Money & Politics

This week, a Moscow court will issue a verdict in the tax fraud trial of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky. While some critics argue that the charges are politically motivated, others question his innocence in the eyes of the West. Read More

Rioting and threats of work stoppages at critical transportation hubs needed to rebuild the war-torn Iraq have erupted in recent months following payment disputes between contractors originally hired by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi officials skeptical of the billings and the CPA's handiwork. Read More

From research patents to high-stakes partnerships, Jennifer Washburn spent years researching the links between industry and the American University. In this exclusive interview with CorpWatch's Jennifer Borden, Washburn talks about what she found, why it matters and what you can do about it. Read More

Public relations giant Omnicom has received almost a quarter of a billion dollars in contracts from the federal government for public relations work. At least one has been labeled "covert propaganda," another involved paying off a journalist and opinion-maker. Read More

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

Military contractors like Boeing, Halliburton and Lockheed, have become increasingly embedded with the Pentagon bureaucrats who give them lucrative work as the jailing of Darleen Druyun, a former U.S. Air Force weapons buyer, demonstrates. 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

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

A once secret Halliburton oil contract raked in billions long after the Army said the work would be competitively bid. As of September 2004 Halliburton billed over $2.5 billion. A Bechtel whistleblower calls the bidding process to break up the work, "a sham." Read More