Corruption Ledger

Aug 10, 2022. A federal jury yesterday convicted a former Media Partnerships Manager for the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region at Twitter of acting as a foreign agent without notice to the Attorney General, conspiracy, wire fraud, international money laundering, and falsification of records in a federal investigation. The verdict follows a two-week trial before the Honorable Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen for the Northern District of California. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Ahmad…

Aug 10, 2022. A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois convicted two former precious metals traders at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMorgan) today of fraud, attempted price manipulation, and spoofing in a multi-year market manipulation scheme of precious metals futures contracts that spanned over eight years and involved thousands of unlawful trading sequences. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Gregg Smith, 57, of Scarsdale, New York, was an executive director and trader on JPMorgan’s precious…

Aug 8, 2022. The United States of America has been authorized to seize an Airbus A319-100 (the Airbus) owned and controlled by sanctioned Russian oligarch Andrei Skoch, pursuant to a seizure warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which found that the airplane is subject to seizure and forfeiture based on probable cause of violation of the federal anti-money laundering laws. According to the seizure warrant and affidavit sworn out today: Pursuant to the…

Aug 6, 2022. Democracy Now Video

Aug 5, 2022.  Violence in Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands Provinces – The violent episodes that broke out in the provinces of Enga, Hela and Southern Highlands last May have since escalated, resulting in a humanitarian situation. According to unofficial estimates, over 300 people died, 25,700 students are unable to attend school, and 557,800 people have no or limited access to basic health services due to damaged facilities, lack of staff and disrupted supply chains. The Government positioned 120 troops…

Aug 5, 2022. The US-Led Drive to Isolate Russia and China Is Falling Short While the US and its allies have sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, half of the countries in the Group of Twenty have not signed up. When Group of Seven leaders gathered in the Bavarian Alps in June, they pledged to stand with Ukraine for the long haul. Their Group of 20 counterparts are proving less supportive. Comprising nations that account for some 85% of…

Aug 5, 2022. More than eight years after a former pharmacist sued Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb and other drugmakers for allegedly skimping out on Medicaid rebates, Lilly’s day in court has finally come. Now, a jury has found the Indianapolis-based company liable for defrauding the nation’s Medicaid program and ordered it to shell out $61 million in damages. Because the damages are trebled under the False Claims Act, meanwhile, the final judgement will exceed $183 million, the law firm…

Democracy Now Video

Why do we care? China considers Taiwan to be part of China and doesn’t appreciate the political U.S. visit, which China sees as showing support for Taiwan’s democracy. This is exactly what Pelosi just tweeted: Our visit reiterates that America stands with Taiwan: a robust, vibrant democracy and our important partner in the Indo-Pacific. See Tweet by @SpeakerPelosi China, a communist nation, has promised to conquer Tawian on several occasions. Furthermore, Pelosi has a history of being critical of China…

Jul 30, 2022. Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has conceded an extension to the date for the return of election results could face legal challenges after a general election marred by violence and corruption claims. Voting concluded on July 22 in the Pacific island nation’s election, which was blighted by reports of dozens killed, thousands forced to flee homes, and allegations of ballot tampering, despite major police efforts to stop violence. In the wake of the turmoil, the…

Jul 27, 2022. The United States Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the Austin, Texas-based Cassava Sciences regarding allegations that the company falsified data to support Simufilam, its drug candidate for Alzheimer’s disease. The probe could swing both ways, leading to criminal charges or end with no resulting lawsuit. The probe, revealed in an exclusive report by Reuters, will be led by investigators experienced in determining whether or not entities have defrauded consumers, investors or government agencies, according…

Jul 27, 2022. Pfizer and BioNTech are fending off lawsuits over their mRNA vaccine technology. Pfizer and BioNTech Launch Phase II Trial of Enhanced COVID Vaccine Pfizer and BioNTech initiated a Phase II trial of an enhanced COVID-19 vaccine. This next-generation bivalent vaccine candidate, BNT162b5, is made up of RNAs encoding enhanced prefusion spike proteins for both the wild-type Wuhan strain and an Omicron variant. The spike protein has been modified with the goal of increasing the immune response to…

Jul 21, 2022. Along with axing a Phase II schizophrenia program and touting the potential of lecanemab, its next shot at Alzheimer’s disease, Biogen announced Wednesday that it is forking over $900 million to resolve a lawsuit. The whistleblower claim was brought by former employee Michael Bawduniak, who accused the company of paying off doctors to favor its multiple sclerosis drugs over those of its competitors. The trial for this case was scheduled to begin July 26. The payment, quietly…

Jul 17, 2022. Records Show Fauci Agency ‘Gain-of-Function’ Concerns about Wuhan Lab Going Back to 2016 (Washington, DC) Judicial Watch announced today that it received 1651 pages of records from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealing an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016….

July 13, 2022. DOJ Press Release. Brian Markus, a former employee at Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc., will be awarded $2.61 million for his role as a qui tam whistleblower in a False Claims Act case. In the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) press release, two U.S. Attorneys highlighted the importance of whistleblowers in cybersecurity enforcement. The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act enable private citizens to file lawsuits on behalf of the government if they know of an individual…

Jul 13, 2022. Diabetes giants Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, plus a trio of pharmacy benefit managers will have to face racketeering charges over claims they systematically hiked the price of insulin drugs. U.S. District Judge Brian Martinotti on Friday denied motions by the defendants—which also include PBM bigwigs OptumRx, Caremark and Express Scripts—to scrap claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Martinotti did drop antitrust claims under the Robinson-Patman Act, meant to stop distributors from…