A Portland jury awarded plaintiffs $28 million today in a now four-year-old class-action antitrust lawsuit against North American lumber company Weyerhaeuser. The jury said that the company violated antitrust laws through high prices and buying unnecessary amounts of lumber to prevent their competition from getting
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EchoStar Communications, the parent company of DISH Network, filed a corporate espionage lawsuit against News Corp’s NDS Group, alleging that the firm hired one of the “two best hackers in the world” to hack into DISH’s satellite network and steal the company’s security codes, according to a report by Reuters. NDS, which provides various […]
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A new bill that will further regulate the federal acquisition process, called The Close the Contractor Fraud Loophole Act, was approved by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, according to a report by Federal Computer Week, and is now
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More proof that price-fixing can take place in any industry: the owner of Adult Fire, an Australian company that puts on various X-rated strip shows for men and women, sued two of its Sydney rivals, Bombshells and Sex Bomb Promotions, for price-fixing. Sadly for Adult Fire the case was “quickly dismissed” after Bombshells and […]
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The CEO of Denver-based Grynberg Productions is trying a new strategy to escape possible FCPA violations: suing a bunch of his rivals. This month Jack Grynberg, the eponymous chairman of the oil company, sued British oil company BP, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, Former BP Chief Executive John Browne, Norway’s Statoil and others, accusing […]
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The South African Competition Commission decided that there have been so many reports of price fixing involving producers of bread, milk and other food items that they’re just going to go ahead and probe the entire South African food industry, according to a report by sabcnews.com. The Commission will focus primarily
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Who says random airport searches don’t work? United States customs officials discovered that Hanjuan Jin, 37, a China-born U.S. citizen, was allegedly trying to leak confidential trade secrets from her former U.S. employer to a China-based rival when they searched her luggage at
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Two weeks ago, in the last edition of Ethisphere Magazine we rated and ranked the ethics programs of some of the largest U.S. government contractors. IBM was
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Either investigative techniques used to uncover FCPA violations are improving, more companies are doing it or it’s just getting more attention from the DOJ. But whatever the reason, FCPA cases are a dime a dozen these days. The most recent alleged violator: Shell Oil. The company is being looked into by the Department of Justice […]
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Last year Stryker Corp came under fire for illegal payments to U.S. doctors. This year, that might be topped. The company announced in an SEC filing last month that it is being investigated by the Department of Justice for “possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” While not many specific details […]
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Becoming a whistle-blower is now a financially sound career move, thanks to the UK’s Office of Fair Trade (OFT). The British watch dog announced last Friday that it will offer as much as £100,000 for information leading to the discovery and dismantling of illegal corporate cartels. The OFT will offer the rewards for […]
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Alcoa was sued yesterday by Aluminum Bahrain BSC in a U.S. federal court for allegations of overcharging, fraud and bribery. Aluminum Bahrain BSC, better known as Alba, says it was overcharged by Alcoa for alumina (pictured), a key ingredient in creating aluminum. The company says it paid excesses of about $65 million per […]
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Will there ever be an end to the Oil-for-Food abuses? Flowserve Corporation announced last Thursday that it will pay nearly $10.6 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice for violating the United Nation’s Iraq Oil-for-Food humanitarian program. A Dutch and French-based subsidiary of the company, Flowserve […]
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The large percentage of Germans that regularly avoid taxes isn’t terribly surprising, considering the nation’s top income tax rate is 45 percent and the tax laws are notoriously confusing, according to Bloomberg. Nevertheless, the problem is huge for the country and getting worse. The issue is making a lot of headlines right now, […]
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Wm Morrison, the UK supermarket chain, is suing the UK’s Office of Fair Trade (OFT) for libel after the OFT claimed Morrison was allegedly part of a 2002 milk cartel, and is demanding a judicial review of how the OFT is handling the case. Several food companies have come under investigation recently on charges […]
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A Florida man has been found guilty of dishing out company trade secrets from his former employer, Alpha Mining Systems, to competitors. Alpha, a global manufacturer of industrial mining tires, won a $19.7 million judgment against Sam Vance, the company’s former sales and marketing manager. The judge ruled that Vance gave competitors more […]
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The World Bank announced it won’t be giving any more money to Lahmeyer International after the company was found guilty of bribing officials responsible for lending contracts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a multi-billion dollar operation. The German engineering firm was found guilty of fraud by the government of Lesotho and fined
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It seems the chemical and pharmaceutical industries haven’t exactly been the most ethically-minded these days. Both BASF SE and Bayer AG announced they will begin an internal probe into allegations by the World Bank that the two companies engaged in a price fixing scheme for an anti-mosquito pesticide sold
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The European engineering firm Siemens just learned that it might be fined as much as €4 billion (close to $6 billion) by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission as the result of a large bribery investigation that began in 2006. The number is about three times the amount of bribes that were uncovered […]
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Choco-giants Hershey, Nestle, Cadbury and Mars have come under scrutiny from the U.S. and Canada over allegations of price fixing. The companies have already handed over documents to the Canadian authorities, and Bloomberg reported back in December ‘07 that U.S. antitrust investigators were looking into the allegations as well. While no government charges
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This week, the Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) issued its first ever bid-rigging fine to six pest control firms. The companies were found guilty of coordinating their bids for six extermination contracts and rotating which firm would offer the lowest. They were caught after email exchanges between senior managers of the firms were […]
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Bribery, according to the DOJ. Lucent technologies helped wrap up a DOJ investigation on Tuesday by agreeing to pay $1 million for FCPA violations. From 2000 to 2003 the company reportedly spent over $10 million on about 315 various trips for approximately 1,000 Chinese government officials. This included all expense paid trips […]
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Staples and HP have been sued by a California man, who accuses the two of price-fixing. Ranjit Bedi claims that HP approached Staples, asking that the company stop selling third party ink cartridges for HP printers. In turn, Bedi claims, Staples was given over $100 million in market development funds to only sell HP […]
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Stolt-Nielsen’s amnesty has been reinstated and the company’s Chief Executive, Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, is “pleased” that he doesn’t have to go to jail - a fate suffered by three top brass of the company’s co-conspirators in a 2002 antitrust case. This is the latest (and final?) development in an ongoing case of “he said, […]
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She’s mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore…and now she’s going to “fight like hell” to do something about it. Apparently a record-breaking fine of $1.3 billion against elevator cartels didn’t get the message across as clear as she’d like (note: fines levied against cartels could be as steep as […]
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