Archive for the ‘Fraud’ Category

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Reward for fraud: $285 billion in Pentagon contracts

February 3, 2011

The Corruption Perception Index produced annually by Transparency International becomes meaningless relative to the scale of fraud and corruption with large contracts in the developed world and which do not seem to be reflected in the CPI.

An AP report carried by 660news.com reports:

Hundreds of defence companies that defrauded the U.S. military between 2007 and 2009 still received $285 billion in contracts from the Pentagon during the same period, a U.S. senator said Wednesday.

Citing a January report prepared by Pentagon acquisition officials at Sanders request, the senator said the bulk of the contracts, just over $280 billion, went to 211 companies that had civil judgments against them or settled fraud charges of more than $1 million.

During the same period, 30 defence contractors were convicted of criminal fraud, but still were awarded $682 million in new work, according to the Pentagon’s report.

Among the contractors listed in the report is AEY Inc., a Miami, Florida-based company that received a $300 million contract to supply ammunition to Afghan security forces. AEY got the work despite a record of poor performance on other government contracts.

The fraud involved shipment of millions of rounds of banned Chinese-made military ammunition that was repackaged to appear of Albanian origin. After nearly $67 million in payments, the Afghan ammunition contract was terminated in May 2008. The owner of AEY was sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2009 to a fraud conspiracy charge.

In the report, defence officials listed a series of actions the military has taken to guard against contractor wrongdoing, including the formation of a working group focused on procurement fraud.

I am quite sure that many lobbyists, middlemen, bureaucrats and politicians all received their share of the largesse in these Defence Contracts. The margins available in Defence contracts far exceed those available in other large infrastructure contracts.

Related posts:

  1. https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/corruption-in-the-european-union-is-alive-and-well/
  2. https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/chief-risk-officer-of-bayerische-landesbank-arrested-for-50-million-bribes/

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Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Fraud, US | Comments Off on Reward for fraud: $285 billion in Pentagon contracts

European commission extends carbon market freeze indefinitely

January 27, 2011

And about time too.

A raft of countries (including Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States) have already shelved cap and trade schemes.

Of course the fundamental fraud that is carbon trading goes much deeper than just the  recent thefts of credits. Hopefully it will never be revived!

image wattsupwiththat.com

The Guardian:

The European commission’s emergency suspension last week of trading in carbon allowances to put a halt to rampant theft of credits by hackers has been extended indefinitely until countries can prove their systems are protected from further fraud.

While the suspension had been expected to end last night, Brussels now says that the freeze in trades had been imposed to give the commission executive some breathing space to figure out what to do.

“The suspension last week was only a transitional measure to give the commission and member states the time to assess the situation and decide the way forward,” the commission’s climate spokeswoman, Maria Kokkonen, said. “Okay, this hurts, but it must hurt in order to make things more secure, more robust. Evolution through crisis.”

A total of 30 countries that participate in the Emissions Trading Scheme, Europe’s flagship climate change policy, must now send assessments of the situation performed by independent monitors. On 19 January, the commission suspended “spot” trading in allowances after up to 2m permits worth around €30m were stolen by computer hackers. Brussels said that half the participating countries were not sufficiently secure. Permits went missing in Austria, the Czech Republic and Greece.

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Posted in Alarmism, Environment, Ethics, European Union, Fraud | Comments Off on European commission extends carbon market freeze indefinitely

Cold Fusion: Another fraud or a breakthrough?

January 22, 2011

In March 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have achieved cold fusion at room temperature but their experiment could not be reproduced.

File:Igloo.jpg

Cold fusion lab (igloo) under construction : image wikipedia

While cold fusion is considered highly improbable, it is not impossible and there remains a nagging suspicion (hope?) that some “miracle”, perpetual machine may suddenly appear in the most unlikely place and perhaps even outside main-stream science.

Physorg reports on another claim this time from Bologna, Italy:

Despite the intense skepticism, a small community of scientists is still investigating near-room-temperature fusion reactions. The latest news occurred last week, when Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusiondevice capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W. Last Friday, the scientists held a private invitation press conference in Bologna, attended by about 50 people, where they demonstrated what they claim is a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor
. Further, the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase; they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.

Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants……….

…… Rossi and Focardi’s paper on the nuclear reactor has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals, but the scientists aren’t discouraged. They published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics, an online journal founded and run by themselves, which is obviously cause for a great deal of skepticism. They say their paper was rejected because they lack a theory for how the reaction works. According to a press release in Google translate, the scientists say they cannot explain how the cold fusion is triggered, “but the presence of copper and the release of energy are witnesses.”

