How a tangled and deadly web of global corruption spreading out from Gaddafi’s Libya threatens to topple Justin Trudeau

Canada’s prime minister is in trouble over prosecution of Libya-related bribery scheme. Such scandals have already led to prosecutions, indictments and jail time around the world

During the final years of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, a steady stream of businesspeople and senior former officials like Tony Blair jetted in and out of Tripoli. They hobnobbed with Libyan officials or even the main man himself inside his tent at the Bab al-Aziziya compound, from where he ran the oil-rich country.

Over small talk and copious servings of tea, they cut potentially questionable deals, handing over consultancy fees or other monies to grease the wheels of Libyan bureaucracy in what amounted to alleged graft, kickbacks and other scheming that tested or transgressed the limits of their own nations’ anti-corruption laws. read more »

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.

But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

Current and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing’s “System Safety Analysis” of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed. read more »

SEC Charges Volkswagen, Former CEO With Defrauding Bond Investors During "Clean Diesel" Emissions Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Volkswagen AG, two of its subsidiaries, and its former CEO, Martin Winterkorn, for defrauding U.S. investors, raising billions of dollars through the corporate bond and fixed income markets while making a series of deceptive claims about the environmental impact of the company's "clean diesel" fleet. read more »