Category: corporate corruption

Britain has issued more than 120 financial penalties to offshore companies that have failed to comply with transparency legislation designed to uncover illicit wealth hidden in the UK property market. The Register of Overseas Entities was created after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to help the UK government crack down on oligarchs and other kleptocrats. Individuals that own British property through offshore vehicles had until the end of January 2023 to register such entities and publicly reveal their ownership at Companies…

LONDON: The Bank of England on Wednesday said its multiple interest-rate hikes aimed at cooling high inflation would prolong a cost-of-living crisis but stressed UK retail banks could contain the fallout. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said in a report that almost five million UK homeowners would see mortgage repayments soar over the next three years. Retail banks tend to pass on BoE rate hikes, hitting customers whose home loans come with variable rates and those whose fixed-term deals…

Consumers who want to watch movies or TV-shows online are limited to the content that they are permitted to see in their home country. This means that the Netflix or Amazon library in one country can be entirely different to those made available in a neighboring nation. This is a direct result of the territorial licensing deals the entertainment industry is built on. However, now that people are more connected online, these restrictions are an increasing source of frustration. That…

  WASHINGTON – The US government concluded that short-seller Hindenburg Research’s allegations of corporate fraud against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani weren’t relevant before extending his conglomerate as much as US$553 million (S740 million) for a container terminal in Sri Lanka, a senior US official said. Allegations in a scathing report by US-based Hindenburg Research, which erased around US$100 billion from the Adani Group’s market value earlier this year, were front and centre as the International Development Finance Corp., or DFC,…

Note from Corruption Ledger Spotify is a publicly traded company headquartered in Luxembourg. Swedish founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon started Spotify as a small start-up in Stockholm, Sweden in 2006.  Job cuts don’t just affect those who are laid off. It creates a culture of fear for remaining employees, who must work additional hours and maneuver to adapt to new demands, the reorganization of departments, and new or altered functions assigned to them. Expectations are often unrealistic, which also…

Mercer Financial Advice has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $12 million penalty for breaching fee disclosure obligations and for wrongly charging fees to customers, ASIC has reported. “This is a significant penalty for a financial advice provider,” said Sarah Court (pictured above), ASIC deputy chair. “Mercer failed in its obligation to provide fee disclosure statements to clients, provided misleading information in the disclosure statements it did provide, and charged its clients fees for services it was…

WASHINGTON: US inspectors announced fines against China-based firms Thursday, as part of a broader effort to hold US-listed Chinese companies up to American auditing standards amid simmering geopolitical tensions. These included PwC affiliates in Hong Kong and China, alongside a Chinese audit company. The $7.9 million in penalties unveiled by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) represent some of the highest imposed on any firm globally, it said. They mark the first time it “has been able to bring enforcement action…

Beijing has defended its prosecution of two Canadians for espionage, after The Globe and Mail reported that Michael Spavor blames intelligence work done by Michael Kovrig for their nearly three-year-long detention. Mr. Spavor is seeking a multimillion-dollar settlement from Ottawa, two sources told The Globe, alleging he was arrested in China in late 2018 because he unwittingly provided intelligence on North Korea to Mr. Kovrig, which was later shared with Canada and allied spy services. In a statement Sunday, China’s…

An Ontario justice has thrown out a proposed $200-million class action lawsuit against legal software provider Dye & Durham Ltd. DND-T over price hikes and broken promises by the Toronto software company. Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan last month dismissed the action brought by real estate law firms and D&D clients Burford Law Professional Corp. and Tais Davis. D&D spokesman Wojtek Dabrowski said in an e-mail: “We are pleased with this outcome and glad to put this meritless lawsuit…

With Russian tanks and troops descending on Ukraine in early 2022, Cyprus became a hotbed of financial activity. The island country has long been known as an offshore transit point for the fortunes of Russian billionaires, and as sanctions loomed over many of them last year, Cyprus financial services firms fielded a series of urgent demands to transfer funds and shareholdings, newly revealed records show. In one case, documents show that two Russian billionaires, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, needed…

Italy has just delivered a devastating blow to the controversial agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and billionaire magnate Bill Gates for global food control, with the historic approval of a ban on the production and sale of cultivated meat. The Chamber of Deputies voted 159 in favor, 53 against, and 34 abstentions in support of the bill presented by Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida. The legislation […] prohibits the production and market introduction of foods and feeds derived from cellular…

Backgrounder. Imran Khan is a former Pakistani cricket player, politician, philanthropist, and prime minister of Pakistan (2018–22). He became a national hero by leading Pakistan’s national team to a Cricket World Cup victory in 1992 and later entered politics as a critic of government corruption in Pakistan. Khan’s calls for investigations into government corruption, along with supporting evidence released in the Panama Papers, led to the resignation of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistani businessman and politician who served as prime minister in…

In September, a class action lawsuit (Mannacio v. Discover Financial Services, et al., No. 23-cv-06788 (N.D. Ill.)) was filed against Discover Financial Services (“Discover”) alleging Discover and certain current and/or former executives violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Specifically, the class action complaint alleged that the defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Discover maintained deficient risk management and compliance procedures; (ii) as a result, Discover, among other things, failed to comply with applicable…

Thomas Flohr, owner of luxury airline VistaJet, must fight a claim that he defrauded a Guernsey investment partnership two decades ago after London’s High Court refused to dismiss the case.  Flohr, who denies the allegations, had tried to have the case thrown out on technical grounds related to the circumstances of the case, in which a previously dissolved partnership was resurrected in 2021 in order to file the suit.  Frontiers Capital initially sued for breach of contract in 2021 but…

Airbnb is facing the prospect of a tax bill worth hundreds of millions of euros following an Italian court ruling in an evasion case. Prosecutors in Milan say a judge authorised the seizure of €779.5m (£677m) from the short-term property rental platform. They said it related to an alleged failure by the company to comply with laws that require Airbnb to pay Italian tax authorities 21% of landlords’ rental income in the country. The requirement dates back to an EU…

Telecom Italia SpA has agreed to sell its land-line network to KKR & Co. in a government-backed deal valued at around €22 billion ($23.6 billion), according to people familiar with the matter. The phone carrier’s board of directors, after a marathon meeting that started on Friday, approved the grid sale to the US private equity giant on Sunday without making it conditional on a vote by shareholders, the people said, asking not to be identified as the decision isn’t yet public. The approval…