Former government officials during the Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo administrations
may be held liable for graft as they allegedly gave undue advantage to contractors involved in the P111-billion President's
bridge program. Senator Sergio Osmeña III, chairman of the Blue Ribbon committee, on Tuesday said the secretaries of the agencies
involved in the bridge-building program failed to exercise due diligence in implementing the project...
The bridge program under the Arroyo administration consisted of 14 contracts many
of which, according to Senator Panfilo Lacson, led to nowhere or could not be used by the public. Osmeña alleged that this
happened because the agencies involved in the project did not do their job of checking and verifying the bridge projects.
He said this is because then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo allegedly manipulated the program...
Osmeña earlier said Mrs. Arroyo was guilty of'serial plunder'for
overpricing the billion-peso bridge program.
When the Nobel Prize committee announces this year's
winners of science's highest accolade, one category they'll omit will be research fraud. But were there a prize for scientific
malfeasance, the top contender would doubtlessly be Japanese anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii, formerly of Toho University
in Tokyo.
"Perhaps thegreatest academic fraudster of the last
10 years," in the words of theChronicle of Higher Education(subscription required for this article), Fujii reportedly authored (if that's the word) 193
journal articles, 172 of which investigators have declared fraudulent. This astounding figure makes him the record holder
for most retractions, and "nearly
doubles that of the current unofficial retraction record holder, Joachim Boldt," according toRetraction Watch.
In the course of 23 years of extraordinary achievement in the realm of fraud,
Fujii faked not only whole studies but even his affiliations with hospitals. He also used the names, and sometimes the forged
signatures, of other researchers as co-authors on phony articles."His work was almost a complete fiction, but he kept saying that it stood up because it
had been accepted by so many journals," theChroniclequotes Koji Sumikawa, president of Japan's Society of Anesthesiologists, as saying. Sumikawa led the investigation into Fujii's oeuvreand found that of 212papers by Fujii, 3 were found to be solid and 172 to
be fraudulent. Evidence was inconclusive for the remaining 37.
How did an oil-rich
region in western Kazakhstan end up with a $100-million hole in its budget? According to investigators from Astana, this giant hole in public funds in Atyrau Region was
caused by massive fraud perpetrated by a man who was a member of Kazakhstan’s national parliament and who just happened
to be the brother of the regional governor, acting in cahoots with corrupt officials and construction firm bosses...On October 1charges were broughtagainst
Amanzhan Ryskali, brother of recently fired regional governor Bergey Ryskaliyev, on one count of fraud, but police are investigating
a total of13 corruption casesinvolving
theft to the tune of 16 billion tenge (a little over $100 million).
Indonesia’s official anti-corruption agency, the Corruption
Eradication Commission (KPK), is walking on thin ice after taking on a top police officer, one of its biggest cases to date. Inspector
General Djoko Susilo has been accused of taking massive kickbacks in the procurement of driving simulators when he headed
the National Police Traffic Corps division in 2010. After defying two summonses, he showed up at the commission’s headquarters on Friday. But he is clearly
not taking the corruption accusation lying down, and appears to enjoy the full backing of the police force.
Created in 2004, the KPK has had remarkable success leading the
campaign to clean up the country of big-time corruption, sending dozens of powerful politicians and businessmen to jail. In
its work, it has collaborated with the National Police as well as the Attorney General’s Office and relies on detectives
seconded by these two institutions. But when the KPK tackles corruption in the police force, it inevitably upsets that relationship...
The police are leading a KPK-bashing campaign and have found enthusiasts
amongst the powerful institutions that have felt the wrath of the anti-graft campaign, such as the House of Representatives,
the major political parties, and even the office of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Insisting that they conduct their
own investigation against Djoko Susilo, the police are doing all they can to frustrate the KPK’s work.
Nobel prize-winning rights advocate Leymah Gbowee has quit her post in Liberian President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government, criticizing her fellow laureate for corruption and nepotism...Omecee Johnson said that Gbowee resigned over concerns Johnson-Sirleaf had failed to root
out corruption and nepotism in her government, but he declined to elaborate...
Global Witness said in September that Liberia's forestry department had
given out a quarter of the nation's land to logging firms over the past two years in a flurry of shady deals.
Last
year, the People's Bank of China mistakenly released a report on its website which was then quickly taken down. The report
said that between 16,000 and 18,000 government officials and employees of state-owned enterprises had smuggled more than $120bn
(£75bn) overseas between the mid-1990s and 2008. That works out to more than $6m per official. Earlier this year, Premier
Wen Jiabao warned that corruption was the greatest threat to the rule of the Communist Party.
The Philippines lost $2.46 billion through misuse of state funds and assets
during the latter years of graft-tainted ex-president Gloria Arroyo’s rule, government auditors said...The Commission
on Audit highlighted anomalies that mostly occurred in the 2007-2009 period in its investigation of more than 61,000 government
agencies last year. “Most audit findings categorically indicate pecuniary loss on the part of the government, as a result
of violations of law, rules and regulations,” said the report no on the COA website.
More than 4,000
cases of unauthorized expenses, unaccounted for cash advances, uncollected duties, fictitious claims, missing assets, or abandoned
projects, cost the government P101.82 billion ($2.46 billion), it said. The total is equivalent to 5.6 percent of the country’s
budget this year.
Police arrested former Philippine President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo on Thursday and temporarily detained her in a hospital on corruption charges, in her third indictment and
second detention since stepping down two years ago. The Philippine anti-graft court ordered her arrest for allegedly misusing
$8.8 million in state lottery funds during her last years in office...The formerpresident was detained for about eight months in the same hospital
in a separate case involving alleged election rigging before she posted bail
in July. She has also posted bail in another case related to a botched overpriced deal with a Chinese telecommunications company.
The stories abound: from the corrupt
official in Fujian who, in 2002, held the first (and only) annualcompetition to judge which of his 22 mistresseswas
most pleasing, to Liu Zhijun, the former railway minister deposed in 2011 for allegedlyembezzling the equivalent of millionsof
dollars -- andmaintaining a relatively modest 18 mistresses. The association is so strong, in fact, that it’s
all but taken for granted in China that when an official falls due to his -- and it’s almost always a he -- misdeeds
and miscalculations, the mistresses will be uncovered next.
And so, whenBo Xilai, the now deposed former Chongqing party secretary once
widely expected to ascend to China’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee, and his wife were first connected to corruption
andmurderthis
spring, rumors of mistresses accompanied the allegations. Of these rumors,the most spectacular involved Zhang Ziyi, the popular Chinese actress best known in the West
for her starring role in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”
Signaling
the start a long-awaited overhaul at Gazprom, President Vladimir Putin called for corruption to be
eliminated at the state-controlled gas giant and said its business model should be improved. Gazprom has been criticized
for years by minority investors who believe their lucrative shares could provide even bigger dividends through the elimination
of inefficiencies and corruption at the company... "We hear claims more and more frequently about how
the company's business is developing and how there's corruption there. There probably is," Putin said.
