Money & Politics

The Supreme Court yesterday strictly limited the ability of investors who lost money through corporate fraud to sue other businesses that may have helped facilitate the crime, a decision that could doom stockholder efforts to recover billions of dollars lost in Enron and other high-profile cases. Read More

The law firm that helped win $7.2 billion in settlements for Enron investors is seeking nearly $700 million in legal fees for itself and other attorneys who handled the case, according to court documents. Read More

Victims of Colombia's civil conflict sued the banana importer Chiquita Brands International yesterday, accusing it of making payments to a paramilitary group responsible for thousands of killings. Read More

The European Union's secretive decision-making processes were condemned on Thursday in a legal judgment that should lead to more light being shed on how thousands of regulations affecting businesses are hatched. Read More

A former defense contractor was convicted by a San Diego court on Monday of bribing a jailed US lawmaker with 700,000 dollars in cash, gifts and prostitutes. Read More

The world of global accounting is girding up for a trans-Atlantic battle. Last month L'Oreal, Royal Dutch Shell, and Unilever, all gigantic companies, asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow them to choose which accounting standards they want to use. (The companies belong to the European Association of Listed Companies, who delivered the letter.) Read More

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. Read More

The Yadana natural gas pipeline runs through the heart of the debate on corporate responsibility as to how foreign businesses should operate in a country ruled by a military dictatorship accused of widespread human rights abuses and violent suppression of dissent within its borders. Read More

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency--much of it belonging to the Iraqi people--was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Read More

BAE Systems is facing a class-action lawsuit in the US related to alleged bribery, which could lift the lid on the inner workings of the defence company. Read More