The US Justice Department is investigating whether IBM violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Bloomberg reported on Friday. In Poland, the probe is examining a transaction that the Polish Central Anti-Corruption Bureau was already in the process of studying, the company said. The DoJ probe comes as IBM is attempting to settle with the SEC over activity in China and South Korea. In March 2011, the company said it had agreed to pay $10 million to settle with the SEC over allegations that it bribed officials to win at least $54 million in government contracts. The alleged bribes in IBM’s SEC case took place from 1998 through 2009 and were made by employees at three subsidiaries of IBM, as well as LG IBM PC Co., a joint venture with LG Electronics Inc., according to the SEC filing. The SEC said cash payments to South Korean officials from 1998 to 2003 totaled $207,000. In China, IBM created “slush funds” at local travel agencies that were used to pay for overseas vacations by government officials, according to the SEC. IBM employees also gave presents, such as cameras and laptop computers, to Chinese officials, according to the complaint. US District Judge Richard Leon, who has had the case under review, said a condition of the deal is that IBM would be required to report any future law enforcement or administrative probes to the court, according to Bloomberg. IBM is cooperating with the investigations, the company said in the filing. The 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits companies or individuals headquartered in the US from paying bribes to foreign officials in order to win business. At the same time, foreign companies and nationals also can be prosecuted if their corrupt acts were committed in the US. IBM’s filing doesn’t give further detail on the transactions in Argentina, Bangladesh and Ukraine that the DoJ is investigating. Ed Barbini, an IBM spokesman, said in an email on Thursday that the company has a “robust and effective compliance program.”“While we will not comment on the specifics of this investigation, it is noteworthy that many such investigations result in no findings of wrongdoing,” Barbini said. “However, if it turns out that our Business Conduct Guidelines have been violated then we will address it promptly and effectively.” Despite the probe, IBM shares rose 1.4 per cent to $202.39 yesterday in New York. The stock has climbed 5.7 per cent this year. … Read More
Bitcoin vs. Big Government
Interest in Bitcoin has surged along with its valuation. Last
week saw its exchange rate soar past $100 for the first time ever,
landing the virtual currency on the front pages of The
Washington Post and the Financial Times. Yet the
media frenzy, which has focused on the rapidly rising valuation and
its possible causes stemming from the bank crisis in Cyprus, is
overlooking Bitcoin’s true radical significance—that it can’t be
controlled by government.
In his new book,
This Machine Kills Secrets, Andy Greenberg recounts
the history of the 1990s cypherpunk movement that paved the way for
WikiLeaks and Anonymous. The early Internet’s crypto-anarchists
foresaw a future world in which widely available cryptography
secured personal anonymity and privacy to such an extent that it
threatened the authority of the state. Their key insight, Greenberg
explains, is that anything that can be done cryptographically can
be done without government oversight.
Before eBay or WikiLeaks, cypherpunks like Tim May imagined
online markets for information in which buyers and sellers
transacted anonymously using untraceable digital cash. Anything
from state secrets to private credit reports would no doubt become
available for the right price. These ideas were notoriously taken
to the next level by the radical libertarian Jim Bell who proposed
a system ;for anonymously crowdfunding the assassination of
corrupt government officials.
While almost all the technology necessary for such black markets
was available when the cypherpunks were writing, there was one
conspicuous exception: true digital cash.
Until Bitcoin, virtual currencies have in one way or another
relied on a third party intermediary, such as a bank or a credit
card company, to prevent “double
spending.” In the physical world, if I give you a $20 bill, I
will no longer have it. You can’t be as sure of that, however, when
the cash is a digital file that can be easily copied. The solution
has been to have a trusted intermediary keep a ledger of balances
and deduct a transaction’s amount from the payer’s account, and add
it to the payee’s.
Intermediaries, however, are the regulatory chokepoints at which
government can apply pressure. For example, after WikiLeaks
released its trove of State Department cables, payment processors
such as Visa and MasterCard succumbed to political pressure and
refused to transmit donations to the group. PayPal even froze its
account so that the group couldn’t access funds it had already
collected. As as a result, WikiLeaks has been driven to near
bankruptcy.