A new report shows that some 2,400 millionaires received unemployment insurance
benefits during the economic downturn, a number that has caught the attention of politicians who funded extensions
of benefits for up to 99 weeks as the economy crumbled. In 2009, 2,362 millionaires received unemployment benefits,
down from 2,840 the year prior, according to a study from the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan arm ofU.S. Congressthat
provides policy and legal analysis. Of the 2,362 more than 1,000 receiving unemployment benefits had a household adjusted
gross income of $1.5 million in 2009.
Vienna prosecutors brought their first
charges against former top managers at Telekom Austria as part of multiple corruption probes that have damaged the company's
image and may have cost it 20 million euros ($26 million). The prosecutor's office said it had charged three former Telekom
Austria managers, one other ex-employee and a banker with price manipulation in relation to a share price surge in 2004 that
triggered a payout of 9 million euros for managers...Prosecutors areinvestigating suspected
corruption at Telekom Austria by a total of about 40 individuals.
The
companies listed are known to be the subject of an ongoing and unresolved FCPA-related investigation.The names are current through September 30, 2012.
Most of the entries are based on disclosures in
SEC filings or news reports or both.That
means non-issuers (non-public companies) and issuers that have a pending investigation but haven't disclosed it, may not appear.
A former fugitive suspected of running a $100 million
cross-country scam collecting donations for Navy veterans has been identified as a Harvard-trained attorney wanted on unrelated
fraud charges since 1987, authorities said.
In a new study, published inthe Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two scientists and a medical communications consultant
analyzed 2,047 retracted papers in the biomedical and life sciences. They found that fraud or suspected fraud was the reason
for three-quarters of the retractions for which they could determine the cause. “We found that the problem was a lot worse than we thought,”
A
former Credit Suisse executive facing extradition to the U.S. on fraud charges for his handling of mortgage-based securities
during the financial crisis was freed on bail after an appearance Thursday before a British court. U.S. federal prosecutors have alleged that Kareem Serageldin conspired with
two of his employees to hide the deteriorating condition of the U.S. housing market in 2007 in order to keep the value of
bonds based on subprime mortgages artificially high, thereby fattening their bonuses. He was slated to receive more than $7 million in compensation in 2007 before
the company learned about the alleged fraud and withheld $5.2 million of his pay. The fraud, which prosecutors described earlier
this year as "a tale of greed run amok," was blamed for a portion of the $2.65 billion write-down Credit Suisse announced
in March 2008.
Three former Nortel Networks
Corp executives defrauded investors and the broader public by manipulating the fallen telecom-equipment giant’s books
to post a surprise profit a decade ago, Crown prosecutors told a Toronto courtroom. “It’s a fraud on the public, that’s the essence of the case against the accused,”
Crown lawyer Robert Hubbard said during closing arguments, calling the use of accounting reserves in late 2002 and early 2003
to lift quarterly earnings “improper manipulation.” The better-than-expected financial performance of Nortel,
once the largest maker of phone and Internet systems in North America, sent the company’s battered stock price soaring
once more while triggering tens of millions of dollars in bonus cash and stock options for top executives...
Mr. Dunn and the others
used accounting reserves built up on Nortel’s balance sheet to make it appear it had hit earnings targets that had little
or nothing to do with the operating performance of the company, which was still reeling from the dot-com bust at the time.
Nortel’s apparent recovery was not from
“improved revenue and cost-cutting, but the release of more and more accruals” into earnings, the Crown said in
its closing. The three men kept critical information from external auditors at Deloitte & Touche...
He told investigators that he was hoping to save the
Church by exposing “evil and corruption” within it.
Instead
of trying high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church for financial and moral corruption, a Vatican court has put the Pope’s
former butler on trial for disclosing information on corruption. Pope
Benedict XVI's former butler Paolo Gabriele went on trial on Saturday in the Vatican for exposing financial and moral corruption
within top brass of the Vatican...Many of the letters and other confidential documents that
he allegedly took from the pontiff's desk were published in a book by an Italian journalist in May, which prove that the highest
levels of Vatican officialsare deeply involved
in financial corruption and infighting over the power.
The Securities and Exchange Commission
today charged Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its former investment bankers with “pay-to-play” violations
involving undisclosed campaign contributions to then-Massachusetts state treasurer Timothy P. Cahill while he was a candidate
for governor.
Pay-to-play schemes involve campaign
contributions or other payments made in an attempt to influence the awarding of lucrative public contracts for securities
underwriting business. This marks the first SEC enforcement action for pay-to-play violations involving “in-kind”
non-cash contributions to a political campaign.
Among other charges, Bo was accused of abusing his office, accepting bribes
(directly as well as through family members), failing as a supervisor, promoting the wrong people and breaking an assortment
of party rules...The accusations of bribery and corruption, for
example, are allegations that could be similarly leveled at most top leaders and their families. By using it, party officials
could appear to be more concerned about a full takedown of Bo than about potential blowback. The unusually heavy anti-corruption language sprinkled throughout the official
announcement on Bo also suggests that officials are aware of swelling discontent with the government, and may be gearing up
to tackle corruption as an main issue in the upcoming party congress.
FCPA prosecutors have focused on Mexico operations. In the last ten years, they have
prosecuted ten companies for bribery in Mexico (and other countries). Some of the significant individual prosecutions
have focused on bribery in Mexico, including the Lindsey case which was reversed for prosecutorial misconduct...
Corruption in Mexico exists in many areas of the government. Local police and government
officials, as well as managers and executives at state-owned enterprises, all have a reputation for corrupt practices. When
it comes to business activities and regulation, Mexico’s public hospitals, health and food safety inspectors have been
identified in enforcement actions. In recent enforcement actions, Mexican officials in the customs, veterinary, public hospitals,
and zoning areas have been identified as demanding and receiving bribes.
Basic public services are typically coupled with demands for payments. Local police often
block roads and require payments for transport vehicles to pass through the blockade. Beyond the local level, corruption permeates
other sectors of the economy, including customs regulation, motor vehicle and transportation, and basic business licenses
and permits...
Companies with operations in Mexico have to make sure that compliance controls are in place
and robust. Due diligence reviews of third party agents is critical to any company operating in Mexico.
