The Komisar Scoop » Fraud

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.

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.

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.

Palin’s campaign operations chief was VP of IDT, telecom investigated for bribery

Lucy Komisar — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:38:30 +0000

Sept 2, 2008 - Michael Glassner, in charge of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s campaign operations, was till April 18th a vice-president of IDT, the New Jersey-based telecom fined $1.3 million by the FCC in July for failing to file its Haiti contract. The contract, effective in 2004, revealed payments to an offshore shell company in the Turks & Caicos which sent only part of the fees to Haiti’s phone company. The case is under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. A former IDT insider, Michael Jewett, who managed the company's Caribbean region, says the missing money represented kickbacks to former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI

Lucy Komisar — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:54:27 +0000

Inter Press Service (IPS), April 4, 2007 Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father.

US/Haiti: Top Republicans Leave Telecom Accused of Bribery

Lucy Komisar — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:00:39 +0000

Inter Press Service (IPS) - Nov 6, 2006 The company is under investigation by the SEC, the United States Attorney in Newark, New Jersey, and a U.S. federal grand jury for allegedly paying bribes to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, former president of Haiti. Five nationally prominent US Republicans, the independent board members of a corporation that has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get a sweetheart telecom deal in Haiti, are leaving its board. The company is IDT, the world's third-ranked international phone company. IDT is run by James Courter (shown here), a former New Jersey Republican congressman. The other Republicans are Rudy Boschwitz, former senator from Minnesota; James S. Gilmore III, former Virginia governor; Thomas Slade Gorton III, former senator from Washington State; Jack Kemp, former congressman from New York and 1996 vice presidential nominee; and Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN under President Ronald Reagan.

The Fall of a Titan

Lucy Komisar — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 04:38:23 +0000

AlterNet, March 17, 2005. Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, one of the world’s richest men, and head of AIG, one of the world’s largest financial companies, was forced to resign this week as prosecutors closed in on him and the company. Given his economic and political power, the fall of Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the 59th richest man in America and CEO of the American International Group (AIG), the world's second-largest financial conglomerate (after Citigroup), is stunning.