Today, online gambling is illegal under federal law and the
prohibition is enforced through payment processors, which are not
allowed to send money to offshore casinos. The infamous Stop Online
Piracy Act (SOPA) also targeted financial intermediaries and would
have banned payments to suspected pirate websites.
Bitcoin is revolutionary because it solves the double-spending
problem without employing an intermediary; there is only the payer
and the payee. The system accomplishes this by distributing the
ledger of transactions across a peer-to-peer network of users, much
like BitTorrent. This allows a record to be kept of all transfers
so that the same cash can’t be spent twice, but because it’s
distributed, there’s no one central authority keeping the ledger.
This makes bitcoins true digital cash. Like dollar bills or euro
coins, if you hand them over to a payee, you will no longer have
them. And because there is no third party running the ledger, there
is no one for the government to pressure or regulate.
(Article continues below video “Bitcoin & the End of
State-Controlled Money.”)
Much of the discussion around bitcoin today centers on whether
it will work as money. Money has three
functions: it serves as a medium of exchange, a unit of
account, and a store of value. Because Bitcoin is distributed,
there is no central banker that can decide to inflate the money
supply. Some argue this makes it a good store of value, like gold
or Picassos, while others counter that Bitcoin’s historic
volatility make it a poor store of value and an unreliable unit of
account to boot. Given the public’s fear of currency devaluation in
Europe and the U.S., the question of whether you can stash your
wealth in bitcoin to avoid capitol controls and inflation is what
has been driving much of the media’s coverage of the currency.
Time will tell whether the gold bugs or the skeptics are right,
but what’s being overlooked is that it doesn’t matter whether
Bitcoin makes it as a store of value or a unit of account for it to
work as a medium of exchange. Even if the Bitcoin market remains
volatile and never pans out as a good store of value or unit of
account, one can imagine users converting their dollars or euros to
bitcoins for just long enough to make a transaction; perhaps just
minutes. And as long as it works as a medium of exchange, it is the
true digital cash that was missing from the cypherpunks’
predictions.
With a little bit of effort, today you can purchase bitcoins anonymously with
physical cash. You could then do all sorts of things the
government doesn’t want you to do. You could buy illegal drugs on
the notorious Silk
Road, an encrypted website that has been operating with
impunity for the past two years facilitating annual sales estimated
;at almost $15 million. You could gamble at various casinos or
prediction markets, buy contraband Cuban cigars, or even give money
to WikiLeaks. Dissidents in Iran or China can use Bitcoin to buy
premium blogging services from WordPress, which now accepts payment
in the currency. Perhaps more importantly, Bitcoin makes the
cypherpunks predictions of markets for stolen secret information
and even assassinations feasible.
Last month, the Treasury Department
issued guidance on how it plans to regulate Bitcoin exchanges.
This is good news for the currency since it implies the government
is looking to regulate its use rather than prohibit it. Confronted
with Bitcoin’s potential, it’s not reasonable to expect that
Treasury’s money laundering cops would simply let it be. So it’s a
sensible approach for them to take because Bitcoin, much like
BitTorrent, can be used for both licit and illicit purposes and
would in any event be difficult to shut down.
