Euro in danger, Europe races for debt solution

By GREG KELLER and PAN PYLAS and PAUL WISEMAN

PARIS (AP) - European leaders rushed Monday to stop a rampaging debt crisis that threatened to shatter their 12-year-old experiment in a common currency and devastate the world economy as a result.

One proposal gaining prominence would have countries cede some control over their budgets to a central European authority. In a measure of how rapidly the peril has grown, that idea would have been unthinkable even three months ago.

World stock markets, glimpsing hope that Europe might finally be shocked into stronger action, staged a big rally. The Dow Jones industrial average in New York rose almost 300 points. In France, stocks rose 5 percent, the most in a month.

More relevant to the crisis, borrowing costs for European nations stabilized. They had risen alarmingly in recent weeks - in Greece, then in Italy and Spain, then across the continent, including in Germany, the strongest economy in Europe.Read more.

Lim Kit Siang For Prime Minister, Anwar Deputy ?

Hantu Laut

"Pakatan ready to take over the federal government" says Anwar Ibrahim here.

Sounds similar to his Sept 16 farce.The man waging psychological war against the BN government trying to hoodwink the people to ally to his side to fulfill his ravenous desire to be prime minister is once again doomed.

Anwar said three years ago, the party has no strength in Sarawak and PKR Sabah was a mess.

Anwar is still unable to ratiocinate Sabah and Sarawak politics and wake up to reality that things have not changed, PKR is still in a mess and unlikely to make much inroads into Sabah and Sarawak's politics.

Pakatan's chances of winning Sabah and Sarawak in the 13th GE is bleak.The spoilers, PKR and PAS.

As far as Sabah and Sarawak are concerned, PKR and PAS are the monkey wrenches in the works, they have nothing to offer other than empty promises that would eliminate Pakatan's chances of taking the two states.The only party that would do well in the East Malaysian states would be DAP, taking most, if not all, predominant Chinese seats.The unfortunate thing is, DAP alone do not have enough seats to form the government.Anwar's life long dream of taking over the federal government and he as prime minister would stay forever a dream.

DAP would do well nation wide and would collect the biggest number of seats among the 3 coalition partners.PAS insistence on hudud law would backfire among non-Muslims and forward looking Muslims.It would not perform well as the Malay votes would be split between PAS and UMNO taking bigger slice of the Malay vote bank.PKR is a lost cause, a wannabe multiracial party that has become a party for Anwar and his family. A party that only exist on sympathy votes for Anwar. Now, that the people have seen the real Anwar Ibrahim the "undi kasihan" have evaporated leaving PKR in a quagmire, fighting an uphill battle to maintain its influence.It would get less seats than those won in March 2008.

If Pakatan do pull through than the man that should be prime Minister should be Lim Kit Siang, Anwar as his deputy and Karpal Singh as minister of finance. As Anwar was against making mandatory a Malay as PM than he should not complain if he has to play second fiddle in the event PKR performed badly.

The West Malaysian scenario will not happen in Sabah and Sarawak.There is no guarantee that Pakatan would be a more benevolent government and not likely to be better guardian of state rights.

Some of their leaders are already behaving like gangsters threatening to break down prison walls if Anwar is incarcerated and threatened to deploy massive street protests should BN win the 13th GE.

Even if BN won, in free and fair elections, Pakatan can still accuse BN of cheating to justify them copying the Arab Spring which they have stupidly indicated they would do.

The contentious hudud, Anwar's sex tape and the oppositions incessant melodramatic attacks against Najib and his government may change the voting pattern as people begin to see the falsities of these attacks.The BN may even regain its two-thirds majority in the 13th GE .

Altsom:Malaysian Insider The Master Embellisher

Hantu Laut

What you read in Malaysian Insider is not necessary exactly the same with what was reported from the sources they picked up some of their news.

They report on Altsom paying bribes in Malaysia was highly embellished and stinks of politics.Sure, there are many corrupt deals in Malaysia, but should so-called purveyor of news indulged in gutter journalism and embellished news they sourced from other parties.

Read what the various foreign newspapers published.They all carry exactly the same story except Malaysian Insider. There was no specific mention of Tenaga or any other Malaysian companies in the other reports.

Read the full report from Malaysian Insider:

By Shannon Teoh

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 — French engineering group Alstom was fined RM133 million by Swiss authorities after its employees were found to have bribed civil servants in at least three cases including the award of contracts in Malaysia.

It is the second French company in as many years to be fined for bribing government officials in Malaysia, after telco firm Alcatel-Lucent paid RM435 million to resolve US criminal and civil probes in December 2010.

