Switzerland Fines Owner of Geneva Company
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Switzerland has fined the owner of a Geneva-based oil trading firm 50,000 Swiss francs (&#36;39,500) for making an illegal bribe to secure Iraqi oil contracts during Saddam Hussein's regime, authorities said Thursday.
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Switzerland is to return $458m invested by ex-Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha, after a failed appeal by his family.
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Switzerland GENEVA -- Swiss justice authorities have blocked bank accounts containing $100 million in an investigation of an alleged bribery scandal tied to a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. , the oil services company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Geneva investigator Daniel Dumartheray confirmed a report in the daily Tribune de Geneve that the freeze was imposed after France ...
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The company which owns a fireworks factory in which two firemen were killed in an explosion was fined in 1999.
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French regulators fined Vivendi Universal (EAUG.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) and its former CEO Jean-Marie Messier one million euros each on Tuesday for
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A Massachusetts businessman accused of bilking the company out of millions of dollars worth of networking gear faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By the Associated Press.
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 6  â The insurance company RenaissanceRe Holdings agreed on Tuesday to pay a $15 million fine to settle civil charges of securities fraud over what federal regulators said was a sham transaction created to burnish the companyâs earnings by smoothing their volatility.
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The French builder of the liner Queen Mary 2 and another firm are fined over an accident that killed 16.
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Jean-Marie Messier, the former chief of Vivendi Universal SA who is under investigation for alleged fraud and stock manipulation, was fined 1 million euros ($1.3 million) by French regulator Autoritee des Marches Financiers.
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The Swiss government has extended a freeze on $6.2 million in bank accounts linked to the former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, an official said Friday.
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Infineon Technologies AG, a German manufacturer of DRAM (dynamic RAM) has agreed to plead guilty and pay a US$160 million fine for attempting to fix prices in the DRAM market, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.
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Keel-hauled outfit suffers biggest-ever settlement An unnamed international media firm has agreed to pay a record fine of â¬2.5m ($3.46m) for being found to have "significant shortfalls in software licenses".â¦
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Swiss Re  said General Electric  would divest its stake worth around 3.5 billion Swiss francs ($2.9 billion), selling half to Swiss Re and placing the other half in the market.
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Switzerland has warned a company that tracks file sharers for copyright violations that its tactics violate the country&#39;s telecommunication law.Logistep, which supplies information on suspected file sharers to law firms around the world for use in copyright violation cases, has until Feb. 9 to respond to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), said Marc Schaefer, the agency&#39;s legal advisor.Under Swiss law, the identity of a subscriber to an ISP (Internet service provider) can only be revealed during the course of a criminal case, not a civil one, Schaefer said.&#160;The IP (Internet Protocol) address&#160;of a computer controlled by the subscriber is considered &quot;personal&quot; information.In order to try to claim damages from people suspected of trading songs or movies, Logistep has asked Swiss prosecutors to open criminal cases, Schaefer said. As the criminal cases progresses, Logistep receives information from prosecutors that identifies the file sharer.Logistep then initiates a civil case against the file sharer while the criminal case is ongoing. Prosecutors usually drop the criminal case against the person, Schaefer said.By starting a criminal case &quot;to obtain the identity behind an IP address ... they just found a way to avoid the telecommunication law,&quot; Schaefer said. &quot;Therefore, we told Logistep to stop their work until there is a legal basis which allows such an identification.&quot;The FDPIC&#39;s recommended to Logistep to stop the practice, but is prepared to take the matter to court, Schaefer said. Logistep would be in the clear if they pursued a civil case after the criminal one is complete, he said.Logistep has issued a statement contending an IP address is not personal information. Company officials could not be reached Friday.An IP address can indicate the location of a computer but not necessarily who is using it. Several people could share the same computer, which would have one IP address. But ISPs, as well as wireless routers used in home, can also dynamically assign IP addresses, which adds further ambiguity regarding who is using the computer and who may be responsible for illegally activity conducted on the PC.That means the person paying the bill for the Internet service may end up as the target of the civil proceeding rather than the offender, adding another worrying factor into the lawsuits, Schaefer said.On its Web site, Logistep said it can compile a history of illegal files shared by someone, even if encryption or proxy servers are used to mask the sharing.The row comes amid growing concerns over how personal data is collected and retained in Europe.On Monday, a top European data protection official, Peter Schaar, said at a European Parliament hearing that an IP address should be considered personal information since it can be used to identify people.Schaar is chairman of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which is looking at personal data and privacy issues, such as what kind of data search engines retain. A report is scheduled for release by April.Also earlier this week, privacy activists claimed victory over music and content industry lobbyists concerning a report issued by the European Parliament&#39;s Committee on Culture and Education.Struck out of the report was a suggestion that ISPs should monitor content and ban users for suspected copyright infringement, wrote Danny O&#39;Brien, international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which lobbied against the suggestion as well as others.The report, entitled Cultural Industries in Europe, will be used to make recommendations to European Union countries on intellectual property and other issues.&#160;
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LONDON (CBS.MW) -- Zurich Financial (ZZ:001107539) gained 2.6 percent in Swiss trade after agreeing to settle US nursing home litigation by paying $47.5 million.
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France&#39;s market regulator fined Jean-Marie Messier, the disgraced chairman of Vivendi Universal, â¬1m (Â£700,000) last night for misleading investors with over-optimistic corporate bravado over a two-year period that ended in the collapse of his
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Jean-Marie Messier, the disgraced former chief executive at media giant Vivendi Universal, was fined $1.35 million yesterday for misleading investors.