A new study released today by Ethical Investment Research Service (EIRIS) revealed that, despite recent high profile abuses, U.S. companies still lag behind their European counterparts when it comes to doing business ethically. However, businesses have significantly improved corporate social responsibility (CSR) across the globe today than 25 years ago, the study says.
As report […]

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The SEC announced the settlement of a civil lawsuit against an employee of IBM for aiding Dollar General Corporation’s accounting fraud. The final judgment ordered Kevin B. Collins to pay $95,000 for his role in assisting Dollar General’s violations of various SEC codes.
Collins allegedly proposed to Dollar General to push forward a $10 million […]

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The State Attorney General of North Carolina announced another settlement in the environmental services bid rigging scandal that has been investigated over the past three years.
In this latest settlement, CBM Environmental Services and its CEO will pay $350,000 for conspiring to rig bids for cleanup work associated with leaky underground petroleum tanks.
CBM is the eighth […]

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In a “reverse discrimination” lawsuit, a federal jury has ruled that Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. did indeed discriminate against a white former maintenance manager at its old Landover coffee-roasting plant based on race.
John Sullivan was hired in 1999 and then later demoted and replaced by a black subordinate. He claimed an African […]

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Delta & Pine Co. (a cotton seed producer) has reached a settlement with the SEC to pay $300,000 over charges that it illegally bribed Turkish government officials in order to get documentation that reportedly would allow the company to operate in the country.
According to the SEC, Delta & Pine (which has since been acquired by […]

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The Department of Justice has announced that two former executives of ITXC Corporation have pleaded guilty to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and one former executive has been already been sentenced for the violations.
Steven J. Ott and Roger Michael Young, former executives of the global telecommunications company, pleaded guilty on July 25, […]

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The DOJ has announced a grand jury indictment of U.S. citizen Jason Edward Steph on charges that he conspired to make corrupt payments to Nigerian officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
Steph, age 37, is a former executive of a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc. According to the indictment, […]

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Two former Ferrari engineers accused of stealing trade secrets have been convicted of industrial espionage and sentenced to jail by an Italian court over charges of stealing confidential engineering data from Ferrari and using it to design cars for motor racing rivals Toyota.
Sensitive data stolen from Ferrari included engineering documents, test data, and other undisclosed […]

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A recent United Nations meeting on responsible business called attention to a company’s ethical performance as an important consideration for investors deciding which companies to back.
Citing findings from a recent survey by Goldman Sachs, Ling asserted that companies with strong ethical standards outperform the market. For example, companies on an ethical list compiled by […]

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According to media reports, the Coca-Cola Co. has filed a criminal complaint against executives of French food and drink maker Danone, as well as its PR firm Euro RSCG. In this complaint, the company accuses them of orchestrating a smear campaign against Coke’s Dasani water brand in the Argentinian market - a violation of […]

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Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) has agreed to pay the $2.6 million to settle False Claims Act allegations. The company allegedly violated the civil False Claims Act by submitting inflated claims for payment between 2002-2005 for programs run by and through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and […]

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Office Depot is feeling the heat surrounding its recent warning to investors that sales were down due to a weak economy. The problem? It seems that some Wall Street analysts were privy to the information a week earlier.
According to the analysts, the warning they received from the Office Depot Investor Relations Department re-emphasized earlier alerts […]

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From our “in-case-you-missed-it-while-out-on-your- holidays-during-July” file the DOJ announced gleefully that four former executives with computer networking and security vendor Enterasys Networks Inc. had been sentenced to long prison terms for their roles in accounting fraud at the company.
The executives were originally convicted on conspiracy and fraud charges during a December 2006 trial.
In U.S. District Court […]

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As reported in the UK’s Guardian and BBC News, global cosmetics giant L’Oréal and its outside employment services firm Adecco were found guilty last week of racial discrimination after they sought to exclude non-white women from promoting a line of shampoo.
The French campaign group SOS Racisme brought the case against the Garnier division of […]

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According to media reports and public announcements from the company, software maker SAP has decided to take a different tact in its trade secret litigation with Oracle:
“Yes, we did it… but we didn’t see it.” Um…what????
SAP admitted this week that a subsidiary had completed “inappropriate downloads” of documents belonging to arch competitor Oracle. […]

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Actually the proper term from the nuclear cold war drill of the 1950s is “duck, cover and roll.” However, the “roll” part seems inappropriate today as Online Tire Review (yes, there really is such a website - www.tirereview.com) broke the news yesterday that Foreign Tire Sales (FTS), the New Jersey importer at the center […]

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced a lawsuit against CVS after customer records with personal information such as driver license and credit card numbers were found in the trash behind one of the drugstore chain’s Texas stores.

According to Reuters…
Investigators with the office of the attorney general found the documents in a dumpster behind a […]

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The SEC has filed and settled a FCPA books and records and internal controls violations charge against El Paso Corporation. At issue is that the NYSE-listed Texas energy company, during 2001 and 2002, indirectly paid nearly $5.5 million in illegal surcharges to Iraq in connection with its purchases of crude oil from third parties […]

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According to the Chinese Supreme People’s Court, the number of commercial corruption cases coming before Chinese courts rose steeply to 5,662 in the first nine months of 2006 despite harsher penalties.
Xiong Xuanguo, vice president of the SPC, said courts at all levels dealt with 5,429 commercial bribery cases involving civil servants during the first three […]

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