The bill was passed after a widely publicized scandal involving
the General Services Administration’s lavish overspending on travel and conferences. Over the years, the Government
Accountability Office and Inspectors General have identified many examples of fraudulent or illegal use of government charge
cards, Lieberman pointed out. The GAO has documented fraudulent, questionable and overly expensive purchases made by federal
workers with government purchase and travel cards, including kitchen appliances, jewelry, gambling, cruises, and even the
tab at gentlemen’s clubs and legalized brothels.
“Even at the General Services Administration, which administers
the charge card program for the entire federal government, a high-ranking employee was able to rack up tens of thousands of
dollars in personal expenditures on a government charge card,” Lieberman said in a statement. "This legislation would
impose stricter controls on charge cards to help reduce waste, fraud and abuse. It’s a common-sense way to keep the
government accountable for taxpayer dollars."
The bill would require agencies to ensure that purchase and travel
cards are used only for approved spending and to take action to prevent misuse of the cards.
A
National Anti-Corruption Commission...would replace the current Public Function Secretary, and have exclusive jurisdiction
in corruption cases involving federal officials. It would also have broad powers to investigate allegations like those leveled
against Wal-Mart (or Walmex) earlier this year.
Running scientific experiments is, frankly, a pain...Sure, it's
incredibly satisfying when days or weeks of hard work produce a clean-looking result that's easy to interpret. But often as
not, experiments simply fail for no obvious reason. Even when they work, the results often leave you scratching your head,
wondering "what in the world is that supposed to tell me?"
The simplest solution to these problems is obvious: don't do experiments.
(Also, don't go out into the field to collect data, which adds the hazards of injury, sunburn, and exotic disease to the mix.)
Unfortunately, data has somehow managed to become the foundation of modern science—so you're going to need to get some
from somewhere if you want a career. A few brave souls have figured out a way to liberate data from the tyranny of
experimentation: they simply make it up.
Fraud is one of the most serious concerns in
science today.
Every case of fraud undermines confidence
amongst researchers and the public, threatens the careers of collaborators and students of the fraudster (who are usually
entirely innocent), and can represent millions of dollars in wasted funds. And although it remains rare, there is concern
that the problem may be getting worse.
But now some scientists are fighting back against
fraud—using the methods of science itself. The basic idea is very simple. Real data collected by scientists in experiments
and observations is noisy; there’s always random variation and measurement error, whether what’s being measured
is the response of a cell to a particular gene, or the death rate in cancer patients on a new drug.
When fraudsters decide to make up data, or to modify
real data in a fraudulent way, they often create data which is just “too good”—with less variation than
would be seen in reality. Using statistical methods, a number of researchers have successfully caught data fabrication by
detecting data which is less random than real results.
The leader of ruling Indian National Congress has been listed
as world's fourth richest politician with a total wealth of over US$ 18 billion, which is invested in real estate, telecommunication
and various business projects around the world, while significant portion of the amount is also deposited in secret bank accounts.
Italian born Indian politician Sonia Gandhi alias Antonia Maino was already in the controversy centering one of the biggest
bribe scandals in India - 3G Spectrum - wherefrom influential politicians looted billions of dollars through corruption and
fraud.
Business Insider has a short feature, "Meet The 23 Richest Politicians
In The World", and Dr Manmohan Singh's boss, Ms Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi is listed as the 4th richest with wealth estimated
between US$ 2-19 billion...Sonia Gandhi's late husband and former Prime Minister of India, Rajeev Gandhi came into media's
exposure, when he was caught into Bofor's kickback scandal, though Indian government tried its best to defend Rajeev Gandhi
to be a "Mr. Clean" by tightly restricting access to official documents by the media.
(NOTE: Sonia Gandhi is listed as the 6th most powerful woman in the
world by Forbes in its recent article The 100 Women Who Run The World - http://www.forbes.com/power-women/ )
Nigeria’s largest airline Arik Air Ltd. halted all its
domestic flights indefinitely Thursday as its leaders alleged government corruption made it impossible for the carrier to
fly, after officials raided and disrupted its flights without explanation.
Arik Air’s top executives told journalists that employees
of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria raided its operations at Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed International Airport
and gave those waiting on its flights nearby conflicting and disparaging information about the airline. The airport authority
later denied its employees were involved, blaming the raid on unions upset over unpaid salaries.
The main criteria for the list was to have been
convicted or pleaded guilty to a graft-related offense and to have received a lengthy prison term for it.
1. Joel Esquenazi, ex-president
of Terra Telecommunications Corp - 15 years
2. Rod Blagojevich, ex-State of Illinois
Governor - 14 years
3. Viktor Bout, suspected Russian arms
dealer - 25 years
4. James Ibori,ex-stategovernor in Nigeria - 13 years
5. R. Allen Stanford, “mini-Madoff”
billionaire - 110 years
6. Jimmy Dimora, former Ohio county
official - 28 years
7. Matthew Ng, Chinese-born Australian
citizen - 13 years
8. Albert “Jack” Stanley and
Jeffrey Tesler, KBR Inc. scandal - 30 & 21 months respectively
9. Jean Rene Duperval, ex- director
of international relations for Haiti’s state-owned telecoms company - 9 years
10. Gerhard Gribkowsky, ex- chief risk
officer of German lender BayernLB - 8 years
Private sector corruption appears to be on the rise in the Pacific
Rim amid the global economic downturn, with countries in the region holding the worst reputation for bribery abroad, a U.N.
expert said...companies in Indonesia, Mexico, China and Russia are the most likely to pay bribes when doing business overseas...a
recent survey by Ernst & Young shows respondents indicating a 26 percent rise in private sector corruption in China and
a 52 percent increase in Indonesia...Between 75 and 93 percent of corruption cases being prosecuted before courts in Hong
Kong and Singapore also involve private sector employees...More than $1 trillion a year in illicit money leaves the developing
world each year...a World Bank survey estimates that small and medium enterprises spend up to 33 percent and in some cases
49 percent of revenues on bribes. Around 90 percent of companies worldwide are SMEs and they pay around $100 billion in bribes
each year...SMES, which are more vulnerable than bigger companies to corruption because of their size and limited resources
and bargaining power.
Corruption has plagued Venezuelan, and much of Latin
American, politics for decades...Venezuelan presidential
candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski expelled a top aide last Thursday amid
corruption charges that could prove damaging to his campaign less than a month beforeElection Day...Government officials are alleging the money was a bribe
for political favors related to Mr. Capriles’ campaign
In their guilty pleas, the defendants
admitted that...they participated in Romanian-based conspiracies...to hack into hundreds of U.S.-based computers to steal
credit, debit and payment account numbers and associated data (collectively “payment card data”) that belonged
to U.S. cardholders and then use the stolen payment card data to make unauthorized charges on, and/or transfers of funds from,
those cardholders’ accounts (or alternatively to transfer the stolen payment card data to other co-conspirators who
would do the same)...federal prosecutors noted that the conspiracies involved more than 146,000 compromised cards and more
than $10 million in losses.
