Banking, Finance & Services
Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, 24 million people jobless or underemployed. Yet claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed.
A whistleblower who previously worked for Ernst & Young, the international auditing firm, has alleged that his bosses turned a blind eye to discoveries that Kaloti Jewellery International - one of the world's biggest gold companies - dealt in minerals from undocumented sources that may have included conflict zones.
A lawyer for Jeffrey K. Skilling, a former Enron chief executive, tried Wednesday to portray the head of the company's broadband unit as an out-of-touch manager who was criticized for his free-spending ways and did not even know how many employees were working under him.
An independent ombudsman has confirmed that World Bank officials should have raised serious questions before the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - the private sector arm of the World Bank - approved a $30 million loan to Corporación Dinant in Honduras in 2009 for palm oil plantation projects.
The CEOs of three-quarters of the world's 100 largest companies have just completed an uncomfortable weekend at the tiny Swiss ski resort of Davos, while their companies' share prices nosedived on global stock markets, amid concern that the U.S. economy is staggering towards recession.
Without enough money from their insurers to rebuild, homeowners are left with two choices: Give up and leave, or else rebuild by hand, using their savings to pay for labor and materials.
Conclusion to a new CorpWatch report that shines a light on the role of six major banks in Greece, Ireland and Spain in the EuroZone crisis that left borrowing countries deep in debt.
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.
Four big scandals have come to light in as many months at big blue chip companies - Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler, Infineon and Commerzbank. In each case, allegations of bribe taking, money-laundering and related crimes have led to the resignation of senior executives.
The medieval alchemists claimed they could turn ordinary metals into gold. Analysts at Standard & Poors (S&P), Wall Street's top ratings agency, claimed that bad loans to poor people were wildly profitably. A U.S. government investigation alleges that S&P financial analysts are no different from the hucksters of yore.