Today physical cash is anonymous, which helps keep one’s
purchases private. Cash is also difficult to control: a $100 bill
never gets “declined.” As we move to an all-digital world, we
should ensure that we retain some type of digital cash that is not
tied to a financial intermediary that can spy on or control
transactions—even if, just like physical cash, it is put to
nefarious uses. The real question facing Bitcoin today, then, is
whether law enforcement and regulators will continue to show as
much restraint as they have so far. … Read More
When Society Disintegrates: A preview Of What May Be Coming To Your City
If society devolves to the point where “only the people can restore order” do you trust that all of the other “people” will be fairer, less prone to corruption than anyone else? … Read More
Big banks take advantage of money laundering epidemic in US
Simon Johnson, the former top IMF economist and a current professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, published a blistering editorial in Bloomberg News this week that makes an argument for imprisoning the banksters responsible for the nation’s last financial crisis — and possibly the next one — much to the chagrin of Attorney General Eric Holder.Large international banks, writes Simon, are guilty of money laundering to the degree of epidemic proportions. If recent admissions from the biggest name in the American economy are any indication, though, they have nothing to fear.“Governor Jerome Powell, on behalf of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, recently testified to Congress on the issue, and he sounded serious. But international criminals and terrorists needn’t worry. This is window dressing: Complicit bankers have nothing to fear from the U.S. justice system,” writes Simon.Speaking to Congress last month, US Attorney General Eric Holder admitted, “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” Johnson, on the other hand, implores the US Justice Department in his latest op-ed to follow in the footsteps of other countries and to once and for all condemn the corrupt practices that banks have been given a mere slap on the wrist for — and now harsh prosecutions.In the editorial published Sunday evening, Johnson attacks both the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve for failing to take action against the big banks.“There may be fines, but the largest financial companies are unlikely to face criminal actions or meaningful sanctions,” he writes. “The Department of Justice has decided that these banks are too big to prosecute to the full extent of the law, though why this also gets employees and executives off the hook remains a mystery. And the Federal Reserve refuses to rescind bank licenses, undermining the credibility, legitimacy and stability of the financial system.”Last December, the US government demanded Standard Chartered Bank — the fifth largest bank in the UK—pay up $327 million in fines after being caught guilty of laundering a quarter of a trillion dollars. Bartlett Naylor, the financial policy reform advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, writes for Huffington Post that the sum is “paltry” when put into perspective of what banks should be paying, but even the attorney general — the nation’s top prosecutor — cannot figure a way to pursue much more.In that regard, writes Simon this week, there’s very little to worry about for banking that may be considering colossal laundering schemes. “[I]nternational criminals and terrorists needn’t worry,” he writes.Is the US actually becoming a haven for international banks to commit massive money laundering operations? The nations’ top economists seem to admit as much, but why, then, isn’t anything being done? “If you or I tried to launder money, even on a small scale, we would probably go to jail. But when the employees of a very big bank do so — on a grand scale and over many years — there are no meaningful consequences,” writes Johnson.According to the attorney general, it might just not be possible. “I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large,” Holder said on Capitol Hill last month. … Read More
Fear and Loathing in Nicosia
After only a day here, it’s become very clear that the people of Cyprus are very concerned, some even scared – about a financial contagion and shock treatment which threatens their future prosperity.Soon, they will get another ‘bad’ injection, which we are told will be deadly. So we are treating this like a crime scene. The next injection will be administered by ‘Dr Troika’. Just utter his name in public here and you will see wrinkles in people’s faces.Dr Troika’s injection is the equivalent, in economic terms, to an experimental vaccine – designed to treat a financial contagion which originated in Greece and Wall Street. It is certain to provoke an auto-immune reaction.The people of Cyprus did not ask for this, yet, they are being forced to take it by the mad economic doctors in Brussels, Berlin and the IMF. It’s the sort of bad medicine that the banking syndicates and corrupt officials have been administering for a while now, in order to take down governments and economies all over the globe with devastating effect.I arrived in Cyprus on Wed night, and headed in to the capital city of Nicosia with my colleague Jason Liosatos, in order to further document what many were