panama. Read More