| August 10, 9:00 PM
, 2020 | -
Alaska
Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty on charges that he lied about receiving $250,000 in gifts. Stevens testified that the items were not gifts, merely things he was holding onto for friends. “We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us,” he said.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 23, 2007 | - Apple CEO Steve Jobs was questioned by federal investigators about his role in an options backdating scandal.
| Source:
Reuters via eweek.com
|
| December 17, 2006 | - It was revealed that Senator
Bill Frist's
AIDS charity had paid almost a half-million dollars in consulting fees to Frist's political friends.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| December 11, 2006 | - It was revealed that billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues had not been spent, and the head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity was accused of graft.
| Source:
NYT
|
| November 12, 2006 | - Zama Ndebele, the wife of Premier S'bu Ndebele of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, promised to return her herd of Nguni cattle to the state in the wake of a cows-for-favors corruption scandal.
| Source 1:
Business Day
Source 2:
IOL
|
| October 23, 2006 | - Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was sentenced to 24 years in jail. “I feel terrible about what happened,” Skilling said, referring to the company's collapse, which cost investors and employees more than $62 billion in devalued stock and pension plans. “That's not to say I did something wrong.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 15, 2006 | - Dan Halutz, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, was under fire for selling all of his stocks in the hours before the war began.
| Source 1:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
The New York Times
Source 3:
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Source 4:
The New York Times
Source 5:
Breitbart.com
|
| August 1, 2006 | - The Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee reported that law enforcement agencies were powerless to prevent the super-rich from cheating on their taxes.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| May 12, 2006 | - The FBI searched the home of former number-three CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo; Foggo is under investigation for his relationship with defense contractors linked to the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal.
| Source:
Bloomberg.com
|
| May 12, 2006 | - In South Korea
stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk was indicted for fraud, embezzlement, and violation of bioethics laws.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
CIA Director Porter Goss resigned, as did Goss appointee Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the executive director of the CIA; Foggo is under investigation for his relationship to two defense contractors who allegedly bribed former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Pentagon officials.
| Source 1:
AP via Breitbart.com
Source 2:
UPI
Source 3:
ABC News
|
| April 27, 2006 | - It was reported that lobbyists had once provided former (now imprisoned) Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham with free limousine service, free access to hotel suites, and the services of prostitutes; it was also reported that the limousine service that was used to ferry the prostitutes had received a contract worth $21 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source 1:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
Sign On San Diego
|
| April 22, 2006 | - Representative Alan B. Mollohan (D., W.Va.), whose real estate holdings and other assets reportedly rose in value from $562,000 to at least $6.3 million between 2000 and 2004, temporarily stepped down from the House
ethics committee after being accused of misusing funds.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 8, 2006 | - It emerged that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury that when he leaked classified information favorable to the case for war in Iraq to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, he was acting under the specific authorization of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush authorized the leak even though the intelligence in question (regarding Saddam Hussein's
nuclear ambitions) was considered unreliable by key administration members such as then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 17, 2006 | - A government study found that FEMA had wasted millions of dollars in the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort; among other things the organization was accused of spending $3 million for 4,000 beds that were never used and awarding hundreds of contracts without competitive bidding.
| Source:
Democracy Now
|
| February 11, 2006 | - Despite White House claims that President Bush could not remember meeting lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Abramoff said that he had met the President almost a dozen times and that they had shared personal jokes. Abramoff's claim was at least partially substantiated when a 2001 photo was published showing Bush meeting with Abramoff client Raul Garza, also known as Makateonenodua ("Black buffalo"), the then-chairman of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. In the photo Garza, who was later indicted for embezzling over $300,000 from the Kickapoo, is shaking the president's hand while Abramoff stands in the background, smiling.
| Source:
Time
|
| February 2, 2006 | - Representative John Boehner (R., Ohio), who belongs to a male-only golf club, whose political-action committee took money from Jack Abramoff but did not return it after Abramoff was indicted, and who in 1995 handed out checks from tobacco-company lobbyists on the House floor, was elected via instant runoff voting to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. The Republican Party, said Boehner, "must act swiftly to restore the trust between Congress and the American people." Boehner also said that he had "a very open relationship with lobbyists in town." "We are," said Representative Michael Oxley (R., Ohio), "somewhat tilting at windmills."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Bloomberg.com
Source 3:
The Nation via Yahoo! News
Source 4:
Sign On San Diego
|
| January 30, 2006 | - U.S. auditors found that of $120 million in Iraqi
oil revenue allocated to fund reconstruction $97 million had gone missing.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| January 29, 2006 | - The White House refused to release photographs of President Bush with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, despite requests from Senate and House
Republicans.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 29, 2006 | - It was reported that one quarter of the Bush Administration's $15 billion in AIDS-fighting money had been given to religious groups.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| December 18, 2005 | -
Senator
Harry Reid said the current U.S. Congress was “the most corrupt in history.”
