http://thekomisarscoop.com Reports & Analysis by Investigative Journalist Lucy Komisar Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:39:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/10/former-u-s-attorney-chris-christie-gop-candidate-for-nj-governor-gets-from-idt-nj-telcom-investigated-by-justice-dept-for-bribing-haitian-officials/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/10/former-u-s-attorney-chris-christie-gop-candidate-for-nj-governor-gets-from-idt-nj-telcom-investigated-by-justice-dept-for-bribing-haitian-officials/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:22:17 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=2039 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/10/former-u-s-attorney-chris-christie-gop-candidate-for-nj-governor-gets-from-idt-nj-telcom-investigated-by-justice-dept-for-bribing-haitian-officials/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/the-real-aig-scandal-how-the-game-is-rigged-at-wall-streets-casino/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/the-real-aig-scandal-how-the-game-is-rigged-at-wall-streets-casino/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:36:24 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/26/the-real-aig-scandal-how-the-game-is-rigged-at-wall-streets-casino/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/the-real-aig-scandal-how-the-game-is-rigged-at-wall-streets-casino/feed/ 5 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/cafeteria-kickbacks/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/cafeteria-kickbacks/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:57:56 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/03/cafeteria-kickbacks/ How food-service providers like Sodexo bilk millions from taxpayers and customers In These Times, March 2009 - The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute provided generous support for this article. At the end of the 2006 school year, children’s nutrition advocate Dorothy Brayley had a disturbing conversation with a local dairy representative. He had come to her office to discuss participation in the summer trade show of food providers she runs as director of Kids First Rhode Island. At the time, the state’s schools were buying 100,000 containers of milk each week. The salesman for Garelick Farms, New England’s largest dairy, told Brayley that Sodexo—a food and facility management corporation that managed most of the state’s school lunch programs—was paying Garelick more than competitors in order to get a bigger rebate. That’s just a taste of the hundreds of millions of dollars of “rebates”—or kickbacks from suppliers—that Sodexo, a $20 billion-a-year global leader in the food and facility management industry, has taken while operating cafeterias and other facilities for schools, hospitals, universities, government agencies, the military and private companies across the country, according to evidence provided by whistleblowers and internal company documents.]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/03/cafeteria-kickbacks/feed/ 3 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/02/exclusive-how-one-funds-profits-ended-up-in-the-caymans/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/02/exclusive-how-one-funds-profits-ended-up-in-the-caymans/#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:59:42 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/02/05/exclusive-how-one-funds-profits-ended-up-in-the-caymans/ Why would a New York investment fund manager run operations through an office in the Caymans? "This type of structure is for optimising taxes," explained Max Obrist, a Cayman Islands official of the global Julius Baer Group (Zurich). He told IPS that "generating" the income where a company was actually based, "you would pay much more taxes". Obrist was describing a company shifting claimed earnings to tax havens to evade home taxes. He allegedly helped Julius Baer Investment Management (JBIM) New York do just that. ]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/02/exclusive-how-one-funds-profits-ended-up-in-the-caymans/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/01/swiss-bank%e2%80%99s-crafty-strategy-shows-how-difficult-it-is-to-clamp-down-on-tax-havens/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/01/swiss-bank%e2%80%99s-crafty-strategy-shows-how-difficult-it-is-to-clamp-down-on-tax-havens/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:20:02 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/01/05/swiss-bank%e2%80%99s-crafty-strategy-shows-how-difficult-it-is-to-clamp-down-on-tax-havens/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2009/01/swiss-bank%e2%80%99s-crafty-strategy-shows-how-difficult-it-is-to-clamp-down-on-tax-havens/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2008/09/palins-campaign-operations-chief-was-vp-of-idt-telecom-investigated-for-bribery/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2008/09/palins-campaign-operations-chief-was-vp-of-idt-telecom-investigated-for-bribery/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:38:30 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/?p=1639 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2008/09/palins-campaign-operations-chief-was-vp-of-idt-telecom-investigated-for-bribery/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/12/investigators-of-subprime-crisis-should-look-offshore/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/12/investigators-of-subprime-crisis-should-look-offshore/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:31:33 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/12/01/investigators-of-subprime-crisis-should-look-offshore/ offshore conduit whose soured investments triggered a government-led rescue." The offshore operation was set up to invest in subprime mortgages. Pam Martens in Counterpunch points out that, "Citigroup, is discovered to have stashed away over $80 billion of Byzantine securities off its balance sheet in secretive Cayman Islands vehicles with an impenetrable curtain around them." Among those securities count subprimes. Citigroup has $55 billion of subprime exposure and in November said it would write down up to $11 billion in subprime losses. Goldman Sachs said that won't be all, that the bank may have to write off $15 billion. ]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/12/investigators-of-subprime-crisis-should-look-offshore/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/corruption-another-lead-in-siemens-bribery-probe/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/corruption-another-lead-in-siemens-bribery-probe/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:53:21 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/30/corruption-another-lead-in-siemens-bribery-probe/ There they could seek information from Clearstream, the international financial clearing house, that might tell them how Siemens moved so much money and where it went. That is because Siemens has the unusual status of being one of only four non-financial companies among 2,500 Clearstream members. It gained membership on the insistence of a former CEO who was fired after a scandal. ]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/corruption-another-lead-in-siemens-bribery-probe/feed/ 1 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/siemens-has-a-13-billion-bribe-fund-did-it-move-payoffs-through-clearstream/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/siemens-has-a-13-billion-bribe-fund-did-it-move-payoffs-through-clearstream/#comments Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:42:35 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/15/siemens-has-a-13-billion-bribe-fund-did-it-move-payoffs-through-clearstream/ It moved money through a network of front companies, mostly in offshore Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates. Siemens is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as by public prosecutors in Germany and Italy. How did Siemens officials move so much money about? Investigators ought to take a look at Siemens’ transactions through Clearstream, the international financial clearing house in Luxembourg, whose clients do not undergo the same due diligence scrutiny that regular banks apply. Siemens is one of only four non-financial companies (out of 2500) with Clearstream accounts. Here -- published for the first time -- are listings of Siemens' Clearstream accounts for 1995, 2000 and 2001. ]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/siemens-has-a-13-billion-bribe-fund-did-it-move-payoffs-through-clearstream/feed/ 0 http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/tax-dodging-helps-murdoch-buy-the-journal/ http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/tax-dodging-helps-murdoch-buy-the-journal/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:57:48 +0000 Lucy Komisar http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/01/431/ The Economist, in 1999, investigated Murdoch's corporate tax affairs and discovered that a collection of 800 offshore companies help him cut corporate taxes to 6%!]]> http://thekomisarscoop.com/2007/08/tax-dodging-helps-murdoch-buy-the-journal/feed/ 1