European Union legislators have voted for a draft anti-corruption
law, echoing rigorous U.S. rules to make oil, gas and mining firms declare payments they make in resource-rich nations.
Pressure has mounted on the EU to take a tough line after the
U.S. regulator in August set demanding rules for U.S.-listed firms.
Tuesday's series of votes in the European Parliament backed detailed
reporting to regulatory authorities starting from a minimum threshold of 80,000 euros ($105,100), almost identical to the
$100,000 U.S. requirement and far lower than the million-dollar level some resource firms had said was practical.
In contrast to the U.S. rules, the European Union is also proposing
to include the forestry industry and banking, construction and telecommunication sectors on a less detailed level than for
extractive industries.
Guatemala's Constitutional Court decided recently that ex-president Alfonso Portillo could be extradited to the United
States on charges of money laundering and embezzling $1.5 million of foreign donations...The current case
againstPortillo was filed by a federal court in New York, charging him for participating
in money laundering and embezzling $1.5 million, an amount donated by Taiwan to help Guatemalan children with school supplies.
More than 200 beneficiaries have been prosecuted in the region's
courts over the past five years for scamming more than $4 million off the taxpayer..."Most cases the ministry investigates
are around clients not being honest about their relationships and failing to tell us they're working whilst receiving the
benefit,"
Former President Jimmy
Carter issued a blistering indictment of the U.S. electoral process Tuesday, saying it is shot through with "financial corruption"
that threatens American democracy. Speaking at the international human rights center that bears his name, Carter said "we have
one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America, and it's almost entirely because of
the excessive influx of money." The 39th president lamented a recent U.S. Supreme
Court decision that allows unlimited contributions to third-party groups that don't have to disclose their donors. The dynamic is fed, Carter said, by an income tax code that exacerbatesthe gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest
of the electorate, allowing the rich even greater influence over public discourse and electioneering. He added that he hopes the"Supreme Court will reverse that stupid ruling," referring to the case known as Citizens United.
Mexico’s
president elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, presented to senators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) an initiative
to “strengthen” transparency and accountability in Mexico. The law project, the first one Peña Nieto presents, is looking to “grant full constitutional
autonomy to the Federal Institute of Access to Information (IFAI in Spanish),” and to extend the jurisdiction of the
Legislative and Judicial branches to Mexico’s states and municipalities. The initiative proposes to increase the IFAI advisors from five to seven to face
this institution’s new tasks; the institute has turned Mexico into an international reference in matters of transparency
since it was created in 2002 during Vicente Fox’s term of office.
Canada has begun
revoking citizenship from 3,100 people that the government said obtained it fraudulently, the country's immigration minister
said. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said that in most of the fraud cases, applicants paid a representative to prove they
were living in Canada to establish residency when they were, in fact, living abroad. Permanent residents must reside in Canada
for three out of four consecutive years before applying for Canadian citizenship. To retain their status as permanent residents,
they must live in Canada for two out of five years, with rare exceptions.
The governor of Nigeria’s oil-rich Bayelsa State in 1999, Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha
stole an estimated $12 million from government coffers over six years. He found a safe haven for the extortion, bribes, kickbacks
and theft in US real estate and financial accounts...In March of last year, Alamieyeseigha became one of the first targets
of the “Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative,’ a new Justice Department unit that uses civil forfeiture to track
and sieze US-based assets of corrupt foreign officials...
The Kleptocracy
Initiative acts as a sort of flip side
of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
and complements the Justice Department’s crackdown on global corruption, says Thaddeus McBride, a Washington, DC, partner
at Sheppard Mullin. “For any bribe to occur, there have to be two sides,” he adds. “To date, the US has
mostly pursued companies, but it’s the stated intention of the US Justice Department to target foreign officials as
well.”...On June 28, Alamieyeseigha became the program’s first
success story. Federal prosecutors assigned to the Initiative executed a forfeiture order on more than $400,000the corrupt former official held at a brokerage
account with Fidelity Investments, in Boston.
Federal prosecutors charged Russell Wasendorf Sr., the former head of Peregrine, with 31 counts of deceiving
regulators about the value of his customers’ accounts. If convicted, he would face a maximum prison sentence of 155
years...The charges against Mr. Wasendorf came just months afterMF Global,
the now-defunct futures brokerage firm, could not locate more than $1 billion in client money. Together,
the two collapses highlighted regulatory holes and insufficient financial protections in the futures industry, which largely
consists of money management firms that trade contracts in commodities, currencies and interest rates.
Russian lawmakers
loyal to President Vladimir Putin submitted an anti-corruption bill they hope will lead to the repatriation of $100 billion
in assets held by officials, the lead author said...The bill would ban officials, their wives and minor children from owning property, stock or bank accounts abroad...It
applies to all state employees, includinglawmakers, bureaucrats, prosecutors and police officers,
though the list may be expanded to include senior management of state-run companies such as OAO Gazprom (GAZP) and OAO Rosneft
(ROSN)...
Putin has made the fight
against corruption a priority in his third term as president, saying in April that he supports a plan to monitor personal
spending by senior officials. Russia is the world’s most corrupt major economy...
Defence giant EADS has appointed accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct a parallel investigation to theSerious Fraud Office probe into bribery allegationsat
its subsidiary GPT Special Projects. The work by the accountants is expected to look at accounts and audits at GPT going back
several years.
Peregrine Financial
Group founder and chief executive Russell Wasendorf Sr was indicted on charges of lying to regulators, a little over a month
after he botched a suicide attempt and confessed to bilking customers of his brokerage
for years. Wasendorf, 64, “overstated the value of PFG’s customer segregated funds by at least tens of millions
of dollars”...Using little more than a post office box, laser
printers and Photoshop software, Wasendorf Sr said in hisconfession that he forged and intercepted financial
statements that were mailed between U.S. Bank, where some Peregrine customer money was held, and the firm’s auditors
at the National Futures Association.
Four politicians
were arrested and three others were being sought in an anti-corruption sting in a Rio de Janeiro town, officials said Wednesday,
describing it as an example of other operations that are under way. Among the seven arrested or sought were the mayor, the leading candidate for mayor and the
head of the city council in Guapimirim, a working class town of about 52,000 people in the foothills of Rio de Janeiro's mountains.
