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Unemployed men with little or no experience are being lured by American firms to risk their lives in Iraq as private security contractors, according to a security consultant. People are being offered between $8,000 and $10,000 a month tax free to go out there. It's now got to the point where some firms are taking on inexperienced people instead of those they should be employing," he said. "They can get away with paying them less."
South Africa's forced removal of the Pomfret community is seen by observers as an attempt to break up the "ready-made" army of unemployed war vets who have been working in Iraq and elsewhere despite stringent mercenary prohibitions.
Ibrahim Jaafari, the prime-minister-to-be in Iraq, is unlikely to hand over the nation's valuable oil assets to foreign companies, but he won't be able to do much about the rest of the Iraqi economy, which was strangled by Coalition Provisional Authority chief L. Paul Bremer in rules and regulations benefiting Western business.
Congressman Henry Waxman wants information on pacts awarded to a defense contractor whose board of directors includes President Bush's uncle.
Environmentalists are claiming victory following General Motors Corp.'s decision to quit a lobbying group that has led the opposition to a 1997 global warming treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan.
Partnerships between multinational companies and tribal businesses, most of them Alaska Native corporations, have skyrocketed in recent years.
Documents unearthed as part of a whistleblower suit against private security company, Custer Battles, reveal the extent to which the defense contractor is accused of gouging the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq following the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003.
For several years, with very little media coverage, a body called the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has been holding hearings and issuing reports on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and China.
In an annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Halliburton stated that the the U.S. Justice Department is investigating former employees who may have engaged in bid-rigging as early as the mid-1980s.
The Justice Department is looking into whether former Halliburton Co. employees conspired with other companies to rig bids for large overseas construction projects, according to the company.
In the biggest foreign-bribery penalty under U.S. law, Titan Corp. pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle allegations that it covered up payments in six countries, including millions of dollars funneled to an associate of an African president to influence a national election.
A history of recent wars makes the region attractive to private companies recruiting for security forces, including El Salvador, the only Latin American country to maintain troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq. While the small nation has 338 soldiers on the ground, there are about twice as many Salvadorans working there for private contracting companies.
Titan Corp. has pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it bribed foreign officials for business favors and agreed to pay $28.5 million in both criminal and civil fines to the federal government to settle the charges.
Congress in July approved a Bush administration request for $25 billion extra in fiscal 2005 and is now weighing a request for $75 billion more. Of that $100 billion, $6 billion could go to Halliburton, the world's second-biggest oilfield services company, according to the Army charts.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and chairman of Senate Finance Committeem, sends Feb. 17 letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting update on Bush administration's position regarding legal status of the Coalition Provisional Authority and questions of contract fraud in Iraq.
The chairman of Occidental Petroleum is staging his own protest against the human rights groups who picket his home and office --he is suing them for harassment and wants a court to grant him damages.
At least 232 civilians working on U.S. military and reconstruction contracts have been killed there, many in violent but largely overlooked slayings, according to a report issued to Congress several weeks ago, but the death toll actually could be far higher.
The omnipresence of the giant defense contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, the shipments of concrete, the transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclavesÂcomplete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores are just the most obvious signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul.
The Defense Department is investigating a pool of former senior military and civilian Defense managers now working for government contractors for possible criminal violations of federal conflict-of-interest rules, according to law enforcement officials.
Although under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, Halliburton has been given bonuses for some of its work supporting the U.S. military in Kuwait and Afghanistan. The Army said KBR's performance has been rated as "excellent" to "very good" for more than a dozen "task orders" in Kuwait and Afghanistan supporting troops.