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video.html

But not everybody is dismissing this latest claim.

Steven Krivit of the New Energy Times describes why he believes that the Rossi and Focardi LENR device is probably real and is an advancement on the Piantelli process.

But there seems to be a vested interest here and I remain unconvinced.

Especially since they claim that they cannot fully explain what happens but are going to be producing “commercial units” anyway it sounds like a scam. They will probably sell some units to the gullible  before they disappear from view.

Just another fraud.

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Posted in Fraud, Physics, Science, Scientific Fraud | 4 Comments »

Autism activism vs. Big Pharma: A plague on both your houses

January 6, 2011

I do not know for sure but it seems likely that there is no strong link between autism and the MMR vaccine.

But the British Medical Journal which has now accused Dr. Wakefield of deliberate fraud with regard to his paper in the Lancet making the link does not cover itself with any glory. It only begs the question as to what standards they actually do have.

The “vaccination industry” promoted by Big Pharma also does not inspire much confidence that anything other than the bottom line is their primary concern. As was seen in the H1N1 vaccination circus, the beneficial links between the medical establishment (WHO) and vaccine manufacturers is widely prevalent and highly suspect. Parasitic lawyers who also have a vested interest in “proving” the link between autism and anything which could help their litigation do not impress either.

Dr Andrew Wakefield

Dr Andrew Wakefield, whose research claimed a link between MMR vaccinations and autism, denies inventing data. (Reuters: Luke MacGregor)

Dr Wakefield now accuses Big Pharma (including Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries) and the journalist Brian Deer of running a smear campaign against him. That may well be so but it does not justify his payments of some £400,000 from lawyers pursuing autism litigation. Whether his book is actually to defend his work or has some other motive is highly unclear.

Dr. Wakefield, British Medical Journal, Brian Deer, Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, The Lancet —-

A Plague on all your houses!

Sources:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/06/3107885.htm?section=justin

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/06/autism.vaccines/?hpt=T1

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Posted in Ethics, Fraud, Medicine | 1 Comment »

Many faculty members involved in fake institute at IIT Kharagpur

December 31, 2010
The Main Building of IIT Kharagpur

IIT Kharagpur: Image via Wikipedia

The Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur is one of the original 5 IIT’s and perhaps the one enjoying the highest reputation of them all. But the case of the fake institute  – Institution of Electrical Engineers (I) – being run apparently by a few rogue faculty members is now spreading and revealing that many faculty members were involved. The investigations which were first to be conducted by a panel of academics will now be shifted to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Many voices were raised against the proposed composition of the panel apprehending a “whitewash”.

The case was first broken in October by the Calcutta Telegraph:

The Centre today asked IIT Kharagpur to give a “factual account” of a professor’s alleged role in running an unapproved institute and duping students into believing it was a branch of the tech school. Amit Kumar Ghosh, the head of the department of aeronautical engineering, has been accused of having a hand in the running of the Institution of Electrical Engineering (IEE) in Kharagpur and offering diploma courses without the approval of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

The ministry is livid that a senior faculty member could be involved in “fraudulent” activities. “The IIT Kharagpur authorities have been asked to furnish a factual account on the issue,” a ministry official said. A senior IIT official said Ghosh had been removed as aeronautical engineering department head following the allegations. An inquiry has been ordered.

The IEE has been operating from a temporary campus and offering courses such as a diploma in electrical engineering. Ghosh has allegedly been serving as the institute president. J.K. Tiwary has apparently been managing the institute for the last two years and luring students by claiming that the IEE is a branch of IIT-Kharagpur. Trouble started this year after students found out that the IEE had no connection with IIT Kharagpur. It did not even have AICTE approval, mandatory for an institute teaching any technical course.

Furious, the students registered a complaint with the IIT Kharagpur director. “They have spoiled our career. We want justice,” M. Ramu, a student of IEE, said.

In the beginning of December, evidence surfaced that many more faculty members were involved. The Times of India reported that:

IIT-Kharagpur has all along been in denial that its faculty members were involved in the running of fake institute — Institution of Electrical Engineers (I). But the hollow claims now lay in tatters, thanks to a photographic proof showing teachers of the institution along with J K Tiwari, the brain behind the institute, who, incidentally, has nothing to do with IIT-Kharagpur.

Police recovered the photograph during a raid and are soon going to question faculty members — both serving and retired — who are seen along with Tiwari. The photograph shows A K Ghosh, former head of department of aerospace engineering and an ex-chief vigilance officer, who has since been suspended for his alleged involvement in the scam.