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 16, 2005 | - Columnist Doug Bandow resigned from his position as a Cato Institute Fellow after it was revealed that he had accepted money from lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 newspaper columns favorable to Abramoff's clients. Peter Ferrara, a senior policy advisor at the Institute for Policy Innovation, said that he had also taken money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces, but felt no remorse. “I do that all the time,” he explained.
| Source:
Business Week
|
| November 28, 2005 | -
Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R., Calif.) confessed to taking $2.4 million in bribes and resigned from office.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 25, 2005 | - It was revealed that the investigation into illegal payoffs made by lobbyist Jack Abramoff involves not only Representative
Tom DeLay (R., Texas), but Representative Bob Ney (R., Ohio), Representative John Doolittle (R., Calif.), Senator Conrad Burns (R., Mont.), 17 current and former Congressional aides, and two former Bush Administration officials.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 25, 2005 | - Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, governor of Bayelsa State, Nigeria, denied that, in order to avoid money-laundering charges, he had fled from the U.K. disguised in a dress.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 4, 2005 | - Emails showed that in 2002 U.S. Representative Tom DeLay asked lobbyist Jack Abramoff to raise money for him through a charitable foundation.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
|
| May 26, 2005 | - The nine members of Thailand's anti-corruption commission were found guilty of corruption.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 9, 2005 | -
Donations to the Bush inauguration reached $18 million,
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 16, 2004 | - Representative Billy Tauzin, an author of the House Medicare Drug Law, announced that he will become a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2004 | - The FDA announced that it will hire a scientific review agency to determine whether the nation's drug safety system is working.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 5, 2004 | - "Let me put it to you this way," he said. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 1, 2004 | - A federal judge said that political parties in Ohio may not station challengers at polling places and said that to do so would create a "substantial likelihood that significant harm will result not only to voters, but also to the voting process itself."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 25, 2004 | - The chief contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers called for an investigation of how Halliburton was awarded large government contracts for work in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 21, 2004 | - Transparency International announced that Iraq is among the most corrupt countries on Earth.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 15, 2004 | - New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer was going after corruption in the insurance industry.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| October 7, 2004 | - House majority leader Tom DeLay was again rebuked by the House Ethics Committee for having "created an appearance that donors were being provided special access to you regarding" pending legislation.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 1, 2004 | - Representative Tom DeLay was "admonished" by the House ethics committee for trying to bribe a colleague to change his vote on a bill.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 18, 2004 | - The U.S. Army announced that it will withhold 15 percent of the fees billed by the Halliburton Company but almost immediately decided to "withhold" the decision pending further review.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 20, 2004 | - The EPA approved an air-pollution rule on formaldehyde emissions based on a cancer risk model created by the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology; the new standard is 10,000 times weaker than the EPA's previous regulation for such emissions.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| April 17, 2004 | - In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's corruption trial resumed; three months ago the Constitutional Court ruled that the law that was passed to protect Berlusconi from bribery charges was unconstitutional.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 28, 2004 | -
Israel's state prosecutor recommended that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted for taking bribes from a real-estate developer and submitted a draft indictment to the attorney general.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 26, 2004 | - It was found that health-care
lobbyists spent $237 million lobbying Congress in 2000, more than every other industry combined; drug companies spent $96 million, quite a bit more than other medical sectors.
| Source:
Case Western Reserve University
|
| March 15, 2004 | - Congressional Republicans were beginning to show signs of resistance to President Bush's spendthrift policies. "We have been out of control for the last three years," said Senator Trent Lott. "We kind of got a little carried away."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The Pentagon was still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that provided much of the discredited intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | - The inspector general of the USDA opened a criminal investigation into whether the Washington State mad cow was falsely listed as a downer; the man who killed the cow, the man who took the cow to slaughter, and the owner of the slaughterhouse have all said that the cow was able to walk. A spokeswoman for the agency said that she could not "fathom" the notion that a high-ranking USDA official could have ordered the falsification, though she did not deny the charge but simply repeated that she could not "fathom" it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 24, 2004 | - A study of the stock portfolios of U.S. senators found that first-time senators beat the market by 20 percent on average; the portfolios of all senators averaged 12 percent better than the market.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 23, 2004 | -
Halliburton, the former employer of Vice President Dick Cheney, was running television commercials pleading that its lucrative government contracts in Iraq were granted "because of what we know, not who we know."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 6, 2004 | -
Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in connection with a bribery investigation.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 4, 2004 | -
Halliburton agreed to repay the government for $27.4 million in overcharges for military meals.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 2, 2004 | -
Yasir Arafat expressed disbelief at Ariel Sharon's plan to remove 17 settlements from Gaza, right-wing politicians were outraged, and one political ally suggested that the prime minister was merely trying to distract attention from corruption scandals that could result in his indictment.
