Entries by ceadmin

BAE ‘payments to Pinochet firms’

UK arms manufacturer BAE has paid over £1m to front companies for the Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

Three companies linked to Gen Pinochet were getting money from the UK defence giant as late as June last year.

The documents show that between December 1997 and October 2004 BAE paid $1,998,871 (£1

Tribunal upholds Shell criticism

Former Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts has lost an appeal against the UK’s city watchdog over how it handled the probe into Shell’s oil reserves crisis.

Sir Philip was forced to step down in January 2004 after the oil giant cut its reserves estimates by 20%.

Sir Philip accused the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of violating his rights by fining Shell £17m without giving him the opportunity to respond

Wal-Mart hit by ‘sweatshop’ claim

US retail giant Wal-Mart has been hit with a lawsuit that claims it ignores sweatshop conditions at many of its suppliers’ factories around the world.

The class-action suit has been filed in Los Angeles on behalf of 15 workers in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua.

Each claims they were paid less than the minimum wage and not given overtime payments

Businessmen jailed for Dome fraud

Two lighting contractors who defrauded the Millennium Dome company out of £4m have been jailed by a London court.

The judge said Simon Brophy took advantage of “chaos” in the building of the Dome and jailed him for 56 months.

Brophy, 39, of Wakefield, West Yorks, admitted conspiracy to defraud, corruption, providing false information and moving crime proceeds from the UK

Tax evaders ‘rob poorer nations’

Global poverty will never be beaten unless poor countries can stop big business and rich elites from dodging tax and stealing wealth, a report says. Poorer nations are losing $500bn (£270bn) a year in revenues to prosperous international tax dodgers, UK charity Christian Aid argues. Responsible tax regimes are needed in the fight against poverty, […]

Accountants face charges in Kanebo case

Prosecutors are set to seek criminal charges against several certified public accountants at a Japan unit of the PricewaterhouseCoopers group, suspecting that they collaborated with executives at Kanebo Ltd in an accounting fraud that has humbled what was once a premier cosmetics and textile company, investigative sources said Saturday.

The sources said the accountants at Tokyo-based ChuoAoyama PricewaterhouseCoopers worked together with two executives in producing consolidated financial statements that concealed 81.9 billion yen in capital deficit in fiscal 2001 and 80

22 years jail for VAT fraud gang

A gang of four fraudsters, including a former US judge and a music producer, has been jailed for a total of 22 years for their part in a £40m VAT fraud.

For over two years the group bought and sold mobile phones through bogus firms, using fake receipts to charge VAT.

Musician Stephen Pigott, 42, of Dubai, was jailed for nine years while ex-New York judge Stacey Haber-Hofberg, 43, of Liphook, Hampshire, received six years

Ethical issues arise in doing business with China

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has accused Yahoo of being “a police informant for the Chinese regime”, following allegations that information supplied by the company helped jail a journalist. The allegations have once again raised questions about how companies should do business in China and how far they should collaborate with the Chinese authorities. The […]

Securities watchdog charge Kanebo with accounting fraud

The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission filed a criminal accusation of accounting fraud Wednesday against Kanebo Ltd. and three former executives of the textile and cosmetics company now undergoing rehabilitation.

The three executives — former President Takashi Hoashi, 69, former Vice President Takashi Miyahara, 63, and former Managing Director Kenzaburo Shimada, 59 — were arrested July 29 for allegedly submitted falsified financial statements to financial authorities

China bank named in N Korea probe

China’s number two bank, Bank of China, has been named in media reports as the subject of a US inquiry into an illicit North Korean fund-raising network.

The bank is suspected by the US of links to criminal syndicates helping to finance Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The bank and two others based in Macau were caught up in a major US operation to shut down the trade, the paper said