Archive for the 'Crime & Corruption' Category
Corruption: Another Lead in Siemens Bribery Probe?
Inter Press Service (IPS), Aug 30, 2007
U.S. officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation met with Munich prosecutors this week regarding the 1.3-billion-dollar bribe fund run by Siemens, the German multinational technology company.
After talking to the Germans about tracking the financial flows of the largest illicit slush-fund ever discovered, the U.S. investigators would do well to visit Luxembourg on Germany’s western border.
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.
Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI
Inter Press Service (IPS), April 4, 2007
Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush’s statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist — it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father.
Offshore Scorecard: US Safra Bank moves Brazilian politician’s kickbacks to Jersey account
March 11, 2007
A few days ago, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced the indictment of Paulo Maluf, the former governor and mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and four co-conspirators, for stealing more than $11.6 million from a Brazilian public works project. 
The money moved through the Safra Bank in New York. It was only part of the $130 million that Maluf passed through Safra in 18 months alone.
The case offers another example of how the offshore banking system, controlled by the global banks, helps the world’s crooks.
Exclusive: Sealed evidence in the IDT Haiti bribery case is revealed
March 8, 2007
Until now, IDT, the giant U.S. telecom accused of bribing former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide 
to get a lucrative phone contract, has managed to keep details of the case under wraps. That is because IDT lawyers succeeded in getting the U.S. District Court Judge, Mark Falk, to gag whistleblower D. Michael Jewett and seal his testimony.
But somehow, three weeks ago — unaccountably in the face of Jewett’s lawyer’s unsuccessful attempts to unblock the court record — the statements of Jewett and of the top IDT officials were posted on Pacer, the US government court website.
What interesting reading those documents make, especially Jewett’s detailed account of what may happen in a major corporation when a lone employee stands up against corruption.
France & UK Ignore Corporate Bribery: One Hand Launders the Other
Inter Press Service (IPS), Dec 29, 2006
Investigators find evidence that Siemens (German electronics & engineering firm), Total (French oil company), and BAE (British arms conglomerate) paid multi-millions of dollars in bribes through bank accounts in Switzerland and other offshore centers.
France and the UK argue “national security” to block inquiries. Concern is more likely the “security” of top officials who got kickbacks.
Spain’s discovery that funding for Basque terrorist group ETA goes through tax havens is dramatic proof that “national security” lies not in protecting but in dismantling the global offshore secrecy network.
Poisoned Russian linked to investigation of possible bribes by ex-Yukos official
Dec 27, 2006
Who might have killed former Russian spy Litvinenko? Julia Svetlichnaya, a Russian living in London, told the press there that she had met Litvinenko and learned that he was collecting information about mega-rich Russian entrepreneurs to use for blackmail.
It has not been reported before that Litvinenko’s collaborator, Yevgeny Limarev, had visited Elena Collongues-Popova (shown here), a Russian woman in Paris, to seek information connecting ex-Yukos official Alexei Golubovich to bribery of the former president of Lithuania. And Svetlichnaya hasn’t told the press that she worked for the very same Golubovich.
US/Haiti: Govt Corruption Suit Stalls for Lack of Funds
Inter Press Service (IPS), Oct 26, 2006
The U.S. Justice Department is withholding agreement to share assets seized from Haitian drug traffickers to finance a lawsuit by the Haitian government charging former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with taking bribes.
The suit is based on allegations by a former executive of the telecom company IDT that before Aristide left the country in 2004, he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from IDT, which is connected to prominent U.S. Republicans.
Justice Dept. Criminal Division chief wrote “lawyer’s letter” clearing GOP ex-congressman’s firm
Sept 18, 2006
Is Top Justice Official Protecting a Former Client Accused of Bribery?
The Justice Department’s Criminal Division, headed by a Bush political appointee who gave legal advice to a company accused of bribing Haiti’s former president, is blocking an agreement to share seized Haitian drug money that would help Haiti pursue the bribery case in US courts. The accused company is run by a former Republican congressman.
The Criminal Division chief, Alice Fisher, formerly a registered lobbyist for HCA, the healthcare company founded by the father of Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
Haiti Telecom Kickbacks Tarnish Aristide
CorpWatch, Dec 29, 2005
Two U.S. lawsuits charge that former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his associates accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from politically connected U.S. telecom companies.
Lawsuits filed this Fall challenge the former priest’s image of political purity and raise claims that both he and U.S. corporate executives scammed illegal profits off the hemisphere’s poorest population.
In one suit, a fired executive charged his former employer, the U.S. telecom IDT (Newark, NJ), with corruption, defamation, and intimidation under the New Jersey anti-racketeering law. In the second, the government of Haiti contends that IDT, Fusion (New York, NY) and several other North American telecoms violated the federal RICO anti-racketeering statute. Both suits allege that Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, and his associates, took kickbacks.
Follow Aristide’s Money Offshore: How Haiti was looted with the help of tax haven shell companies & secret bank accounts and U.S. citizens & corporations
Haiti Democracy Project, Nov 10, 2005
Add former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the long list of corrupt and repressive officials who have used Western banks and companies and offshore tax havens to plunder their countries and launder the stolen money.
Aristide and his associates looted government coffers, wrote checks to front companies for nonexistent purchases, padded invoices to get kickbacks from vendors, secretly owned companies that cheated Haiti of taxes, and laundered the money they stole through shell companies and secret bank accounts set up in the United States and the offshore tax havens of Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands.
Nearly $20 million has been documented as stolen between 2001, when Aristide took office as president for the second time, and 2004, when he fled or was forced out of the country according to varying accounts.
U.S. Investigators Missed Russian Mob in N.Y. Bank Scandal
Pacific News Service, Aug 6, 2002
An aggressive European investigation of international crime has revealed alleged Russian mafia leaders operating in the United States. The U.S. Justice Department dropped the ball three years ago during the Bank of New York scandal, which now threatens to explode.
NEW YORK–Nearly three years ago, the Justice Department called the Bank of New York (BoNY) money-laundering scandal “just” a Russian tax-evasion scheme. Now, European investigations show that BoNY was a channel for organized crime. And according to a document obtained by Pacific News Service, some of the alleged Russian mafia leaders have operated freely in the United States.
Mobster on Thin Ice
Featurewell.com, Aug 6, 2002
For Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, 53, called Taivanchik (the Taiwanese) because of his Asian features, the plot to get an Olympic gold medal for Russia’s top figure-skaters was small-time.
The Russian mafia don who was arrested July 31 for fixing skating contests at the Salt Lake City summer Olympics reminds one of Al Capone, who was put away for tax evasion, because the government couldn’t get enough evidence against him for murder, extortion and criminal racketeering.
OECD commits to curb bribery among public officials
Earth Times News Service, May 14, 2001
PARIS — OECD Secretary General Donald Johnston says he is pleased about the OECD commitment to try to stop companies from its own member states from bribing public officials in other countries. But, he added, that effort needs to be extended to cover bribery of corporate officials as well.
The Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions entered into force in February 1999. It commits 34 signatory countries, including all the world’s biggest economies, to adopt common rules to punish companies and individuals who engage in bribery.
BCCI and the Bushes
Lucy Komisar writes about the criminal offshore bank BCCI and the way it connected the Bushes, the Saudis, Saddam and Osama bin Laden 
in her chapter, “BCCI’s Double Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad,” in ”A Game As Old As Empire.”
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