| Source:
Guardian, Ha'aretz
|
| January 31, 2004 | - Alain Juppé, the former prime minister of France, was convicted of corruption.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 23, 2004 | - Vice President Dick Cheney defended Halliburton, which continues to pay him a salary, from what he said were "desperate attacks" by opponents of the Bush Administration. "They're rendering great service," he said. "They do it because they're good at it, because they won the contract to do it. And frankly the company takes a certain amount of pride in rendering this kind of service to U.S. military forces."
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 23, 2004 | -
Halliburton, which received most of its Iraq contracts by administrative fiat rather than through a competitive bidding process, admitted that its employees in Iraq have accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 22, 2004 | - There was speculation that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon might soon be indicted for taking bribes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 17, 2004 | -
Mississippi was declared the most corrupt state in the nation.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 14, 2004 | -
Italy's constitutional court struck down a law that gave Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution, a ruling that will revive the corruption charges the law was written to nullify.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 30, 2003 | - Eight aides to President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea were indicted for illegal fund-raising.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Parmalat, the Italian dairy company, went bankrupt and its founder, Calisto Tanzi, was arrested on suspicion of fraud.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| December 20, 2003 | - It was reported that the omnibus spending bill passed by the House of Representatives this month includes $23 billion in "earmarks" such as $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa and $225,000 to repair a swimming pool in Sparks, Nevada. Jim Gibbons, a Republican representative, explained that the funding came about because he felt guilty for clogging up that pool with tadpoles when he was a boy. "Look," Gibbons said in defense of his earmark, "this is the standard practice the United States Congress has had for decades." Gibbons said he did not view such projects "as pork."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 17, 2003 | - A federal district judge overturned the Bush Administration's decision to discard the Clinton Administration's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and said that the Bush decision was arbitrary and "politically driven."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 15, 2003 | - Several officials in Las Vegas were in trouble for accepting bribes from a strip-club operator. "There's a tendency on the part of people to think politicians are inherently corrupt," said the mayor. "That's unfair, but it's a fact."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 12, 2003 | - The Pentagon accused Halliburton, which recently removed its name from outside its corporate headquarters in Houston, of overcharging for gasoline in Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 11, 2003 | - The United States Supreme Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, which bans unlimited political contributions to political parties. The majority concluded that "it was not unwarranted for Congress to conclude that the selling of access gives rise to the appearance of corruption."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 10, 2003 | - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz decreed that Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and other nations that opposed the conquest of Iraq will be ineligible for $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts. The announcement was greeted with astonishment by the blacklisted countries; Russia said that it would now refuse to consider restructuring Iraq's $8 billion debt, and Canada said the decision would probably rule out further reconstruction aid.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| December 3, 2003 | - Thomas Scully, the federal official who runs Medicare, was preparing to take a job in the private sector, probably with a company that will directly benefit from the new bill, which he helped draft.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 30, 2003 | -
Georgia's new rulers, who overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze because they were tired of living in one of the most corrupt nations on earth, began hiring their friends and relatives for important government positions.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 29, 2003 | -
Congress approved a major Medicare bill that permits the elderly to buy prescription drug coverage; few citizens were able to understand the plan, though the health-care industry appeared to be well pleased by it. The legislation was endorsed by AARP, which nowadays makes a great deal of money selling health-care products to its members, and consumer advocates denounced it as "a classic election-year giveaway." Some experts predicted a revolt among the elderly once the plan takes effect in 2006 and the true costs of reform become clear.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2003 | - Lawyers at the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they were dropping lawsuits against 50 power plants for violating the Clean Air Act, because newly weakened enforcement rules have undermined the cases.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 1, 2003 | -
Argentina's presidential jet was grounded, forcing President Néstor Kirchner to take a commercial flight, after two of his three pilots were removed as part of a crackdown on corruption.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 31, 2003 | - A new study from the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the 70 companies that have benefited the most from $8 billion in government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan collectively contributed more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
| Source:
Boston Globe, New York Times
|
| October 31, 2003 | - Congressional negotiators stripped a measure criminalizing war profiteering from the final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq.
| Source:
U.S. Newswire, Office of Sen. Patrick Leahy
|
| October 31, 2003 | -
Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for seven hours as part of two corruption investigations.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 17, 2003 | - George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, described the Bush Administration's budget policies as "a form of looting."
| Source:
New York Times
|