The others caught in freeze frame are N K Kishore, professor, department of electrical engineering; Jayanta Pal, head of department, electrical engineering; Pallab Kumar Chattopadhyay, retired professor of agricultural and food engineering; Punyabrata Dutta Gupta, retired professor of electrical engineering; J C Biswas, retired professor of electronics & electrical communication engineering.

Tiwari, who conceived IEE (I), and even managed to get an official quarter for the institute, is seen sitting along with a section of IIT-Kharagpur faculty members. Police sources said they are investigating if the photograph was taken during the convocation of IEE (I) as claimed by many students of the fake institute.

Yesterday, the Indian Express revealed that

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will probe the fake institute scam that was allegedly run from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, by some of its faculty members……. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is learnt to have decided that a CBI probe was the best course to follow and the issue would be formally referred to the agency in the next few days.

The stench of corruption in the Indian body academic is not restricted to the private “education industry” but is present even in the most respectable institutions.

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Posted in Corruption, Education, Ethics, Fraud, India | 2 Comments »

Japan shelves carbon emissions trading scheme

December 29, 2010

Japan joins the growing list of nations who have shelved, postponed or cancelled carbon trading schemes (and there is not a single carbon trading scheme anywhere which is not built on fraud).

Reuters reports:

Japan postponed plans for a national emissions trading scheme on Tuesday, bowing to powerful business groups that warned of job losses as they compete against overseas rivals facing fewer emissions regulations.

The government has submitted a climate bill to parliament that includes a one-year deadline to design a national trading scheme. After Tuesday’s delay, that bill faces revisions in the next parliamentary session that begins in January.

The decision is a blow to the European Union’s hopes that other top greenhouse gas polluters will introduce emissions trading schemes and follows setbacks to similar efforts in the United States and Australia.

A U.N. meeting in Cancun, Mexico, this month failed to clear uncertainty over a global climate framework beyond 2012. This is likely to cause some big emitters to take their time in rolling out tougher greenhouse gas regulations, particularly for carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Neighboring South Korea has delayed the introduction of its emissions trading laws into parliament until February because of business concerns.

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Posted in Alarmism, Business, Fraud, Japan | 1 Comment »

Cancun kicks off with the Alarmist creed

November 29, 2010

The Cancun jamboree kicked-off today and started by reiterating the Global Warming Alarmist creed. Drastic – should we say Draconian? – measures would be needed. Some of the suggestions :

  • Stop economic growth in rich countries within 20 years
  • Introduce food rationing
  • Change lifestyles (reduce heating)
  • limit electricity usage
  • food transport be limited (to save on carbon footprint one understands!)
  • people compelled to use public transport

The usual dire warnings of rising sea levels, droughts in river basins and mass migrations were not left out.

It sounds remarkably like the rantings of Pentti Linkola and his ecofascism.

The Telegraph has the whole story but it requires a strong stomach to read it all in one sitting!

Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world


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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Fraud, UN | 1 Comment »

Cancún – Follow the money

November 28, 2010

Cancun Hotels & Resorts : image cancun-travelnet.com

While winter comes early to Europe and China with heavy November snow and temperatures down to minus 37 Celcius in N. Sweden, 15,000 of the faithful travel to the balmy, holiday resort of Cancún (min 21 deg C, max 29 deg C) for the UN / IPCC conference on climate change and to try and blow some life back into the carbon trading scheme.

That Cancún is just about money has become apparent especially since Copenhagen and Nagoya. But it is the unrestrained greed represented by the carbon-trading, money trail that is most telling.

A Global Investor Statement on Climate Change has been issued by:

259 investors – both asset owners and asset managers – that collectively represent assets of over US$15 trillion.

Reducing Risks, Seizing Opportunities & Closing the Climate Investment Gap

Investors are interested in the large potential economic opportunities that the transition to a low-carbon economy presents. In particular, investors are calling for:

  • Domestic policy frameworks to catalyze renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other low-carbon infrastructure, so as to provide investors with the certainty needed to invest with confidence in receiving long-term risk-adjusted returns.
  • International agreement on climate financial architecture, delivery of climate funding, reducing deforestation, robust measurement, reporting, and verification, and other areas necessary to set theglobal rules of the road, bolster investor confidence, and allow financing to flow.
  • International finance tools that help mitigate the high levels of risk private investors face inmaking climate-related investments in developing countries, enabling dramatic increases inprivate investment.

