CorpWatch Exclusives

Killing Clean Energy Laws: Tar Sands Lobby Does Washington by Geoff Dembicki May 5th, 2011 Tar sands from Alberta have enabled Canada to become the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. Tom Corcoran, a Washington lobbyist, is paid to promote this rapidly growing industry that produces some of the most emissions-heavy gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel on the planet.

Indian Roads Endanger Ways of Life: The Role of Wilbur Smith Associates by Nityanand Jayaraman January 18th, 2011 A U.S.-based company is planning a system of elevated highways in Chennai, India, that will despoil natural resources that humans and wildlife have shared for millenia, environmentalists and villagers claim. Wilbur Smith Associates has won approval for the projects, they further charge, through deceptive practices and corporate slight of hand.

Citizens United v. America's Citizens: A Voter's Guide October 22nd, 2010 The midterm elections are days away, but the winners are virtually certain: the corporations and conservative operatives like Karl Rove who have taken advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to establish a well-heeled “shadow party” of networked trade associations and G.O.P. front groups.

Dollar Stores: Top Link in the Sweatshop Chain by Kent Paterson October 6th, 2010 A growing group of chain-store corporations that cater to America's poor with cheap goods are classifying workers as managers. By categorizing employees as salaried managers these dollar stores avoid paying overtime wages that the Fair Labor Standards Act mandates for hourly workers.

Global Horizons Indicted for Human Trafficking by Pratap Chatterjee September 15th, 2010 Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiter, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and document servitude" of some 400 Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S.

Billion Dollar Audit Missed by Pentagon Watchdog by Pratap Chatterjee August 30th, 2010 Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel even though it had billed for $1 billion worth of work over the last four years, largely done in Afghanistan.

Gulf Dispersants: BP and Nalco Play Toxic Roulette by Terry J. Allen July 19th, 2010 BP has dumped almost two million gallons of dispersants from Nalco in the Gulf of Mexico that is disguising the extent of the Deepwater spill and the inability of existing technology to mitigate the disaster. Even if BP eventually staunches the hemorrhage of oil, devastating toxins will linger for decades.

U.S. Congressional Wartime Commission Targets Armed Contractors by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch June 23rd, 2010 This week, almost a decade after the U.S. "War on Terror" began, the Commission on Wartime Contracting held two days of hearings into the role of private contractors in conducting and supporting war. The Congressional witness table included Aegis, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Curiously, Blackwater was not called; and the CEO of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions failed to appear.

The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report by Antonia Juhasz, True Cost of Chevron May 25th, 2010 Chevron's 2009 Annual Report celebrates 130 years of Chevron operations. We, the communities and our allies who bear the consequences of Chevron's offshore drilling rigs, oil and natural gas production, coal fields, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have a very different account to offer.

ADM's New Frontiers: Palm Oil Deforestation and Child Labor by Charlie Cray, Special to CorpWatch May 18th, 2010 ADM has moved beyond the days of blatant price-fixing that landed its top execs behind bars. But the company's forays into new global agricultural markets bring charges of complicity in forced child labor and rampant deforestation. Critics assert that the conglomerate's embrace of self- regulation and voluntary guidelines is but a cynical ploy to deter effective reform.

BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous? (2000) by Kenny Bruno May 12th, 2010 In 2000 British Petroleum launched an expensive ad campaign, re-branding its corporate image into the eco-friendly "BP: Beyond Petroleum.” We said it then. When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that's greenwash. Three long weeks into the BP oil disaster roiling the Gulf of Mexico, CorpWatch's December 2000 skewering of its new image sadly, bears repeating.

Afghanistan, Inc.: A CorpWatch Investigative Report (2006) by Fariba Nawa, Special to CorpWatch April 30th, 2010 The recent boom in humanitarian aid has an underbelly largely invisible to charity sector outsiders. “Easy money: the great aid scam," packs a biting critique (Linda Polman, The Sunday Times Online, April 25). In 2006, CorpWatch’s "Afghanistan, Inc.", cited by Polman, drilled down on reconstruction dollars, in what’s become known as “Afghaniscam.” We bring our report to you again.

Afghanistan Spy Contract Goes Sour for Pentagon by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch March 16th, 2010 Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have hired a company called International Media Ventures to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a complaint filed by the CIA and revealed by the New York Times on March 15.

Protesters in Eastern India Battle Against Mining Giant Arcelor Mittal by Moushumi Basu, Special to CorpWatch March 2nd, 2010 In the rural, tribal lands of Eastern India, protesters are going head-to-head with world steel giant Arcelor Mittal. “We may give away our lives, but we will not part with an inch of our ancestral land," the villagers cry. "The forest, rivers and land are ours. We don't want factories, steel or iron. Arcelor Mittal Go Back.”

DynCorp Oversight in Afghanistan Faulted by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch February 26th, 2010 Afghan police are widely considered corrupt and unable to shoot straight; they die at twice the rate of Afghan soldiers and NATO troops despite $7 billion spent on training and salaries in the last eight years. A new high-level report says that the State Department's contract with DynCorp is at fault.

Asia Inhales While the West Bans the Deadly Carcinogen by Melody Kemp, Special to CorpWatch February 16th, 2010 Asbestos, a known carcinogen, causes 100,000 occupational deaths per year. Although banned in much of the world, asbestos is a common and dangerous building block in much of Asia’s development boom, and its export remains both legal and profitable -- to the health detriment of the region.

Agility Attempts to Vault Fraud Charges by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch February 1st, 2010 Agility, a Kuwait-based multi-billion dollar logistics company spawned by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, is facing criminal charges for over-billing the U.S. taxpayer on more than $8.5 billion worth of food supply contracts in the Iraq war zone. If the lawsuit is successful, the company could owe the U.S. government as much as $1 billion.

Shed a Tear for Our Democracy by Robert Weissman, Public Cititzen January 22nd, 2010 Patronage from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the U.S. policy making process. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled that these corporate giants have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Temping Down Labor Rights: The Manpowerization of Mexico by Kent Paterson, Special to CorpWatch January 6th, 2010 In the globalized electronics production chain, Mexico serves as the main assembler of Asian-produced components for electronics exported to the United States. Mexico's labor force is increasingly supplied by temporary workers employed through domestic and transnational corporations like Manpower.

The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble by Andrew Nikiforuk, Special to CorpWatch December 14th, 2009 Patrick Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc, is bullish about the future of unconventional oil from Canada’s massive tar sand deposits. His company not only operates North America’s longest crude oil and liquid pipelines, but transports 12 percent of the oil that the U.S. imports daily. Canada’s bitumen, or dirty crude, lies under a forest area the size of England and is arguably the world’s last remaining giant oil field.