February, 17 2016, 11:15am EDT

Former South African President Visits US to Stop "Illicit Financial Flows"
Congress Debates Anti-Corruption Legislation
WASHINGTON
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki visits the United States February 16-19 to raise awareness on how the developing world loses money to corruption. Mbeki will focus specifically on the flow of illicit money out of Africa through crime, corruption and tax evasion. The developing world loses approximately $1 trillion annually through these "illicit financial flows," with Sub-Saharan Africa losing the most of any region relative to the size of its economy. Mbeki chaired an African Union (AU) panel on illicit flows and its report on the issue was adopted by the AU in January 2015. In the US, Mbeki will meet with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, US government officials and the United Nations.
"President Mbeki's visit couldn't be more timely," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious anti-poverty coalition Jubilee USA. LeCompte serves on UN expert groups on global finance. "Far too much international money laundering flows through the US financial system."
One vehicle for transferring illicit money out of the developing world is through "anonymous shell companies," corporate entities set up to launder funds that don't disclose their true owner. According to a 2012 study by academics at Griffith University, the United States is the second easiest country in the world to set up fake companies, behind only Kenya. Terrorists, drug traffickers, human traffickers and weapons traffickers also use shell companies to hide their activities.
On January 31, the news program 60 Minutes aired an investigation showing US lawyers advising an undercover investigator on how to set up fake companies in the United States to launder questionable funds from Africa. On February 3, Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Peter King (R-NY) introduced the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act (HR 4450). The bill gives law enforcement access to the identity of these companies' true owners. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced similar legislation in the Senate (S 2489).
"Passing transparency legislation is an immediate action that Congress can take to address corruption and crime," noted LeCompte. LeCompte worked with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to address illicit financial flows during the 2015 UN Financing for Development process. "This is an issue where Republicans and Democrats should be able to get together and do the right thing even during a contentious election year."
Read more about President Mbeki's visit
Read more about the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act
Read the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act:
Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.
(202) 783-3566LATEST NEWS
New 'Make Polluters Pay' Campaign Pushes States—and Biden DOJ—to Sue Big Oil
"It's time to come together and finally hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damage they've done."
Sep 17, 2023
Shortly after California sued five fossil fuel giants over their decades of climate deception and damage, activists on Saturday announced the launch of a new campaign aimed at pressuring the Biden Justice Department and state attorneys general across the U.S. to join the growing legal fight against Big Oil.
The "Make Polluters Pay" campaign is set to formally kick off Monday with a billboard display in Times Square and a six-figure digital ad buy designed to build public support for lawsuits against leading oil and gas firms, which knew about the link between their products and climate change long before they publicly acknowledged it.
"Climate change isn't just a tragedy, it's a crime," said Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media, one of the groups behind the new campaign. "Fossil fuel companies knew, they lied, and now it's time to make them pay. Right now, billions of us around the world are experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand. It's time to come together and finally hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damage they've done."
Dozens of U.S. counties, cities, and states have sued fossil fuel companies in recent years over the destruction wreaked by oil, gas, and coal projects, which remain a dire threat to global efforts to limit planetary warming and prevent the kinds of catastrophic weather events the world has seen in recent months from becoming even more intense and deadly.
On Friday, California became the largest economy in the world to take legal action against the fossil fuel industry, suing ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute for engaging in a "multidecade, ongoing campaign to seek endless profits at the expense of our planet."
The new pressure campaign, modeled after the national effort to inform the public about the threat of tobacco, hopes to push other states—and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland—to follow in California's footsteps.
"Knowingly wrecking the climate is criminal," Leah Qusba of Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) said in a statement. "Make no mistake—they will pay for losses and damages."
The campaign is set to launch ahead of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit on Thursday.
The summit, billed as a "no-nonsense" effort to generate more aggressive action plans to phase out planet-warming energy, will be preceded by hundreds mass demonstrations across the globe imploring U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders to "end fossil fuels."
The protests will culminate in the "March to End Fossil Fuels" in New York City on Sunday afternoon.
"Big Oil owes us for the lives and livelihoods lost to climate change-linked extreme weather, illness, and death," said Alex Witt, the senior adviser for oil and gas at Climate Power. "The industry's C-suite has known for decades the horrific impact oil and gas have on the climate, and they kept drilling. That's not just negligent; it's reprehensible."
"The tide has turned against Big Oil," Witt added, "and they know it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Their Plan Won't Work': UAW Rips GM and Ford for Laying Off Workers Amid Historic Strike
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain accused the companies of "trying to put the squeeze on our members to settle for less."
Sep 16, 2023
The president of the United Auto Workers condemned Ford and General Motors on Saturday after the companies said they plan to temporarily lay off thousands of nonstriking employees, blaming the union's walkouts at two plants in Michigan and Ohio.
Ford said in a statement Friday that it is laying off roughly 600 workers at its Michigan Assembly Plant, pointing to "knock-on effects" from the UAW's walkouts at the facility's final assembly and paint departments.
General Motors, meanwhile, said it expects 2,000 workers at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas "to be idled as soon as next week," a decision the company called "a negative ripple effect" of the UAW's historic strike.
But UAW president Shawn Fain argued the layoffs are completely unnecessary—and an obvious attempt by Ford and General Motors to "put the squeeze on our members to settle for less."