expecting to be a run on the island’s banks at 12pm after 12 days of closed doors to hundreds of thousands of residents whose savings has been locked inside the banks during the extended “bank holiday”. This particular ‘holiday’ will go down in history as one of the worst on record.The lines began forming around 11am, but to everyone’s surprise – except the Cypriots’ of course, the lines were not as long as many expected, and not as long as the corporate mainstream media expected either, most of whom were hoping for a fight in front of both the old town’s Bank of Cyprus (good bank) and Laiki Banks (bad bank) branches. The majority of those queuing were older people, but these included many of the top depositors whose life savings have been clipped by the Troika.We asked around and quickly learned why the Cypriots did not all rush the bank on Thurs at high noon. Many residents told us that there was a community feeling that islanders did not want to stress the Bank of Cyprus by storming its branches. Strict capital controls have been put into place to slow the cash haemorrhaging this week, with most residents restricted to 300 euros per day, for seven days, followed by an official assessment of the situation.There’s a lot of talk of Cyprus’s potential riches from untapped gas and oil, and many residents believe the bankers have taken down the economy here in order to exchange the island’s future riches for a series of expensive (if not utterly debilitating) ECB and IMF loans. But that’s still a ways off, and more pressing matters are salary cuts, pension cuts, a flight of wealth off of the island, and of course – the fact that people’s money is being literally stolen from their accounts.When elites go to war, and fight their financial battles, it seems that the only victims are the average mom and pop. After meeting 5 or six local residents and business owners, it became abundantly clear that even the street sweepers knew that a criminal banking syndicate had held a gun to their heads and then stolen their money in broad daylight.A retired resident, Mr Andreas, explained also, “We Cypriots have dignity. I have had only 3 euros in my pocket for the last week – enough only to buy a cup of coffee, but I will not line up today and beg the Troika for my daily withdrawl of 300 euros.”He adds, “Our friends in Europe have treated us like gangsters and criminals. Our government leaders have made mistakes, yes. But why are we being forced to pay? It’s blackmail. This is stealing from the people, that’s all.”Not surprisingly, there were no Russian Oligarchs waiting to get inside any of the island’s branches on Thursday, many of them apparently withdrew their money from still open Russian branches of Laiki and Cyprus banks – at the same time that the banks in Cyprus were shut.Mr Kiriakos, a local bar owner lamented over a beer with us before closing shop, explaining the reality of this latest banker-led heist in Cyprus. “I’ve been working all my life – 30 years, so I can send my daughters to university and give them a better life than I had, and they can just come and take that money? They are running a big casino, when they win they put the money in their pockets, but if they lose they take the money out of our pockets.” … Read More
What’s really behind Israel’s Gaza flotilla mea culpa?
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to accept Israel’sapology and to normalize relations between the two nations, tiesthat abruptly broke down following the UN report in 2011 madepublic the storming of the Gaza bound aid flotilla. Turkey has alsoagreed to drop its criminal charges against Israeli military brass,including those against former chief of staff Lt.-General GabiAshkenazi.A normalisation of relations between Israel and Turkey?Nearly three years and a scathing UN report later, with nineTurkish dead and bereaving families – many would ask, what tookIsrael so long to respond, and why now?In some ways this is unchartered territory, because seldom hasIsrael ever reached out and offered a retraction for its sins ofthe past. It’s certainly a positive move from a Turkish diplomaticperspective.The extremely rare apology by PM Benjamin Netanyahu has left somesurprised and many skeptics wondering what Israel might beexpecting in return for such a conciliatory announcement.Israel’s international image has long been tarnished by its refusalto engage in diplomatic talks, or observe dozens of UN resolutionsthat have been passed in an attempt to bring it in line withinternational norms.Netanyahu described the Gaza Flotilla incident in 2010 as“unintentional”, but some passengers aboard the ill-fatedMavi Marmara are not convinced.Former US Marine and humanitarian aid worker Ken O’Keefe was asurvivor of the Flotilla, and isn’t convinced of the IsraeliPM’s sincerity, saying “Insincere apologies offered andaccepted by corrupt governments is nothing more than theatre, it isan insult to the memory of those martyred on the Mavi Marmara andto the people of Gaza themselves.” “I would certainly ask any sane people to consider if it weretheir brother, their father, their husband who was murdered, wouldan apology and money be sufficient for you?”Quoting Israel’s own “eye for an eye” foreign policydoctrine of retaliation, and judging by Israel’s own past recordfollowing comparable incidents, if the shoe were on the other foot- with