War & Disaster Profiteering

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been more acceptance that providing nonmilitary money to foreign countries is an essential part of fighting terrorism. Read More

The Philippines said the ban on the deployment of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) to Iraq remains in effect as it reminded foreign companies against allowing OFWs from sneaking in the war-torn country due to its dangerous peace and order situation. Read More

Government officials on Sunday urged about 6,000 Filipino workers to immediately leave Iraq after a foiled kidnapping injured two Filipinos, stressing that the situation there remains very dangerous for foreign workers. Read More

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo ordered an investigation into an American firm for the illegal deployment in Iraq of five overseas Filipino workers who were almost kidnapped by armed men there Saturday. Read More

Two Filipino workers were wounded in Iraq when armed insurgents fired on the mini bus in which they were traveling between Baghdad center and the city's airport, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Read More

Private contractors in Iraq say pay can top $100,000 for a year's work. But plenty of danger is often part of the bargain. Frank Atkins, who returned home in October, said danger was part of his job as a police adviser. Sometimes, the former Marine enjoyed the thrill of fighting off insurgent attacks alongside U.S. military personnel on his convoys. Read More

With more hired guns in Iraq than in any other U.S. conflict since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, armed contractors admit their role is cloudy and controversial. They're driven by money and a lust for life on the edge, but also by a self-styled altruism. They do shoot to kill, but they aren't legally considered combatants. Read More

On March 7, 2004, the Zimbabwe police detained a chartered plane and arrested 70 of the passengers. Most of those detained said they had been hired by a security consultancy company to guard a diamond mine in Congo. A few days later, the government of Equatorial Guinea announced that its police had arrested 20 people who were the vanguard for the force that was arrested in Harare. According to the announcement, the two groups were connected and had planned to topple the regime of President Teodoro Obiang. Read More

The president and his aides do not believe that Severo Moto, the opposition leader, was behind the coup plot. They think he was a pawn in the hands of forces and interests stronger than him - probably businessmen and perhaps Western governments. One of the names mentioned in this connection is that of the British-Lebanese financier and oil broker Eli Calil. Read More

In a city that has been rocked by the Enron collapse and subsequent prosecutions, the indictment of Houston oil executive David Chalmers Jr. and a Houston-based Bulgarian oil trader serves notice that the probe of irregularities in the U.N.-supervised oil-for-food program will likely ensnare more energy industry figures before it is finished. Read More