Authorities said 11 other suspects also
were indicted in a scheme that investigators allege illegally siphoned off at least $24 million in public funds over four
years. The charges include fraud, corruption and racketeering. The investigation is not an isolated case, prosecutor Antonio Campos Moreira said at a news conference. "We have a number
of similar investigations looking into city halls," Moreira said.
Early July saw multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline
pay the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history, in a case that highlighted the issue of fraud and corporate wrongdoing
in the sector. The subject of fraud has grown in prominence in recent years, with regulators cracking down on activities including
Goods Manufacturing Pricing violations, off-label marketing, and kick backs. In light of heightened scrutiny, healthcare companies
are encouraged to re-evaluate their anti-fraud and corruption risk provisions, and consider their options in the event they
come under the regulatory microscope. There is little doubt that fraud and corruption in the healthcare sector is an extensive
problem, although estimates of the cost vary widely. Currently, the US government estimates that fraud against government-sponsored
programs may, in 2012, reach as high as $102bn. Meanwhile, according to the FBI, government and private healthcare fraud combined
costs the US economy approximately $250bn annually.
Wang Guoqiang, who was party secretary of Fengcheng
city in Liaoning province, left for the United States in April with his wife, the People's Daily said. Local officials said
Mr Wang, who was being investigated for corruption, had been removed from his post,..Several reports cited 200m yuan ($31.5m;
£20m) as the amount taken. The local officials did not elaborate on allegations that he had embezzled and transferred the
funds to the US, where his family is believed to be.
The award represents 30 percent of the amount collected in an
SEC enforcement action against the perpetrators of the scheme, the maximum percentage payout allowed by the whistleblower
law...The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized the whistleblower program to reward individuals who offer high-quality original information
that leads to an SEC enforcement action in which more than $1 million in sanctions is ordered. Awards can range from 10 percent
to 30 percent of the money collected. The Act included enhanced anti-retaliation employment protections for whistleblowers
and provisions to protect their identity.
A Cuban court has convicted a dozen people of corruption including high-ranking government officials,
an executive at a state-run nickel company and workers at a Cuban-Canadian joint concern...Nickel production is one of Cuba's main sources of foreignincome...
UK Ministry of Defence officials appeared to express concerns
about payments made to a Cayman Islands bank account by a subsidiary of EADS, the pan-European defence contractor, as early
as 2008...Those payments, which continued until at least 2010, and gifts allegedly given to Saudi generals, are the subject
of a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office...
A retired Colombian police general pleaded guilty to a U.S.
court on charges he fed critical secret information to the country's murderous right-wing paramilitary warlords and drug dealers
even while acting as former President Álvaro Uribe's security chief...
The incident is a stark reminder of how deeply drug-related corruption can
run even in countries that have made progress in fighting the cocaine trade, as has been the case in Colombia. Cultivation
of coca—the raw material for cocaine—has plunged in Colombia over the past decade.
The Special Court on Wednesday sentenced former Home Minister
and Nepali Congress leader Govinda Raj Joshi to one-and-half year jail term and penalty of Rs 21.6 million after convicting
him of massive corruption while he held several important portfolios in the governments formed by the Nepali Congress in different
years.
Problems such as the misappropriation of funds have been found
in some of the construction projects around the country that have been partly backed by foreign loans or donations.
On June 18 the nation's top auditor, the National Audit Office,
released the findings of its examination of the 2010 operations of 99 projects that had foreign backing of 34.5 billion yuan
out of a total 424.6 billion yuan investment. The audited projects were in a range of sectors, including agricultural, energy,
transportation, education, public health and urban construction.
The foreign funds came from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank
(ADB), the United Nations Development Program and other foreign institutions in the form of loans or donations. The rest of
the funding had domestic sources.
The National Audit Office said six projects had misappropriated
or unused funding totaling 237 million yuan. Flaws in bidding, subcontracting, asset management and supervision were found
in 18 projects involving 650 million yuan.
Accounting flaws and overspending were detected in 20 projects
involving 1.18 billion yuan. Inaccuracies were discovered in the financial books of 19 projects, and five projects had delays.
The audit report said construction firms under the Ministry of
Railway sold or transferred equipment and materials bought with 10 million yuan from the ADB. The items were intended for
use on the line linking Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, and Zhongwei, in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
In addition, false inspection and accounting problems related to
equipment purchases and leasing, and sub-contracting were also found in the project. The issues involved 119 million yuan.
The central government ordered a cleanup of the Taiyuan-Zhongwei
project, which opened in January 20110, the report said. Total investment for the line was 3.21 billion yuan, including a
1.99 billion yuan loan from the ADB.
In a project funded by the World Bank to improve energy efficiency,
financing fraud involving 69 million yuan was uncovered, the report said. Three companies were accused of misappropriating
103 million yuan.
Japanese camera and medical equipment maker Olympus Corp and three of
its former executives pleaded guilty on Tuesday over charges related to a $1.7 billion accounting cover-up in one of Japan's
biggest corporate scandals...
Prosecutors
charged Kikukawa, former executive vice-president Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada with inflating the company's
net worth in financial statements for five fiscal years to March 2011.
Japanese camera and medical equipment maker Olympus Corp and three of
its former executives pleaded guilty on Tuesday over charges related to a $1.7 billion accounting cover-up in one of Japan's
biggest corporate scandals...
Prosecutors
charged Kikukawa, former executive vice-president Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada with inflating the company's
net worth in financial statements for five fiscal years to March 2011.
Japanese police and prosecutors have arrested seven men, including the former president of Olympus
Corp and ex-bankers over a $1.7 billion accounting fraud -- one of the country's biggest corporate scandals. The scandal was
exposed in October by chief executive Michael Woodford, who was sacked by the Olympus board after querying dubious deals later
found to have been used to conceal the losses. Woodford campaigned to win his job back, but gave up that bid last month, blaming
cozy ties between management and big Japanese shareholders and citing the strain on his family.
America’s closest ally in Southeast Asia
and a rising China now face a new source of potential friction over the alleged corrupt practices of a well-connected Chinese
corporation.
At the center of a case before the Philippine anti-graft
tribunal is Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment, or ZTE, a state-linked manufacturing giant that sells communications gear
in more than 140 countries. The company is not on trial, but its alleged payment of tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks
in connection with a 2007 contract has led to graft charges against former president Gloria Magacapal-Arroyo, her husband
and two other former senior officials. All deny any wrongdoing.
