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 [...]

Today, in a Denver courtroom packed with former US West and Qwest employees who lost their savings in the bankruptcy of the company, a federal judge sentenced the former chief executive who presided over the company’s demise to six years in prison. Judge Edward Nottingham also ordered the ex-CEO, Joseph Nacchio, to pay a $19 [...]

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 [...]

The SEC announced yesterday that it unanimously approved a new auditing standard and other measures intended to increase the accuracy of financial reports while reducing unnecessary costs, particularly for smaller public companies. The Commission is hoping that this new management guidance, Auditing Standard No. 5 (which replaces Auditing Standard No. 2), will make Section 404 [...]

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, Steph [...]

According to media reports and court filings, a hedge fund trader has pled guilty to buying and selling stocks based on tips about changes in UBS’s analyst stock ratings. The trader, Mark Lenowitz used inside information about planned ratings changes when he traded securities at hedge funds Chelsey Capital and Q Capital Investment Partners. Lenowitz [...]

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 [...]

As the Toronto Star is reporting, a Canadian couple is being accused of illegal insider trading stemming from a deal that he learned about through recovering emails on behalf of executives at the company where he worked. According to the Ontario Securities Commission, Shane Bashir Shuman, who worked in the IT department of MDS Sciex, [...]

The French competition regulator, Conseil de la Concurrence, has fined the country’s three mobile telephone companies (Orange France, FranC’aise du Radiot, and Bouygues Telecom SA) a total of $631 million for illegally restricting competition. Investigators found that between 1997 and 2003, the operators regularly exchanged information about new and canceled contracts and used this information [...]

Land O’Lakes, Inc. has been ordered to pay a Colorado feed manufacturer $15.2 million after a federal jury found that the company knowingly infringed upon the manufacturer’s trademark. Cache La Poudre sued Land O’Lakes in 2004, alleging that the company began rebranding its lines of show feed under the brand name “Profile,” the same name [...]

According to an exclusive report coming out of Bloomberg, Medtronic, the world’s largest maker of electronic heart devices, has agreed to pay more than $75 million to settle lawsuits claiming it hid defects in its defibrillators. Medtronic has been facing approximately 2,000 claims over battery defects in the defibrillators which are potentially fatal and had [...]

Verizon Wireless could find itself paying more than $8 million to settle claims that it violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and sent out over 10,000 junk faxes to business in Louisiana, Florida and Alabama. While this case (one of about a dozen of its kind against Verizon) has been settled for $6 million, the [...]

A former Pfizer employee is trying to get a class action lawsuit filed against the company after 17,000 of Pfizer’s employees had sensitive personal information posted online by a third party. The information included names, social security numbers, cell phone numbers and “bonus information”. The suit is asking for Pfizer to provide long-term identity theft [...]

TRACE International, a non-profit membership association (and important partner of the Ethisphere Council) that helps companies combat bribery, announced the creation of a new database that can help businesses track the prevalence of bribery attempts and requests. This new online tool, called BRIBEline, is backed by many leading organizations and companies such as Wal-Mart, International [...]

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 [...]

Agreeing to pay the federal government $16.5 million, Mellon Bank settled claims that it allowed overworked employees to destroy thousands of federal tax returns and payments in 2001. Mellon had a contract with the I.R.S. to process income tax returns and tax-payment checks. Its employees, feeling overwhelmed and unable to meet the deadlines, destroyed over [...]

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. [...]

The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets are reporting a large amount of suspicious option trading in advance of the Hilton-buyout by Blackstone Group announced on July 3rd. As Dow Jones reported: Traders booked massive profits in positions on Hilton Hotels Corp. as the stock surged 26% after the company said Blackstone Group will [...]

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 [...]

The SEC filed lawsuits against five former executives of Veritas Software on the grounds that they each played a role in an accounting fraud, itentionally manipulating the company’s financial performance over the course of three years. While the former controllers of the company will pay $278,000 to settle the allegations against them, three of the [...]

A jury awarded a former Target employee nearly $1 million in response to his lawsuit against the retail giant. James Patton, who was demoted and then terminated following two weeks of service with the Oregon National guard, sued Target citing federal and state laws, which prohibit discrimination against military personnel and wrongful discharge. The jury [...]

A lawsuit against Fidelity Investments accuses the mutual fund giant of deliberately avoiding and violating portions of the U.S. Patriot Act. The whistle was blown on the company by, of all people, one of its former compliance officers. What has resulted is a mess of finger-pointing, additional lawsuits, and rush to put a seal on [...]

Former Pacific Consolidated Industries (PCI) executive Leo Winston Smith has been arrested on charges of violating the FCPA, money laundering, and tax offenses. Smith allegedly took part in a plan to bribe a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence official with the intent of obtaining high-value contracts with the U.K. Royal Air Force. From 1993 to [...]

The Justice Department has announced it is opening an investigation into American Express Bank International related to “black market exchange accounts.” Red flags were raised with the Drug Enforcement Administration after American Express disclosed that it reserved $60 million to deal with matters dealing with money laundering issues in its most recent 10-Q. This is [...]

A former Richmond grocer who was once hailed as the nation’s most successful minority grocer was awarded $16 million by a jury from a lawsuit in which he accused grocery giant Supervalu of forcing him out of business. Jonathan F. “Johnny” Johnson’s suit claimed that Supervalu defrauded him by singling him out, then extending high-interest [...]