Bribery, Fraud & Tax Evasion

One rich bank (JP Morgan) lost money to a rich hedge fund (Saba). Surely that is a zero sum game: They swap mansions and yachts, their partners swap diamonds and butlers, and it makes no difference to the rest of us. Or are they robbing us? Read More

Protests at the 2012 annual general meetings of companies may rank as the most diverse, widespread and sizeable in history. They have been bolstered not just by Occupy activists outside but also by institutional investors inside who have started a "shareholder spring" against excessive CEO pay. Read More

Eduardo Castro-Wright, the former CEO of Walmart Stores USA, has been accused of orchestrating a $24 million bribery scheme to expand the company's presence in Mexico between 2002 and 2005. The alleged scheme involved a series of payoffs to Mexican city governments, according to an investigation by the New York Times Read More

Goldman Sachs will pay out $22 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges of insider trading. Company researchers were accused of holding weekly "huddles" with investment bankers and traders to provide them with stock tips for preferred clients. Read More

Ian Hannam, a senior JP Morgan banker and ex-soldier, who helped finance a number of flamboyant and controversial mineral extraction projects from India to Tanzania over the last couple of decade, has resigned, after being fined $720,000 for insider trading by the UK Financial Services Authority. Read More

AT&T, the U.S. telecommunications giant, allegedly profited from Nigerian nationals, who claimed to be deaf, to help them order goods from U.S. stores with stolen credit cards. The U.S. government alleges that the company then passed the charges on to the taxpayer. Read More

Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs employee in London, has quit the company with a fiercely critical op-ed in the New York Times in which he accuses the Wall Street investment bank of losing its moral compass. Read More

During the final, desperate days before it entered bankruptcy proceedings, MF Global executives took money from segregated customer accounts - money that belonged not to MF Global but to the farmers and commodities traders that were its clients - and used it to prop up its rapidly collapsing business. Nor was this petty cash: of the $6.9 billion in customer assets that MF Global held, a stunning $1.6 billion is missing. There is virtually no chance that the full amount will ever be recovered. Read More

Mahmoud Karzai, brother to the Afghan president and Abdul Hasin Fahim, brother to the vice-president, are the real symbols of corruption in Afghanistan. Kabul Bank has helped finance their shady deals and contracts with the U.S. military Read More

The FBI has just released an ad featuring the fictional character Gordon Gekko from the "Wall Street" films to target insider trading. Increasingly, however, it seems that Scotland Yard needs a similar campaign for the City of London, which has become the center for the mantra "Greed is Good." Read More