The criminal prosecution, which follows a lengthy investigation
into ZTE’s business practices by the Philippine Senate, puts a spotlight on the role played by Chinese companies in
extending China’s economic reach around the world but also in straining Beijing’s doctrine of noninterference
in the affairs of other states. While insisting that it does not meddle in foreign lands, China keeps getting dragged deep
into the affairs of other countries by the pursuit of profit by corporations controlled by or closely tied to the state...among thosecharged with graft is Benjamin Abalos Sr., the former head of the Election Commission. According to testimony during
hearings by the Philippine Senate, Abalos took large kickbacks from ZTE in connection with a contract for the construction
of a broadband network and fed some $30 million into the campaign coffers of Philippine politicians ahead of a 2007 election.
In
2001, the nation was rocked by the collapse of Enron, a multibillion dollar corporation that employed thousands of people
and had affiliations right up to and including The White House itself. Amid the financial chaos and destroyed lives and reputations
the collapse left in its wake, questions arose concerning exactly how the catastrophe occurred, why it occurred, and who was
involved...the scandal changed the lives of everyone in America, and elsewhere,
in one way or another, for better or for worse. Perhaps just as importantly, it forced everyone to look at themselves and
fully realize the consequences of reckless greed and the breakage of laws on a whim.
Beginning in 1999 and continuing through May 2002,
WorldCom (under the direction of Scott Sullivan (CFO), David Myers (Controller) and Buford Yates (Director of General Accounting))
used shady accounting methods to mask its declining financial condition by falsely professing financial growth and profitability
to increase the price of WorldCom's stock.
The fraud was accomplished in two main ways. First,
WorldCom's accounting department underreported 'line costs' (interconnection expenses with other telecommunication companies)
by capitalizing these costs on the balance sheet rather than properly expensing them. Second, the company inflated revenues
with bogus accounting entries from 'corporate unallocated revenue accounts'.
Rags to Riches He came from nothing and went to the top of the financial world.
Bernard Ebbers took a small telephone company and turned it into a telecom giant. As the head of WorldCom, Ebbers was worth
billions.
The Lifestyle The Aquasition, a 132-foot yacht
and the largest privately-owned ranch on earth. Bernard Ebbers spared no expense when it came to himself. But the lavish lifestyle
put WorldCom investor fortunes in jeopardy.
BIllion Dollar Fraud The
outlook for the telecom business turns stormy. WorldCom stock tumbles. Ebbers is asked to resign. But the company
hasn't hit rock bottom yet... an internal auditor makes a discovery that shocks Wall Street and the world!
It’s been dubbed “Europe’s Enron”
– the saga that has engulfed Italy’s milk-processing giant Parmalat and its senior executives, blue-chip European
and American banks, accountancy firms, politicians and 130,000 hapless small shareholders following the discovery in 2003
of a $14bn black hole in its finances.
The revelation triggered an eight year marathon of court cases
in Europe and America, the disgrace of the Tanzi family that controlled Parmalat, at least one death, the collapse into administration
of one of Europe’s most successful football clubs, and grave misgivings about the quality of governance in Italy’s
boardrooms. And it’s still going on.
Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing
company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years,
the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil.
Raju, resigned after revealing that
he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back-office giant with
a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries...
Satyam serves as the back office for some of the
largest banks, manufacturers, health care and media companies in the world, handling everything from computer systems to customer
service. Clients have included General Electric, General Motors, Nestlé and the United States government. In some cases,
Satyam is even responsible for clients’ finances and accounting.
Former
French president handed suspended two-year prison sentence over fake jobs conspiracy while he was mayor of Paris.
The case against Chirac was divided into two parts: the first count
involved embezzlement and breach of trust in relation to 21 bogus jobs; the second related to a charge of illegal conflict
of interest concerning seven jobs.The charge sheet alleged that Chirac was the "inventor, author and beneficiary" of
a conspiracy to use public funds to "support his political influence" and serve his own "interests and ambitions, or
those of his party"...
Chirac, who led France from 1995 to 2007, was found guilty of diverting
public funds and abuse of trust over two cases in which prosecutors said he had paid members of his former party for municipal
jobs that did not exist.
The cases dated from Chirac's time as mayor of Paris from 1977
and 1995 when he built the centre-right Gaullist party that launched his successful presidential bid. "Jacques Chirac has
breached the duty of probity required for public officials, to the detriment of the public interest of Parisians," said tribunal
judge, Dominique Pauthe...Chirac benefitted from legal immunity during his 12-year presidency and could have faced up to 10
years in prison over the charges.
A U.S. Treasury inspector general report accuses the IRS of discouraging employees
from reviewing applications for the ID numbers, which are generally fromnon-resident workers. The inspector general specifically said there were 154 mailin
g
addresses that were used 1,000 or more times on applications, including 15,795 numbers assigned to a Phoenix address. The
report, which evaluated the processing year 2011, also found inadequate controls can result in the numbers being assigned
to people who have not proved their identity or foreign status, which can result in fraudulent tax returns. The inspector
general also found 10 individual addresses were used for filing 53,994 tax returns and receiving $86.4 million in fraudulent
tax refunds. For example, 23,994 tax refunds totaling $46.3 million were issued to an address in Atlanta; and 2,507 tax refunds
totaling $10.4 million were issued to an address in Oxnard, Calif.
Nomura CEO Kenichi Watanabe has resigned in the
wake of an insider trading scandal that has tarnished the reputation of Japan Inc. and its biggest investment bank...Japan's
financial regulators are investigating Nomura Securities for leaking information to clients ahead of planned securities offerings
by energy company Inpex, Mizuho Financial Group and Tokyo Electric Power Co. in 2010...Nomura has admitted that some its employees
were involved in leaking inside information.
Eileen Foster was an investigator in charge of Fraud Risk Management
at Countrywide when the ticking time bomb of its bad loans detonated. The practices she discovered shocked her and have also
shocked those who've heard her story—including the producers of “60 Minutes,” who asked her on the program
last December to discuss the lack of prosecutions of any of the bankers responsible for the crisis. But instead of cleaning
house and admitting guilt, Bank of America—which purchased Countrywide as the financial crisis grew, in what the Wall Street Journal calls “one of the worst deals ever struck in corporate America”--drove Foster out and tried to discredit
her findings.
In 2011, the Department of Labor ruled
that Foster had been illegally fired. It said that her firing was retaliation for her whistle-blowing and ordered that she
be reinstated and paid compensation. There have still been no prosecutions, and no officials have asked to hear Foster's story—so
she's taking it public.
One
in every 20 health care providers getting taxpayer money from Medicaid is delinquent on federal taxes, and in some cases the
tax cheats are years behind in paying theInternal Revenue Service, according to an audit by congressional investigators.
TheGovernment Accountability Officelooked
at about 7,000 providers in three large states whom Medicaid reimbursed more than $6 billion in 2009 and found that they had
nearly $800 million in unpaid federal taxes
The
story of HealthSouth and its CEO Richard Scrushy began as the perfect rags-to-riches tale. In the end, it became just another
breaking news headline of high-priced greed on Wall Street... By his mid-20s
Scrushy was a vice president at a large healthcare company when he met Aaron Beam...
