Bribery, Fraud & Tax Evasion

Volkswagen, the German car maker, bowed to public pressure yesterday, saying it would abolish its controversial practice of paying salaries to employees who leave work for full-time politics. Read More

A Virginia judge has been asked to decided whether or not Custer Battles, an upstart security company assigned to guard Baghdad airport, had defrauded its customers by as much as $50 million. But company lawyers are arguing that the United States government did not control the Iraqi oil money, seized during the occupation, used to pay the company. Read More

As New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charges American International Group (AIG) executives with collusion in an insurance brokerage kickback scandal, a paper trail stretching back a decade reveals that AIG used offshore shell companies to skirt the law. Read More

Newly revealed documents, dating from December 2003 and the early months of 2004, allege that Halliburton staff in Kuwait asked for kickbacks from selected contractors while undermining others who were looking for work from the multi-billion dollar contracts that the company oversees for the military occupation force in Iraq. Read More

Companies working in support of U.S. troops in Iraq are hauling Houston-headquartered defense contractor, Halliburton, into U.S. federal court with claims that the company stiffed them for hundreds of millions of dollars after they provided essential services in the war effort. Read More

Former managers working for Custer Battles, a high-profile private security company in Iraq, are accusing the firm of using companies in the Cayman Islands and other "tax haven" countries to fraudulently overcharge on government contracts by tens of millions of dollars. Read More

Finance sector invests heavily in candidates When former Texas Senator Phil Gramm came out of the Tavern on the Green one recent August morning, his disposition turned edgy. Now a vice chairman of the Swiss financial corporation UBS, he had just left his colleagues at the Financial Services Roundtable breakfast. He wasn't keen on talking to waiting journalists, certainly not to the CorpWatch team. Read More

Electronic Voting Machines Add Uncertainty to Close Election Race Across the U.S., dozens of election commissions, county clerks and voting registrars are scrambling to maintain public confidence in an election system shaken by the Florida 2000 debacle and challenged by security flaws in hi-tech electronic solutions. In the swing states, where the presidential election is expected to be close, 14 of 20 states will be experimenting with untested technology. Read More

The extravagant spectacle is expected to dwarf the record $95 million spent by Democrats this year. In fact, the Republicans will spend more than the $130 million raised by Al Gore for his entire 2000 campaign. Read More

Media corporations give millions, receive billions. The cost for two weeks of ad-driven debate on Kerry's military record cost almost $1 million. Political advertising will bring over $1.5 billion to media corporations this election season. In turn they will invest millions in campaign contributions and lobbying. Meanwhile, substantive political coverage continues to decline. Read More