Money & Politics
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
The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday it had told a contractor to stop sending the agency information about political party affiliation in databases used to track down delinquent taxpayers.
While most people believe that Enron is an important political issue, the Democrats have not succeeded in turning this to their political advantage. The main fallout, as far as public opinion is concerned, is that a large majority favors, and very few people oppose, campaign finance reform; and a substantial plurality favors a new federal government agency to regulate accounting firms.
Italian oil giant Eni has a long history of cutting deals with anyone, and of accusations of corruption and bribery. Now that its future hangs on Russia and its notorious reputation in the energy market, has Eni finally met its match?
Thompson, Ashcroft and Norton are among a number of figures in the Bush administration who have been relatively helpful to the tobacco industry and who could take positions that would signal a marked change in the federal government's approach to cigarette makers.
Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.
When Chevron learned that "60 Minutes" was preparing a potentially damaging report about oil company contamination of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, it hired a former journalist to produce a mirror image of the report, from the corporation's point of view. An Ecuadorean judge is expected to rule soon on whether Chevron owes up to $27 billion in damages.
The U.S. Congress saw no progresses toward corporate accountability and reining in corporate influence over public institutions in 2013, according to the newly released Corporate Accountability Coalition (CAC) Congressional Report Card.
Corporations are the dominant force in modern life, surpassing even church and state. The largest are richer than entire nations, and courts have given these entities more rights than people. To many Americans, corporate power seems out of control. According to a Business Week/Harris poll released in September 2000, 82 percent of those surveyed agreed that ''business has too much power over too many aspects of our lives.'' And the recent revelations of corporate scandal and political influence have only added to such concerns.
The big oil and gas companies that spent nearly $2 million to help elect President Bush last year are pouring millions more into an advertising campaign this summer to help sell his energy policy in Congress.