Corruption Ledger

A former Tokyo Olympics official arrested on bribery charges was granted bail on Monday. The Tokyo District court set bail for Haruyuki Takahashi at 80 million yen, NHK reported. Prosecutors have raided multiple companies in recent months in a widening corruption scandal related to the Tokyo Games. Takahashi, a former member of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics board and before that an executive at advertising giant Dentsu Inc, was arrested in August on suspicion of receiving bribes from Olympic sponsors. Reuters…

KPMG India settled a proceeding before the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) on 6 December 2022; but there is barely any coverage by the Indian media. PCAOB, which audits public companies, censured KPMG Assurance and Consulting Services LLP (KPMG India) and the engagement partner (EP) Sagar P Lakhani for quality control failures, supervisory failures and documentation failures while working with a public company in 2017. It led to a monetary penalty of US$1mn (million) on KPMG India and…

An internal investigation by parent company ByteDance confirms that employees obtained personal data from reporters who were probing Beijing’s influence on the app’s activities ByteDance, the Chinese technology giant that owns TikTok, admitted Thursday that several employees of the social network spied on journalists from Forbes magazine who were investigating the link between the company’s US branch and China. The information first came to light in October but was confirmed on December 23 by Forbes, which had access to an…

As the U.S. deals with its deadliest overdose crisis to date, a national crime-prevention group is calling on the Justice Department to clamp down on social media’s role in the spread of fentanyl, the drug largely driving a troubling spike in overdose deaths among teenagers. The National Crime Prevention Council sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling for an investigation. The group known for ads featuring McGruff the Crime Dog is especially concerned about the sale of…

Zyno Medical LLC (Zyno), a medical device manufacturer headquartered in Massachusetts, has agreed to pay $493,140 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by causing the submission of claims to Medicare in connection with the intravenous (IV) administration of medication using devices Zyno knew were materially defective. The settlement announced today resolves allegations that Zyno knowingly distributed defective IV administration sets that were used to deliver controlled dosages of chemotherapy and other medications to Medicare beneficiaries. As…

German authorities said on Thursday they had arrested an employee of its foreign intelligence service (BND) on suspicion of sharing state secrets with Russia this year and thereby committing treason. Police arrested the suspect, a German citizen identified as Carsten L, on Wednesday in Berlin, the federal prosecutors office said. It said police also raided his flat and workplace as well as those of another person. “The accused is suspected of state treason,” federal prosecutors said in a statement. “In…

A former chairman and two other senior officials of major business suit retailer Aoki Holdings Inc admitted in court Thursday to having bribed a former Tokyo Olympic organizing committee executive to become a sponsor for the sporting event held last year. Hironori Aoki, 84, along with two others, has been charged with providing a total of 28 million yen to Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, who had influence over the committee’s marketing division, charged with sponsorship selection. The Tokyo District Court hearing…

The Kremlin on Thursday accused Kyiv and Washington of turning a deaf ear to its concerns and charged the United States was using Ukraine as a battleground to weaken Russia. It came as President Vladimir Putin insisted Russia was aiming for a speedy end to the fighting. “Our goal is… to end this conflict. We are striving for this”, he told reporters. “We will seek to make sure that it all ends, and the sooner, the better. “All conflicts end,…

Meta Platforms Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative-backed Byju’s —​​India’s largest online education firm — has been accused of bullying parents to buy courses. What Happened: India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, or NCPCR, said the edtech company is targeting first-generation learners and forcing parents to buy courses after purchasing their phone numbers, ANI reported. Priyank Kanoongo, the chairperson of NCPCR, said that the body has initiated action and will send a report to the government. “We came…

Turkey on Tuesday lashed out at Sweden’s refusal to extradite a top reporter that Ankara has demanded in exchange for its ratification of Stockholm’s NATO membership bid. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants Sweden to return dozens of people that he suspects either of involvement in a failed 2016 coup or of membership of a banned Kurdish militia that Washington and the European Union designate as “terrorists”. But the now-closed Today’s Zaman newspaper’s editor-in-chief Bulent Kenes was the only person Erdogan…

BioTelemetry Inc. and its subsidiary CardioNet LLC, both headquartered in Pennsylvania (collectively “BioTelemetry”), have agreed to pay $44,875,000 to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting claims to Medicare, TRICARE, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program for heart monitoring tests that were performed, in part, outside the United States, and in many cases by technicians who were not qualified to perform such tests. The United States alleged that CardioNet improperly…

Advanced Bionics LLC, a Valencia, California-based manufacturer of cochlear implant system devices, has agreed to pay more than $12 million to resolve allegations that it misled federal health care programs regarding the radio-frequency (RF) emissions generated by some of its cochlear implant processors. “The United States expects device manufacturers to provide accurate information when they claim that their devices meet certain tests or standards,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Department of Justice’s Civil…

A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland returned an indictment that was unsealed today charging two men for their roles in schemes to defraud investors in CytoDyn Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company (OTCQB: CYDY) based in Vancouver, Washington. According to court documents, Nader Pourhassan, 59, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Kazem Kazempour, 69, of Potomac, Maryland, allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud investors through false and misleading representations and material omissions relating to CytoDyn’s development of…

The panel probing last year’s assault on the U.S. Capitol on Monday recommended Donald Trump be charged with crimes including insurrection — raising the stakes in an investigation that could put the former president in jail. The House of Representatives select committee called for the indictment — as well as charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States — after an 18-month probe into the storming of Congress on Jan 6, 2021. At least…

As 2022 comes to a close, is it possible to predict a trend for corporate and white-collar enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023? Yes: enforcement will increase in 2023, and it will increase yet more in 2024. Understanding the Department as a dispersed, human institution that responds to incentives explains why.

North Korea said Monday it fired a test satellite in an important final-stage test for the development of its first spy satellite, a key military capability coveted by its leader Kim Jong Un along with other high-tech weapons systems. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency also released low-resolution, black-and-white photos showing a space view of the South Korean capital and Incheon, a city just west of Seoul, in an apparent attempt to show the North is pushing to acquire…