The four-year probe centred on payments made by Alstom Network Schweiz AG to middlemen — termed “commercial agents” by the company — in return for securing government contracts to build power stations in 15 countries since the 1990s.

The Financial Times reported today that the Swiss Office of the Attorney-General said it had not found criminal wrongdoing by the French company and a Swiss affiliate, which, “as far as can be ascertained” did not know about the bribes.

“But it accused Alstom of ‘failing to meet the standards for an international group employing over 75,000 people’, sanctioning the group for ‘corporate negligence’,” the international business daily said.

The Washington Post also reported Alstom as saying it was satisfied with the outcome of the case as it concluded “the absence of any system or so called slush funds used for bribery of civil servants.”

Alstom supplied Malakoff’s gas-fired power plant in Lumut. — industcards.com pic

But the US daily also reported the French firm as acknowledging “that prosecutors had concluded that ‘improper payments were made to civil servants in Latvia, Malaysia and Tunisia.’”

“In two out of these three cases, Alstom itself would appear to be a victim of the actions of some of its employees, who would have benefited from kickbacks. In the third one, Alstom was simply a subcontractor of a consortium,” the company said, according to Reuters.

Alstom was awarded a RM2.8 billion contract by Tenaga Nasional earlier this year to provide key power generation equipment to Southeast Asia’s first 1,000-megawatt (MW) supercritical coal-fired power plant Manjung, Malaysia.

It also won turnkey contracts in 1994 and 2000 to build four power plants including the 1,300MW Lumut and the 670MW Kuala Langat plants and deals in 2003 and 2004 to install environmental control systems for the Tanjung Bin and Jimah coal-fired power plants.

Alstom was also appointed by Tenaga to supply two 125MW hydro power turbines, a generator and ancillaries for the 250MW Hulu Terengganu hydro power plant in 2010.

Alstom says it is “the largest original equipment manufacturer in Malaysia” having supplied key equipment for nearly 7.5 gigawatt (GW) of the country’s installed power generation capacity.

The ruling will have significant repercussions for a concurrent criminal investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office. Brazil is also investigating some of the company’s contracts.

The Swiss authority also looked at alleged wrongdoing by Alstom in 12 other countries but did not find compelling evidence.

In July, a former Alcatel employee was charged in the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court with giving a RM25,000 bribe to a Telekom Malaysia (TM) officer, in a case linked to the French company’s admission last year that it had bribed government officials to win a US$85 million (RM255 million) contract.

From The Wall Street Journal

By Samuel Rubenfeld

The Swiss Office of the Attorney General said Tuesday it closed a probe into Alstom SA, and ordered a unit to pay 38.5 million Swiss francs ($42.2 million)

lstom Network Schweiz AG, a unit of the French power engineering and train company, was fined CHF2.5 million for negligence in implementing proper controls to prevent bribery by company officials in Latvia, Tunisia and Malaysia, and it was ordered to pay an additional CHF36 million for profits connected to the negligence. Dow Jones Newswires reported on the story, and there’s more here, here, here and here.

The Swiss attorney general said in a statement that during a broader investigation of Alstom, eventually focused on 15 countries, it found that the company “had implemented a compliance policy that was suitable in principle, but that it had not enforced it with the necessary persistence.”

A summary judgement issued by the attorney general’s office said the group “failed to meet the standards” of an entity employing 75,000 people around the globe. Alstom’s compliance department was understaffed, it said, and “filled with employees with too little experience and/or training in compliance issues.”

That lack of experienced compliance personnel, according to the Swiss attorney general’s office, enabled the corruption to happen without the knowledge of the French parent.

“The investigation showed that consultants engaged by Alstom on the basis of consultancy agreements in the mentioned three countries had forwarded a considerable part of their success fees to foreign decision makers and thereby had influenced the latter in favor of Alstom,” the statement said.

Alstom said in its own statement that the use of consultants for tenders is both legal and customary so long as their relationship “correspond[s] to actual services and [does] not contribute to illicit activities led by these partners.”

The company is not going to appeal the finding, it said. Further, it burnished itself in the wake of the announcement, saying the company did not engage in systemic corruption.

“Alstom notes with satisfaction that, after thorough investigations, the Office of Attorney General has concluded the absence of any system or so called slush funds used for bribery of civil servants to illegally obtain contracts,” it said in the statement.

The company is under investigation for alleged bribery by the U.S. Justice Department, as well as by authorities in several other countries, including the U.K.Read more.

From Washington Post/Bloomberg

BERN, Switzerland — A subsidiary of French engineering company Alstom SA has been ordered to pay 39 million Swiss francs ($42.7 million) in fines and compensation to end a long-running corruption case in Switzerland, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The four-year probe centered on payments made by Alstom Network Schweiz AG to middlemen — termed “commercial agents” by the company — in return for securing government contracts to build power stations in 15 countries since the 1990s.Read more.