Together, Beamand Scrushy eventually cofounded HealthSouth, a company
based on Scrushy’s idea of taking rehabilitation services out of hospitals and into outpatient facilities. The idea
proved to be brilliant. Things on the outsidelooked
good, but HealthSouth wasn’t rock solid behind closed doors. Instead, a massive securities fraud was brewing –
one that would ultimately exceed two billion dollars and turn Scrushy’s American dream into a nightmare. In the second
quarter of 1996, Beam says HealthSouth’s growth had slowed and the company could not meetWall Street’s expectations. Rather than report the truth,
Beam says Scrushy ordered him to cook the books by generating false revenue. So the CFO did just that, and reported fake numbers
to Wall Street. From that point forward, HealthSouth’s books would never be clean. Over the
next five years, the fraud grew to 2.4 billion dollars and seemed to have no end in sight. But then, one man decided he had
had enough. Former CFO Weston blew the whistle, and it all came
crashing down...all five former CFOs claim Scrushy gave the
orders to keep the fraud going.
In the end,
Scrushy was indicted but amazingly a jury found him not guilty on all charges relating to the HealthSouth fraud.
While all five CFOs served prison time, Scrushy walked away scott-free. Today, Scrushy sits in a federal prison, serving time on unrelated charges for another case.
HealthSouth,
the largest U.S. operator of rehabilitation-hospitals, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and
the Justice Department for allegedly overstating earnings by $2.5 billion since 1999. Fifteen HealthSouth employees, including all five former chief
financial officers, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Former CEO Richard M. Scrushy has denied wrongdoing.
The Golden Touch It’s the classic rags to riches story. Richard Marin
Scrushy is a brilliant businessman with the “golden touch.” The one time bricklayer turns billionaire after starting
HealthSouth, a big provider of outpatient rehab services. Scrushy is the darling of Wall Street. Investors pour money into
HealthSouth stock.
High-Flying CEO The high-flying CEO always travels in style... by air, land and water. Scrushy
has a Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, a yacht, seaplane and four mansions. The town of Birmingham, Alabama names buildings after
him... and a parkway. But, not everyone is impressed.
Jekyll and Hyde Employees call Scrushy a sinister
CEO... a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To the outside world, all appears well... but on the inside a billion dollar fraud
is brewing. Accountants conspire to cook the books and report fake earnings.
No Ordinary Trial The accounting scandal
at HealthSouth becomes front-page news. Scrushy is indicted. But the HealthSouth founder puts his faith in a higher power.
Scrushy becomes a televangelist.
American Greed follows the story of a man who turns the American dream into the American
nightmare!
Following years of appeals and a vocal campaign
by supporters, ex-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman is heading back to prison after being sentenced Friday to more than six years
for bribery and other convictions.
Siegelman and former HealthSouth chief Richard
Scrushy were convicted in 2006. They arranged $500,000 in contributions to Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery
to fund education programs in exchange for the governor appointing Scrushy to an important hospital regulatory board.
"If I had known I was coming close to the line where a
campaign contribution becomes a bribe and a crime, I would have stopped,”Siegelman told U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller,
who sentenced Siegelman to 6 1/2years in prison...the debate over “the
line where acampaign contribution becomes a bribe,” especially relevant
in a year when campaign spending has become a paramount issue, shows no signs of fading away.
The trial would have determined what, if any, damages were owed to Tyco.
Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 and is serving a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years. He has already paid $97 million in restitution
to Tyco and a $70 million fine. The
company's civil case was strengthened by a December 2010 ruling in which U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa said he agreed
with Tyco on the general proposition that Kozlowski must forfeit compensation he received during his period of disloyalty.
Jurors at Kozlowski's criminal trial heard evidence about his $6,000 gold-threaded
shower curtain and a $2 million birthday party he threw for his wife on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Kozlowski and his co-defendant, Tyco's chief financial officer
Mark Swartz, were accused at their criminal trial of giving themselves as much as $150 million in illegal bonuses and forgiving
millions of dollars in loans to themselves while manipulating the security systems company's stock price by lying about the
state of its finances.
The letter was
as bold as it was explosive. Signed by the South Sudanese president and sent out with a news release, it chastised its powerful
recipients for collectively stealing $4 billion from the world's newest country, before it was even born. "We fought for freedom, justice and equality. Many of our
friends died to achieve these objectives. Yet, once we got to power, we forgot what we fought for and began to enrich ourselves
at the expense of our people," the letter read. At least 75 officials were served with copies, which offered amnesty for the
partial return of funds.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/20/v-fullstory/2960717/americans-anti-corruption-work.html#storylink=cpy
Since 2005, state officials and government contractors have stolen
an estimated$4 billion from treasury coffers—an amount equivalent
to 30 percent of the country’s annual economic output. In a particularly egregious example, the Ministry of Finance
and Economic Planning squandered millions of dollars as grain contracts, meant to stave off an anticipated food shortage,
were awarded to shell companies. Although not as problematic as the high-level graft, it’s also not uncommon for court
officials and other bureaucrats to solicit petty bribes.
Corruption is thought to cost the EU 120 billion euros a year in
lost revenue and it has helped fuel the economic crisis that has spiralled some countries close to economic meltdown. Is corruption killing Europe? To discuss this worrying trend Isabelle Kumar
is joined ‘On The Frontline’ by Michelle Coninsx,, President of Eurojust which aims to improve judicial co-operation
between member states, and Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of anti-corruption organisation Transparency International.
Not long after Bertrand de Speville launched his book, "Overcoming
Corruption: The Essentials," in 2010, Tunku Abdul Aziz, the former deputy chairman of Transparency International opined,
“If there is one person whom I admire for his sustained contribution to tackling corruption in societies across
the world, it is Bertrand de Speville.” Indeed, de Speville, 71, spends most of his time on how to eradicate corruption—a
task he feels is full of pain, requires a sense of invulnerability, and is very lonely. He has been chasing after corruptors
since he was a chairman heading the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), the ‘KPK’ of Hong Kong.
A new report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
indicates that auditing firms have apparently ignored or forgotten the lessons that came out of the Bernard Madoff scandal
and similar financial frauds of recent years... Among the troubling array of problems uncovered during the inspections
were independence conflicts and deficiencies with customer protection and net capital rules.
