Category: corporate corruption

Democracy Now speaks with Democratic Congressmember Al Green of Texas a day after he was censured by the House of Representatives for disrupting President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. His dramatic protest came near the start of Trump’s record-long speech. In instantly iconic images, Green rose and shook his walking cane at the president on the rostrum, telling him “You have no mandate” to cut vital government programs. Green was ejected from the chamber. This comes…

Video: The asset-management giant BlackRock, which has invested huge amounts in Russian state-owned energy and banks, and which is also invested in rebuilding Ukraine, is now buying property that will give them control over 43 ports in 23 countries, including the ports of Balboa and Cristobal, located at either end of the Panama Canal. Other ports are in Mexico, the Netherlands, Egypt, Australia, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Unusually for him, Donald Trump made no great fuss as he signed one drily worded executive order last Tuesday. Public attention was distracted that day – by the headline-grabbing drama of Elon Musk bludgeoning his way through the federal bureaucracy, by immigrants deported to Guantánamo Bay, and by the torrent of other directives Trump has issued since his inauguration last month. But Trump’s 69th executive order of his second presidency, under the deceptive title of “Ensuring accountability for all agencies”,…

The villa is stunning. The private swimming pool; the lush, landscaped terrace with firepit; the long dining table with its expansive balcony view; the pingpong table; the piano. But the jewel in the crown, according to the Airbnb listing, is the experience of watching the sun rise over the nearby mountains from the luxury of the generous master bedroom. The villa with views of the Judean mountains is in a settlement located on land seized from Palestinians and considered illegal…

Austria’s legal fight against Hungarian nuclear reactors built by Russian companies is valid, the adviser to the EU’s top court ruled. Back in 2017, Brussels approved a Budapest request to finance the construction of a new nuclear power plant, Paks II, in the heart of the country. It was to be built by a Russian company, Nizhny Novgorod Engineering. Austria sued and lost a lower court case in 2022. Today, the advocate general of the Court of Justice of the…

Officials in St. Petersburg announced controversial plans to equip thousands of the city’s surveillance cameras with ethnicity recognition software, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Thursday. Oleg Kapitanov, head of interethnic relations for the St. Petersburg city government, said around 8,000 of the city’s 102,000 cameras will feature the new ethnicity recognition technology. According to him, the system will help combat “the formation of ethnic enclaves” and “prevent social tension.” Kapitanov said the St. Petersburg city government purchased an ethnic recognition software…

YAPP USA Automotive Systems Inc., a corporation with its principal place of business in Michigan, has agreed to pay $14,208,496 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to obtain a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for which it was not eligible. Congress created the PPP in March 2020 to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans suffering from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the PPP, eligible businesses could receive forgivable loans…

Note: View the settlement agreement here. Health Net Federal Services Inc. (HNFS) of Rancho Cordova, California and its corporate parent, St. Louis-based Centene Corporation, have agreed to pay $11,253,400 to resolve claims that HNFS falsely certified compliance with cybersecurity requirements in a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to administer the Defense Health Agency’s (DHA) TRICARE health benefits program for servicemembers and their families. In 2016, Centene acquired all of the issued and outstanding shares of Health Net…

On Sunday, Mumbai Police arrested Dharmesh Paun, private developer from Kandivali, in connection with the New India Cooperative Bank scam (NICB). According to the police, Paun allegedly received illicit funds from the bank’s General Manager and Account Head, Hitesh Mehta, who was also arrested Saturday. The scam was uncovered during an audit at the bank’s headquarters in Prabhadevi last Wednesday, when RBI officials discovered funds missing from the vault. Mehta, who has been with the bank since 1988, reportedly confessed…

Veterans Affairs leaders dismissed more than 1,000 employees Thursday night as part of a White House purge of government workers still in their probationary periods, an effort designed to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce. In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the elimination of the posts will save roughly $98 million annually, funds that can be redirected into veterans’ care and benefits. “We thank these employees for their service to VA,” he said. “This was a…

Video: House Democrats attempted to enter a Department of Education building on Friday in protest of proposed actions from President Trump but were blocked.

Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC) has agreed to pay $29.74 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations of defective pricing on contracts for F-35 military aircraft. This payment is in addition to $11.3 million that LMC previously paid to the Department of Defense (DOD) for the same undisclosed cost and pricing data on some of the same contracts. LMC, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, is one of the world’s largest defense contractors. According to court documents, between 2013 and 2015, LMC inflated…

Video: During remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) criticized the Trump Administration for moving the country towards ‘oligarchy’.

Amazon.com was sued on Wednesday by consumers who accused the retailing giant of secretly tracking their movements through their cellphones, and selling data it collects. According to a proposed class action in San Francisco federal court, Amazon obtained “backdoor access” to consumers’ phones by providing tens of thousands of app developers with code known as Amazon Ads SDK to be embedded in their apps. This allegedly enabled Amazon to collect an enormous amount of timestamped geolocation data about where consumers…