From Reuters

By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Swiss authorities have fined French power and engineering group Alstom 38.5 million Swiss francs ($42 million) for corporate negligence, after a global bribery probe.

Alstom said on Tuesday it was fined 2.5 million francs for negligence in three cases involving company officials in Latvia, Malaysia and Tunisia. It must also pay around 36 million francs, corresponding to estimated profit related to the cases.

"In two out of these three cases, Alstom itself would appear to be a victim of the actions of some of its employees, who would have benefited from kickbacks, 'enriching themselves at the expense of the company'," Alstom said.Read more.

From Swissinfo

The Swiss subsidiary of French transport and engineering company Alstom has been found guilty of corporate negligence following a lengthy corruption inquiry.

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office said on Tuesday Alstom Network Schweiz AG had been fined SFr2.5 million ($2.74 million) and ordered to pay SFr36.4 million in compensation relating to three cases where it had failed to prevent the bribery of foreign officials in Latvia, Tunisia and Malaysia.

The punishment comes after investigations into the company’s actions in 15 countries were reopened in 2008. The investigation concluded that Alstom had failed to enforce a compliance policy with the “necessary persistence”.

“Therefore, acts of bribery in Latvia, Tunisia and Malaysia were not prevented,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

“The investigation showed that consultants engaged by Alstom… had forwarded a considerable part of their success fees to foreign decision makers [in the countries concerned] and thereby had influenced the latter in favour of Alstom.”

The prosecutor’s office said that after “considerable investigative efforts” it had detected some breaches of internal compliance methods, but no additional acts of bribery in the other 12 countries.

It dismissed proceedings against parent company Alstom SA in relation to the Latvian, Tunisian and Malaysian cases after imposing costs of SFr1 million.

In a statement, Alstom said it was satisfied that the Swiss prosecutor’s office had not found evidence “of any system or so-called slush funds used for bribery of civil servants to illegally obtain contracts”.

The company said that in two of the three cases were it was found to be at fault, it was a “victim of the actions of some of its employees”, while in the third, Alstom was “simply a subcontractor of a consortium”.Read more

My Life as a White Supremacist

By R.M.Schneiderman

The Daily Beast

John Matthews had long been a presence in his son Dan’s life. Every six months it was a new city, a new state, a new apartment. Dan, who lived with his mother, suspected something illegal was going on. He was estranged from his father and even used his stepfather’s last name, Candland. Once, when Dan was 16, Matthews called him from a pay phone to say he was going underground and might appear on the television show America’s Most Wanted one day. Months later, when they reconnected, neither brought it up.

Matthews, who is now 59, recognized how he must have looked to his son: a troubled Vietnam veteran, a paranoid man who wandered between jobs and marriages, despised the government, and always kept a camouflage backpack filled with food, water, and clothing by his bedroom door. “Danny always figured I was trash,” Matthews says. “Or a bad person.”

Now they were outside the federal courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City; Dan, 33, had no idea why. A grizzled man in a Stetson hat smoking a Toscanelli cigar introduced himself as Jesse Trentadue, attorney at law, and led them into his office across the street. There, Matthews divulged the secret he had harbored for two decades: while his family thought he was hiding from the law, palling around with white supremacists and other antigovernment activists, he was working as an informant for the FBI, posing as an extremist to infiltrate more than 20 groups in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks. “[Dan’s] eyes got bigger and bigger,” the lawyer recalls. For Dan, the revelation brought sanity to a childhood of mystery and frustration. Finally, he says, “it all made sense.”

It is rare for an informant to unmask himself, especially one who has found his way into the violent world of heavily armed bigots. But Matthews had developed a fatal lung condition and a drastically weakened heart, and he wanted his family to know his true identity before it was too late. “I ain’t gonna be around for more than a couple of years longer,” he says. “So I figure whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.”

Matthews’s story, which Newsweek verified through hundreds of FBI documents and several dozen interviews, including conversations with current and former FBI officials, offers a rare glimpse into the murky world of domestic intelligence, and the bureau’s struggles to combat right-wing extremism.

No one can forget how Timothy McVeigh set off a bomb in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 19, 1995, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of 6. FBI efforts to avert another outrage have taken on increased importance in recent years, as fears of Islamic terrorism, a sour economy, expanded federal powers under the Patriot Act, and the nation’s first black president have swelled the ranks of extremist groups. Since President Obama’s election, the number of right-wing extremist groups—a term that covers a broad array of dissidents ranging from white supremacists to antigovernment militias—has mushroomed from 149 to 824, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based civil-rights group.Read more.