In 13 of the 23 audits, the PCAOB inspections staff found that
firms did not perform sufficient procedures to identify, assess and respond to the risks of material misstatement of the financial
statements due to fraud. In 10 of the 23 audits, the inspections staff discovered that auditing firms did not perform sufficient
procedures to identify the existence of related parties and material related-party transactions, or in instances where evidence
of related parties existed, the auditors did not perform sufficient procedures regarding material related-party transactions.
"The bureaucratic system of the United States has managed to gain a reputation
of a highly effective and non-failure one. However, there are many
imperfections, corruption among them, in which the US are very fond of blaming other countries. Some stories are absolutely fantastic...
...in the USA decisions are often taken with the help of bribes;
money can get contracts, necessary permission from government agencies, and even the meeting with the president of the United
States."
In many of the Western democracies an unholy coalition has
developed between a permanent government class and a permanent dependency class, which means today that the West cannot vote
itself back to fiscal sanity. In a democratic age and in an era of big government, short-term and front-loaded policies are
the order of the day. It is no accident
that the most corrupt developed countries are Greece and Italy, with Spain, Portugal and France not far behind. All of these
countries have had traditionally large bureaucracies and interventionist economic policies. Other European countries with
big governments such as Germany and the Nordic countries have low levels of corruption, but then they also have very independent
judiciaries, adequate pay for civil servants, functioning oversight, a free press and a vibrant civil society.
"As
long as dollars are involved, they will eventually touch a US institution," he says, referring to how almost all banking transactions,
particularly in US dollars, will at some point in the process flow through the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. The courts
have made clear over the years that such flows of funds through New York is sufficient for asserting jurisdiction. "Even if
a transaction is done, say, in Japanese yen, if a blip in the system turns these into dollars - however briefly - that in
theory could mean it falls under US law,"
Pharmaceutical companies, military contractors,
banks and other corporations are on track to pay as much as $8 billion this year to resolve charges of defrauding the government,
analysts say — a record sum and more than twice the amount assessed last year by the Justice Department...
“A lot of people on the street, they’re
wondering how a company can commit serious violations of securities laws and yet no individuals seem to be involved and no
individual responsibility was assessed...”
A spectre of corruption is haunting the global
campaign towards higher education internationalisation. An overseas degree is increasingly valuable, so it is not surprising
that commercial ventures have found opportunities in the internationalisation landscape.
New private actors have entered
the sector, with the sole goal of making money. Some of them are less than honourable. Some universities look at internationalisation
as a contribution to the financial ‘bottom line’, in an era of financial cutbacks.
The rapidly expanding
private higher education sector globally is largely for-profit...Countries whose academic systems suffer from elements of
corruption are increasingly involved in international higher education – sending large numbers of students abroad, establishing
relationships with overseas universities and other activities.
In many of the
Western democracies an unholy coalition has developed between a permanent government class and a permanent dependency class,
which means today that the West cannot vote itself back to fiscal sanity. In a democratic age and in an era of big government,
short-term and front-loaded policies are the order of the day.
It is no accident that Hong Kong and Singapore cut red tape and cut bureaucracy at the same time. Through
the use of online procedures and streamlining of laws, they reduced the opportunities for the would-be kleptocrat. Better,
less and more streamlined laws, less red tape, less bureaucracy, a more independent judiciary and a well-paid and independent
anti-corruption agency are what every developing country needs
A document leaked...reveals that as of Nov. 26,
2011, Beijing had identified 225 corrupt officials, 58 of them at the local high-level (“ditingji”) and above,
who had embezzled over 2.5 billion yuan ($US392 million)...
Corruption in China is often referred to as both
the lubricant of the Party machine’s economic growth, but also a factor that may precipitate its demise, as ordinary
citizens become increasingly incensed with an elite that functions like a kleptocracy, analysts say.
Party media regularly make noise about the threat
corruption poses to the regime, but while the problem stems from the regime itself, the Party has never allowed any genuine
mechanisms of oversight outside its own control.
Between 16,000 and 18,000 officials and employees
of state-owned companies left China with the funds from the mid-1990s up until 2008. The officials used offshore bank accounts
to smuggle the funds, according to the study posted on the People's Bank of China website this week but which has since been
removed. It said the officials smuggled about 800 billion yuan into the US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands through
offshore bank accounts or investments, like property or collectables.(article dated
June 17, 2011)
China’s zero tolerance for corruption
has helped it to replace Japan as the second largest economy of the world. The
three most effective tools in China’s war on corruption are monitoring, transparency, and the most lethal deterrent
to corruption – death penalty...there is no concept of mercy
for those found guilty of corruption. Several officials of the director general rank have been given death penalty for corruption...In
all, 2,300 cases of abuse of power have been decided since adoption of the anti-corruption initiative in 1997.
Before WorldCom, Enron and Adelphia made headlines, the savings & loan crisis was at the top of
the accounting scandal list, and long-ago schemes by Charles Ponzi and Ivar Kreuger, among others, wiped out millions of investors'
dollars.
“Creative accounting” is not a new
technique, but it can certainly be a costly one. Businesses feel the pressure to appear profitable in order to attract investors
and resources, but deceptive or fraudulent accounting practices often lead to drastic consequences. Are these so-called creative
practices always illegal or can they ever be justified? This case study will present examples of companies who have used inappropriate
accounting practices, the results of their deceptions and the government's plan to avoid future incidents.
India has been
rocked this year by a series of corruption scandals that have embarrassed the ruling Congress party, rattled markets and delayed
reform bills as the opposition stalls parliament. The country, 87th in Transparency International's rankings based on perceived
levels of corruption, is no stranger to scandals. Click on above headline for some of the biggest in the last two
decades.
“The
majority today, the citizen today, the citizens’ groups today are no longer willing to sit quiet. They are very discerning,
they are very demanding and no longer do they think that anything that the government has to give to them is charity. It is
very much their right. So a government official is not a government servant; he is perceived as a public servant.”
This website is dedicated to providing a reference
source on the scourge that is whirling across planet Earth destroying governments, businesses, cities, families and imperiling civilized
culture by agregating and making available on one site sources of news, analysis and opinion about corruption.
Criteria for inclusion on this site of "BIG
Corruption" cases:
Very High level corporate and/or government official(s) involved;
Very Large amount of money lost;
International financing/aid agency program;
Global impact on numerous countries/businesses/investors; and/or
Classic example that can be used in training/seminarsmajor cases of global fraud and corruption.
As a news agregator website this site primarily serves to gather for research and educational
purposes in one single place news and information specifically pertinent to major global corruption in business and government.
The news items, views, editorials and opinions summarized or reported on this website are taken from the general media and
reputable blogs, websites, etc., and are exclusively the responsibility of the original sources and/or authors. In accordance
with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work on this website is distributed under fair use without profit or payment
to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes
only. Ref: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107html
