War & Disaster Profiteering

After six years of battling, the plaintiffs must prove whether certain multinationals enabled the apartheid government to commit acts of gross human rights violations. Among the 21 defendants are oil, vehicle and financial companies which continue to operate in South Africa -- the likes of BP, Shell, Chevron Texaco, Barclays, Daimler Chrysler and Rio Tinto. They stand accused of supporting the former regime with arms and ammunition, financing, fuel, transportation and military technology. Read More

An Alabama company controlled by a billionaire Kuwaiti family is the biggest supplier of guns to Iraq. These weapons were paid for by the Pentagon which has lost track of them. A new Amnesty international report says that such unrestrained global arms trading schemes may have catastrophic human rights consequences. Read More

The U.S. government on Tuesday said it had approved up to $330 million in three separate arms deals for Israel, and sources tracking a much bigger deal for 25 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets said that agreement could be approved later this month. Read More

The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia's army assault in South Ossetia in August. Read More

An American financier is pitching a vast theme park in Baghdad, not out of kindness, but as he says, "for profit." Read More

Federal investigators on Monday raided the downtown offices of a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Read More

Qinetiq, once owned by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), said it would it pay $104.5m (£53m) in cash for the firm. Read More

England's House of Lords ruled that the Serious Fraud Office was lawful in its actions to halt investigations into allegations that BAE Systems ran a £60m "slush fund" and offered sweeteners to officials from Saudi Arabia in return for lucrative contracts. Read More

According to documents seen by the Financial Times, BAE Systems has been linked to Zimbabwean arms trader John Bredenkamp. BAE reportedly paid at least £20m to Bredenkamp via offshore entities in the British Virgin Islands between 2003 and 2005. The payments raise fresh questions about bribery in BAE's dealings. Read More

Auditors at a Pentagon oversight agency were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on major defense contractors to make them look more favorable instead of exposing wrongdoing and charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office. Read More