"With their record profits, they don't have to lay off a single employee. In fact, they could double every autoworker's pay, not raise car prices, and still rake in billions of dollars," said Fain. "Their plan won't work. The UAW will make sure any worker laid off in the Big Three's latest attack will not go without an income. We'll organize one day longer than they can, and go the distance to win economic and social justice at the Big Three."
The UAW's response to the layoffs came as union negotiators and the Big Three automakers returned to the bargaining table to continue negotiating over a new contract.
More than 12,000 UAW autoworkers are currently on strike at three plants, and—as part of its "stand-up strike" strategy—the union is expected to call on additional locals to strike in the coming days if the car manufacturers don't make a sufficient contract offer.
The UAW says a gradual wave of strikes at select plants will give its negotiators maximal leverage—and keep the Big Three guessing—as the union attempts to win significant benefit and wage improvements. Fain has said an "all-out" strike is still on the table.
Reutersreported Saturday morning that Stellantis has increased its wage-hike offer to nearly 21% over the life of the contract—the biggest total wage boost proposed by a Big Three automaker thus far, but still well shy of the union's demand for a 36% raise.
Ford and General Motors have proposed raises of 20% and 18%, respectively.
Ford CEO Jim Farley, whose compensation package totaled nearly $21 million last year, faced backlash from the UAW and lawmakers for claiming earlier this week that the union's wage demands would "bankrupt" the company.
"There's no way you can continue wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on stock buybacks to manipulate prices, jack up CEO pay to ludicrous levels, all while starving the workers who actually make the product you sell," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) replied on social media. "THAT is what is unsustainable. Pay your workers."
Fain, for his part, called Farley's claim "a lie like everything else that comes out of their mouths."
As Fortunereported on Friday, Morgan Stanley's auto analyst estimated in a recent note that a 40% pay raise for autoworkers would result in $2.6 billion in additional labor costs for Ford, which expects to bring in $168 billion in total revenue this year.
The company spent nearly $500 million on stock buybacks last year.
"They could double our wages and not raise the prices of vehicles, and they would still make billions of dollars," Fain said from the picket line on Friday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Watershed Moment': California Sues Big Oil Over Decades of Climate Destruction
"California's move is an unmistakable sign that the wave of climate lawsuits against Big Oil will keep growing and that these polluters' days of escaping accountability for their lies are numbered."
Sep 16, 2023
The state of California on Friday filed suit against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, accusing the five oil and gas giants of a decadeslong campaign to mislead the public about the threat fossil fuels pose to the climate.
The lawsuit makes California the largest economy on the planet to take legal action against fossil fuel companies over their efforts to deceive the world about their destructive—and immensely profitable—business model. California is also a major producer of oil and gas.
"This has been a multi-decade, ongoing campaign to seek endless profits at the expense of our planet, our people, and the greedy corporations and individuals need to be held accountable," California Attorney General Rob Bonta toldThe New York Times in an interview on Friday. "That's where we come in."
With its new civil lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court, California joins Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and other states that have sued the fossil fuel industry over its role in massive climate damages. Dozens of municipalities, including several in California, have also filed lawsuits against oil giants.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has experienced a record-breaking 23 billion-dollar extreme weather disasters this year, from deadly flooding in California to the catastrophic wildfire that killed nearly 100 people in Maui, Hawaii—which is also suing Big Oil.
Cities and states representing 25% of the U.S. population are currently taking part in some kind of climate-related legal action against the fossil fuel industry, according to Fossil Free Media, and the Biden Justice Department is facing growing pressure to join the fight.
In an effort to improve their chances of winning the mounting legal battles, fossil fuel giants have tried to move climate liability lawsuits from state to federal court—but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their appeals earlier this year.
"Just like tobacco and opioid companies, the oil and gas industry will have to face the evidence of its deception in court."
Richard Wiles, the president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement Saturday that "California's decision to take Big Oil companies to court is a watershed moment in the rapidly expanding legal fight to hold major polluters accountable for decades of climate lies."
"Whether it's fires, droughts, extreme heat, or sea-level rise, Californians have been living in a climate emergency caused by the fossil fuel industry, and now the state is taking decisive action to make those polluters pay," said Wiles. "As similar cases proceed toward trial, California's move is an unmistakable sign that the wave of climate lawsuits against Big Oil will keep growing and that these polluters' days of escaping accountability for their lies are numbered. Just like tobacco and opioid companies, the oil and gas industry will have to face the evidence of its deception in court."
California's lawsuit, which also names the American Petroleum Institute as a defendant, comes days after The Wall Street Journalpublished a front-page story based on previously unreported documents that detail Exxon's behind-closed-doors effort to cast doubt on climate science after 2006, when the company publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuels and climate change for the first time.
Exxon and other oil companies have been aware of the connection since the 1970s.
"For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us—covering up the fact that they've long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet," California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. "It has been decades of damage and deception."
"Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heatwaves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells," Newsom continued. "California taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable."
The Times noted Friday that California's lawsuit aims to establish "a fund that would be used to pay for recovery from extreme weather events and mitigation and adaptation efforts across the state."
"The lawsuit claims that California has already spent tens of billions of dollars paying for climate disasters, and expects costs to rise significantly in the years ahead," the Times added.
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said Saturday that with its lawsuit, "California just kicked open the door for every city and state in America to sue the fossil fuel industry for climate damages."
"After this summer of brutal heat waves and climate disasters, I think the public is hungry for a way to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damage they've done," said Henn. "Big Oil knew, they lied, and now it's time to make them pay."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular
Independent, nonprofit journalism needs your help.
Please Pitch In
Today!
Today!