But Christopher Booker in The Telegraph gets it right:

These are the bodies (major banks, insurance companies and pension funds) calling most stridently for “government action on climate change”, because they are the ones who hope to make vast sums of money out of it. They are desperate for a treaty of the type they failed to get at Copenhagen – even more so since the collapse of the US cap and trade bill – because they see their chance of turning global warming into the most lucrative fruit machine in history dwindling by the month.

Top of their wish list is “a rapid time-frame” for implementing the UN’s REDD scheme, which would enable them to make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling the CO2 locked up in the world’s tropical rainforests as “carbon offsets”, thus allowing firms from the developed world to continue emitting CO2. Under this scheme, for instance, environmental bodies including the WWF hope to share in the $60 billion which they estimate as the “carbon value” of the Brazilian rainforest.

But nothing better betrays their gloom about any result from Cancún than that they at least want it to give “a clear mandate” for the adoption of “a legally binding agreement” at the UN’s next conference, due in South Africa next year.

(Seen first at http://climaterealists.com/index.php)

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Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, Fraud | Comments Off on Cancún – Follow the money

The Cancun hype begins – but it is all about money not climate

November 22, 2010

With one week left before the Cancun circus begins (UN/ IPCC Climate Conference from 29th November to 10th December), the mainstream media hype has begun.

Global CO2 expected to rise to record levels screams the Daily Telegraph. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to reach record levels this year, according to a new study, despite the recession and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases – but what that has to do with climate is uncertain. No doubt it has a great deal to do with pricing of the Carbon Trading market. As The Telegraph points out (inadvertently perhaps) this is just hype timed to come just before the UN jamboree.

The results of the study by the Global Carbon Project will be used to put pressure on environment ministers meeting in Cancun, Mexico this month for the latest UN meeting to come to a global agreement on cutting emissions.

The Cancun meeting itself is all about money and Carbon Trading. The collapse of the Chicago exchange and the growing realisation in Europe that Carbon Trading is just a scam is leading all those with a vested interest in carbon pricing to raise the spectres of carbon dioxide again.  Hopefully these efforts will be as useless as at Copenhagen but some “trading” being introduced through the back door is always a possibility.

The two main “money flows” that Cancun is concerned with is the carbon trading fraud and the diversion of funds to “developing” countries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. Just as with the Nagoya biodiversity conference a key objective is the redistribution of wealth. In fact biodiversity and climate are merely convenient scare stories which can act as vehicles for arranging for the flow of funds. A UN IPCC official admitted as much when talking about climate policy:

OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL: “That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all”.

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Posted in Air pollution, Alarmism, Climate, Development, Economics, Fraud, UN | 1 Comment »

Now Wall Street to crack down on insider trading

November 20, 2010

Two days after the Tokyo Stock Exchange attacked the “rampant” insider trading prevalent in Japan, US federal authorities after a three-year investigation, “are preparing insider-trading charges against consultants, investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders and analysts across the nation” according to the Wall Street Journal. Where Tokyo calls it “rampant” the US calls it “vast” and “pervasive”.

The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say.

The investigations, if they bear fruit, have the potential to expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in U.S. financial markets, including new ways non-public information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies, federal authorities say.

Among the expert networks whose consultants are being examined, the people say, is Primary Global Research LLC, a Mountain View, Calif., firm that connects experts with investors seeking information in the technology, health-care and other industries. “I have no comment on that,” said Phani Kumar Saripella, Primary Global’s chief operating officer. Primary’s chief executive and chief operating officers previously worked at Intel Corp., according to its website.

In another aspect of the probes, prosecutors and regulators are examining whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bankers leaked information about transactions, including health-care mergers, in ways that benefited certain investors, the people say. Goldman declined to comment.

Independent analysts and research boutiques also are being examined. John Kinnucan, a principal at Broadband Research LLC in Portland, Ore., sent an email on Oct. 26 to roughly 20 hedge-fund and mutual-fund clients telling of a visit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information,” the email said. “(They obviously have been recording my cell phone conversations for quite some time, with what motivation I have no idea.) We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman’s gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web.”

The investigations have been conducted by federal prosecutors in New York, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Representatives of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and the SEC declined to comment.

Another aspect of the probe is an examination of whether traders at a number of hedge funds and trading firms, including First New York Securities LLC, improperly gained nonpublic information about pending health-care, technology and other merger deals, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Read the article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704170404575624831742191288.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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Posted in Business, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud | Comments Off on Now Wall Street to crack down on insider trading

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