nine dead Israeli passengers, arguably this would haveprompted a stern reaction in the form of either targetedassassinations, or a surgical airstrikes by Israel against Turkishassets, as a result of such a high-profile internationalincident.If readers are in any doubt as to the plausibility of thisscenario, consider the quid pro quo which followed Hezzbolah’s 2006capture of only two Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and UdiGoldwasser. The result was a 33 day bombardment and military siegeof Lebanon which left an estimated 1,191 Lebanese civilians dead,4,409 injured and hundreds of thousands more internally andexternally displaced – a huge black mark on Israel’s own record ofwanton aggression against its neighbors.This latest apparent olive branch by Tel Aviv to Ankara shouldalso be underscored by Israel’s own much-maligned history, lackingany apologies or statements relating to the Palestiniansthemselves, perpetual victims of violence and oppression sinceIsrael forcibly etched itself onto the region in 1948. O’Keefe seesthis political reality reflected in the flotilla incident.He explains, “They (flotilla victims) died because theyrefused to accept the unacceptable and what is unacceptable is thecollective punishment of 1.6 million people in Gaza, over half ofwhich are children. There is only one thing that will even comeclose to justice and that is a 100% end of the blockade and massivecompensation to the traumatised, injured, grieving people of Gaza,as well as the complete rebuilding of Gaza.”More than likely, this latest announcement was a result of USPresident Barrack Obama’s need for a win, albeit even a small one.It’s clear that this time, Obama had to return to Washington DCwith something other than AIPAC photo-ops, and the normalobligatory public relations visit to Israel required by successiveUS Presidents.More to the point however, is Israel’s cooperation with the USand British-led plans for the region.Turkish and Israeli motives in SyriaHelping to patch-up relations with Turkey is one thing, butObama’s political appearance in Israel and the recent patch upbetween Turkey and Israel cannot be looked at without taking intoaccount the wider geopolitical chessboard.Both countries have a stake in whatever comes from the presentupheaval in Syria. From a US and NATO standpoint, it is highlyunfavorable – and unlikely, that a NATO country like Turkey and USpartner state Israel are not on the same page regarding the NATOAllies’ plans for regime change in Syria.Prior to the Gaza Flotilla raid by Israel, IDF fighter jets wereallowed to train in Turkish airspace for long-range missions, andwould likely require the cooperation of Turkey for any futurepre-emptive strike against Iran.Although at odds over their security interests and Syria’sgeopolitical alignment with Iran, both Israel and Syria haveexperienced relative détente since a UN brokered armistice wassigned between the two countries in 1974. But recent Syrian rebelexploits in the Golan Height have jarred the balance of thatsituation, and Israel would likely make the first move should theUN’s UNIFIL peacekeeping force, or Damascus ever appear too weak tomaintain their hold over the Golan security buffer zone. If theBashar al Assad regime does fall in Syria, most analysts andpundits are in agreement that the country will descend into asectarian and paramilitary chaos not unlike that witnessedfollowing NATO last regime change operation in Libya – an outcomewhich would all but guarantee instability and more violence in theregion for many years to come.Although Netanyahu and Erdogan are said to have agreed onworking together to improve the humanitarian situation in thePalestinian territories, they also mentioned they would cooperateto do the same in Syria.In addition to absorbing thousands of Syria refugees from theconflict, Israel’s neighbor Jordan has already taken on the role offacilitator for the US, Britain and France’s proxy war in Syria, byallowing itself to be the main conduit for the transfer of weaponsand training for the confab of Syrian Rebel militants and some alQaeda-affiliated fighting groups – all backed by the NATO alliesunder the table, as it were. From a NATO standpoint, Israel willalso need to be on the same page as Jordan.In addition to all this, Israel has long coveted both land andnatural resource interests in Syria’s Golan Heights region, whichis water for Israel’s agricultural industry and also the recentannouncement and pending license application for plans for Israeldevelop newly discovered oil in that area.This latest maneuvering may appear like a bizarre U-turn byIsrael, and not without some similarly bizarre comments from theTurkish side too. In an oddly worded communiqué, the Turkish PMErdogan’s office also released a statement on Friday saying,”Erdogan told Binyamin Netanyahu that he valued thecenturies-long strong friendship and cooperation between theTurkish and Jewish nations”. Some might ask here- whichcenturies-old Jewish nations was he referring to? It’s probablyjust a political gaffe.The statements, views andopinions expressed in this column are solely those of the authorand do not necessarily represent those of RT. … Read More
Myanmar farmers face land grabs
http://www.youtube.com/v/KUjxVojWVCA?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata More: Myanmar farmers face land grabs
