The Komisar Scoop » Corporate/Wall St.

Ex-employee who claimed firing over opposition to Haiti bribery settles suit against IDT

Lucy Komisar — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:06:53 +0000

Jan 24, 2011 - The lawsuit filed by a former employee against the Newark-based global telecom IDT is over. J. Michael Jewett, who was an IDT executive, claimed in 2004 that he was fired for opposing bribes to Haitian officials. Lawyers for both sides agreed to drop the complaint and counterclaims in an accord filed with the U.S. District Court in Newark on January 13th. This has not been reported before now. IDT spokesman Bill Ulrey said, "We have no comment…as usual. Thank you." Jewett's attorney William Perniciaro also declined to discuss the matter. When both sides don’t talk about an agreement to dismiss a case, that normally means a confidential settlement has been reached.

IDT’s imaginary “ethics letter”

Lucy Komisar — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:02:24 +0000

Sept 24, 2010 - Last Saturday, Barron's ran my story in which IDT CEO Howard Jonas admitted for the first time a suspect deal with then Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that involved sending payments due Haiti to a law firm in the Turks and Caicos. Jonas told me the company had gotten a lawyer's "ethics letter" clearing the deal. But he wouldn't provide it. A day before the story was to run, Barron's got a call from a lawyer of the firm representing IDT in a lawsuit by former IDT executive D. Michael Jewett, who says the company fired him for objecting to the offshore deal. He promised to provide the ethics letter. It was the end of day, Friday. The magazine noted that promise when it published the next day. Days later, the lawyer called to say he couldn't provide the letter because it was sealed. Hard to believe: there is no sealing order for the letter in the case docket.

Sodexo, exposed by Komisar for kickbacks, agrees to $20m settlement

Lucy Komisar — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:40:13 +0000

July 21, 2010 - The global food services company Sodexo, which I exposed last year for exacting "rebates" from suppliers and charging clients full price, has agreed to a $20 million settlement with NY Attorney General for that illicit practice.

The Wall Street ICEcapade

Lucy Komisar — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:04:10 +0000

The American Interest, July-Aug 2010 (online May 18, 2010) - As I write this, the U.S. Senate is debating a major financial reform bill in which the credit default swap, a kind of derivative, plays a significant part. An amendment to that bill, proposed by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), would ban banks from proprietary trading. There are a lot of high-rolling bankers who do not want that amendment to pass, because it will mess up their plans to repatriate foreign profits into the United States, untaxed, by trading in derivatives on their own accounts. The clearinghouse ICE Trust U.S. forms a central part of these plans. What is ICE Trust U.S., and who owns it? ICE US Holding Co., which was established in 2008 as the parent of ICE Trust U.S., is located in the Cayman Islands. Yet none of the owners of ICE US Holding Co. are based in the Caymans. Among the owners of the Cayman’s company are Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which are headquartered in New York. Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

IDT’s Voodoo Economics: Inside Justice Dept’s probe of telecom bribes in Haiti

Lucy Komisar — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:38:28 +0000

The Big Money, March 11, 2010 - When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January, IDT, the New Jersey-based global phone company, moved fast to help. It announced it was setting up calling stations at hotels and other sites so Haitians could use its Internet calling-service to reach family and friends around the world. It cut rates on its U.S. prepaid calling-card to 2 cents a minute to Haiti (at least for 12 days), donated 4,000 $2-prepaid calling-cards to Haitian community groups in New York and Florida, and said it would give some proceeds from prepaid calls to Haitian Red Cross relief. Such a warm, fuzzy response from a U.S. corporation often wins plaudits, though, of course, IDT has a business interest in the impoverished island. In 2005, in its latest publicly available figures, the company reported $4 million in profits from $17 million in revenues for routing calls there.

The ICE Age — big banks set up their own credit default swaps exchange

Lucy Komisar — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:21:58 +0000

portfolio.com, March 8, 2010 - One year ago, a group of financial institutions quietly launched ICE Trust, a new and theoretically safer way to trade derivatives, a key element of the financial crisis. As lawmakers debate reform, banks at the center of the storm are remaking the market—and stand to profit. As the financial crisis exploded with full force in 2008, it was obvious that something was gravely wrong with the huge, unregulated market for derivatives. Lehman Brothers had $738 billion of these contracts—which are based on the value of some other asset, such as a stock or a bond or a hog belly—on its books when it failed on September 14, 2008. Lehman certainly wasn’t alone. Over the next few months, insurer AIG reported as much as $53.5 billion of derivatives losses—losses that were linked to nearly one third of its $182.5 billion federal

CORRUPTION: U.S. banks abetting corrupt regimes, probe finds

Lucy Komisar — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:14:41 +0000

Inter Press Service (IPS), Feb 3, 2010 - The global bank HSBC may be running offshore accounts for central banks. According to a U.S. Senate investigation, an HSBC subsidiary in London called HSBC Equator Bank had a sister bank in the Bahamas. According to an internal e-mail, the bank told HSBC USA it had been providing offshore accounts to central banks for 20 years, because the banks wanted to avoid "Mareva" injunctions, legally enforceable orders to freeze funds.

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, GOP Candidate for NJ Governor, gets $ from IDT, NJ telcom investigated by Justice Dept for bribing Haitian officials

Lucy Komisar — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:22:17 +0000

Oct 22, 2009 - Back in 2004, when Chris Christie was the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, his office first heard allegations that IDT Corporation, a Newark, N.J.-based global telecommunications company, was involved in a case of international bribery. No federal criminal case was ever brought against IDT, in contrast to several successful federal prosecutions in similar cases elsewhere. The company is run by James Courter, a former Republican congressman from New Jersey. Fast forward to the present, and Christie is now the Republican candidate for the governor of New Jersey. And, an examination of campaign finance records shows, Christie has thus far racked up $26,800 in campaign contributions – earning him a total of $80,400 including state matching funds — from 27 individuals who could have a direct interest in the IDT case.

Exclusive: Florida banking agency helped Stanford set up unregulated office to sell his phony CDs

Lucy Komisar — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:18:26 +0000

State aided suspect in huge swindle

Miami Herald, July 5, 2009 -

Winner of second place for Business News, the National Headliner Awards Years before his banking empire was shut down in a massive fraud case, Allen Stanford swept into Florida with a bold plan: entice Latin Americans to pour millions into his ventures — in secrecy.

From a bayfront office in Miami in 1998, he planned to sell investments to customers and send their money to Antigua.

But to pull it off, he needed unprecedented help from an unlikely ally: The state of Florida would have to grant him the right to move vast amounts of money offshore — without reporting a penny to regulators. He got it.

The Real AIG Scandal: How the Game is Rigged at Wall Street’s Casino

Lucy Komisar — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:36:24 +0000

AlterNet, March 26, 2009 - Congress has deftly avoided the real story of AIG's collapse, which will make a few million in bonuses seem like peanuts. Most legislators at a House Finance subcommittee hearing last week deftly avoided the real story of AIG's collapse. Instead, they homed in on the public relations disaster of hundreds of top AIG officials and staff getting $165 million (later revealed as over $218 million) in bonuses. The key issue ignored by the congressmen and women was the potential catastrophe represented by as much as $2.7 trillion in AIG derivative contracts and how AIG and the U.S. government are dealing with them. To put that number in context, we've so far provided the company only about $170 billion.