February 2009 archive

A former unit of US conglomerate Halliburton agreed to pay 579 million dollars in criminal and civil penalties to settle a long probe into bribery in Nigeria, US officials said Wednesday.

Authorities said the agreement represented the second largest fine ever in connection with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Kellogg Brown & Root LLC pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges related to “its participation in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials” to obtain contracts, the Justice Department said.

SOURCE: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/K…

What else is new? KBR is still getting huge contracts from the US military in Iraq, while soldiers are being electrocuted by defective KBR-installed wiring. This is a familiar pattern. Big corporations get away with massive corruption by fingering a scapegoat and paying fines, then the corruption starts all over again. The article about the Nigerian payoffs neglects to point out that Dirty Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton while this scheme was being hatched. In how many companies can millions of dollars in bribes be paid without the knowledge of the CEO?

It is time for America to apply its enthusiasm for capital punishment to corporations. Corporation charters can not only be granted by government; they can be revoked. Congress should immediately pass legislation mandating the de-chartering and dissolution of any corporation whose officers have repeatedly been convicted of corrupt practices. This would do much more to reform our corruption-riddled country than the ritual wrist-slaps our courts are currently administering in the name of “justice.”

Bankers Need Bribes To Work    

Obama’s Battle on Stimulus Shows Threats to His Agenda

NEWS ANALYSIS

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: February 11, 2009

WASHINGTON – It is a quick, sweet victory for the new president, and potentially a historic one. The question now is whether the $789 billion economic stimulus plan agreed to by Congressional leaders on Wednesday is the opening act for a more ambitious domestic agenda from President Obama or a harbinger of reduced expectations.

Both the substance of his first big legislative accomplishment and the way he achieved it underscored the scale of the challenges facing the nation and how different a political climate this is from the early stages of recent administrations.

While it hammered home the reality of bigger, more activist government, the economic package was not the culmination of a hard-fought ideological drive, like Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and Great Society programs, or Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, but rather a necessary and hastily patched-together response to an immediate and increasingly dire situation.

FBI expects number of major financial bailout fraud cases to rise

Investigations will focus on big-name companies and the cases are likely to be similar in scope and complexity to that of failed energy giant Enron, Deputy Director John Pistole tells a Senate panel.

By Josh Meyer

7:50 PM PST, February 11, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Despite an expected wave of fraud in the trillion-dollar bailout that aims to stop the ongoing financial meltdown, federal law enforcement officials told Congress on Wednesday that they have nowhere near the level of resources to combat it.

Top FBI and Justice Department officials said they believed mortgage fraud and other types of corporate criminal behavior has contributed to the economic tailspin. And they said they already have more than 2,300 open investigations into suspected illegal financial activity — including 38 probes specifically linked to the crisis.

Those investigations are already straining the resources of the FBI and the Justice Department, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole and Acting Assistant Atty. Gen. Rita Glavin said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But the problems will worsen exponentially as the economy plunges, and as the Obama administration and Congress spend more than $1 trillion in various bailout and stimulus packages in an effort to forestall foreclosures, corporate bankruptcies and a prolonged economic depression, they said.

USA

Out of Work and Challenged on Benefits, Too

In Record Numbers, Employers Move to Block Unemployment Payouts

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 12, 2009; Page A01

It’s hard enough to lose a job. But for a growing proportion of U.S. workers, the troubles really set in when they apply for unemployment benefits.

More than a quarter of people applying for such claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to former workers.

The proportion of claims disputed by former employers and state agencies has reached record levels in recent years, according to the Labor Department numbers tallied by the Urban Institute.

Nikai Thursday

I listened to the oral arguments of the Jeppesen civil lawsuit seeking damages from an aircraft company for its role in the rendition & torture of 5 suspected terrorists. It was shocking to hear that Obama wants to continue Bush’s policy to elevate state secrets from an evidentiary privilege to blanket immunity. Under this view, the subject matter of a lawsuit is grounds for dismissal even if the plaintiff does not need any classified evidence to prove its case. This is not the standard created by the US Supreme Court, the law governing criminal litigation or the proposed law for civil litigation. The judges also seemed surprised:  2 of the 3 judges asked the DOJ lawyer if he was “representing” the “thoroughly vetted” positions of the Obama administration.  Some Democrats reacted by introducing a bill today to require judges to determine “whether a blanket claim of secrecy by the government is necessary to protect national security.”  (h/t Meteor Blades)