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Date Posted: 03:01:30 08/03/06 Thu
Author: Multinational Monitor
Subject: T H E T E N W O R S T C O R P O R A T I O N S O F 1 9 9 6
In reply to: Common Ground Common Sence 's message, "THE TOP 100 CORPORATE CRIMINALS OF THE 1990's" on 19:41:21 08/02/06 Wed

The Ten Worst
Corporations of 1996
by Russell Mokhiber
ADM
CATERPILLAR
DAISHOWA
DAIWA
DISNEY
FREEPORT
GERBER
MITSUBISHI
SEAGRAM'S
TEXACO



THE UNITED STATES IS IN MORAL DECLINE. The Pew Charitable Trusts earlier this year announced that it was giving $1 million to fund a National Commission on Civic Renewal to study this moral decline and propose solutions. After holding three meetings early next year, the commission will file a report outlining the nature and extent of the moral decline and making specific recommendations on how to improve civic life. The commission's co-chairs: the Heritage Foundation's William Bennett and outgoing Senator Sam Nunn, D-Georgia.

"American leads the world in rates of murder, violent crime, juvenile crime, imprisonment, abortion, divorce and single-parent families, production of pornography, consumption of pornography, consumption of cocaine and other drugs. And that's just a partial list," says Bennett. "Something is wrong."

Well, something is clearly wrong, but whether the Bennett/Nunn commission is structured in a way to paint a complete picture of this decline is doubtful. Bennett, after all, tends to focus his fire and brimstone outrage on street crime, while generally ignoring the moral depravity of corporate America.

In announcing the formation of the Commission, Bennett failed to mention that the United States leads the world in corporate crime and violence, the destruction of the family by mass consumption of television, the proliferation of junk food outlets and the general mechanization and dehumanization of society.

To show some good faith, the Commission might want to take a peek at the moral depravity of the largest U.S. corporations, since it is corporations, after all, which are society's most powerful members. Society, as they say, rots from the head down.

So, why not start at the top?

According to Bennett, the Commission will study the nation's moral decline during three one-day plenary sessions to be convened in Washington, D.C. According to the Commission, the 25 commissioners will "have the opportunity to enter into a dialogue with a wide range of Americans -- from scholars to community leaders -- who have wrestled with the challenge of civic renewal and will offer both analysis and concrete recommendations for the commissioners' consideration."

The Commission might want to call Mark Whitacre, a former executive at Archer Daniels Midland to describe how ADM fixed prices on products that cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. Or maybe Richard Lundwall, the former Texaco executive, who taped his fellow executives making disparaging remarks about their fellow black employees. Or George Hacker, who is fighting the liquor industry's decision to start advertising on television. Or possibly Charles Kernaghan, the New York labor organizer who has launched a campaign to get The Walt Disney Company to pay decent wages in such Third World countries as Haiti, Thailand and the United States.

Kernaghan is the longest shot of the bunch. Not only is he fighting one of the nation's premiere entertainment companies, home to Mickey Mouse and Pocahontas, but guess who sits next to Nunn and Bennett on the National Commission for Civic Renewal? John F. Cooke, executive vice president, corporate affairs, for The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the company's worldwide corporate alliances, government relations and environmental matters.

Imagine Kernaghan, recommending that, as an act of civic renewal, U.S. consumers stop buying Disney pajamas, stop watching Disney movies and TV and stop drowning our children in Disney toys.

Imagine citizen leaders from northern Virginia, invited to testify before the Bennett/Nunn commission, telling their story of how, as an act of civic renewal, they rose up to defeat a gargantuan Disney theme park that would have destroyed their rural countryside.

Well, imagine all you want. The commission is stacked.

The Ten Worst Corporations of 1996 might be a more open forum than the Bennett/Nunn commission to document the moral depravity of U.S. leaders. This annual effort focuses attention on the inevitable effects of allowing the political economy to be run through the unaccountable and undemocratic structure that is the corporation.

Unless the Bennett/Nunn commission turns its focus upward, it is sure to fail to reach one of its primary goals -- "to reach consensus on clear, practical, and dramatic recommendations for enhancing the quality of citizenship and civic life." Too many citizens have been run over by the corporate machine. Their voices must be heard.



ADM: Superracket to the World

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is a cutting edge corporation -- a self-congratulatory/welfare queen/crime boss combo.

Dwayne Andreas, the chair of the board of Archer Daniels Midland, went before a packed shareholders meeting in October and apologized for the crimes committed by his company.

"I consider this a serious matter which I deeply regret," he said. "The buck stops with me. You have my apology and my commitment that things are arranged so that this will never happen again."

Just one week before the shareholders meeting, ADM pled guilty to various felonies and paid a $100 million criminal fine -- the largest criminal antitrust fine ever -- for its role in conspiracies to fix prices to eliminate competition and allocate sales in the lysine and citric acid markets worldwide. The two-count felony charges filed against ADM alleged that the company conspired with other producers (including previously charged Ajinomoto Co. Inc., Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co. Ltd. and Sewon America Inc.) in the lysine and citric markets to set prices and allocate sales from 1992 to 1995.

Victims and shareholders were livid over the plea agreement, under which all executives and employees of ADM -- except for two -- will be protected from prosecution if they cooperate with the government. Dwayne Andreas, the big cheese, was protected.

Stock analysts applauded the agreement, saying that ADM could now put the matter behind it, and ADM stock went up after the announcement of the plea.

"There are a whole number of ADM executives who committed these crimes," says David Hoech, co-founder of the ADM Shareholders Watch Committee of Hallandale, Florida. "Those executives should have been indicted first."

Hoech says that political campaign contributions from ADM to both political parties inoculated ADM and its executives from a just result.

Kenneth Adams, a lawyer for the victims of ADM's crime, says the plea agreement is troubling because "there is no disclosure in the plea agreement about the particulars of this crime."

"The government shed no light on who was involved -- whether there were a few individuals or many," Adams says. "I would want to know who did this. These people are still sitting at their desks and we don't know who screwed up."

Adams estimates that the citric acid price-fixing cost his clients $400 million while the lysine price-fixing cost $100 million. Under federal sentencing law, the $500 million total loss could be doubled, thus putting ADM's potential criminal exposure at $1 billion. But the Department of Justice's Gary Spratling defended the $100 million fine, saying "we made all of our decisions based on the evidence we had developed -- we don't think anybody is getting off the hook."

Federal officials said that as a result of ADM's crime, seed companies, large poultry and swine producers and ultimately farmers paid millions more to buy lysine, an amino acid used by farmers as a feed additive to ensure the proper growth of livestock. It is a $600-million-a-year industry worldwide.


FREEPORT McMoRAN: Mining Menace

In 1967, in the early days of the Suharto dictatorship, Freeport McMoRan negotiated a contract with the Indonesian government that gave the multinational giant exclusive mining rights to the then recently discovered Erstberg copper deposit in Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea in Indonesia. In 1988, Freeport discovered Grasberg, a huge copper and gold deposit. A 30-year contract giving the company unlimited rights to the island's copper and gold soon followed.

Today, the company operates a virtual colony in Irian Jaya, where it maintains exploration rights to about seven million acres and operates the world's largest gold mine and the world's third largest copper mine. The brutal Suharto regime controls about 9 percent of PT Freeport Indonesia, the country's largest taxpayer.

Indonesian environmental groups charge that Freeport has dumped mine tailings from its open-pit copper mine into rivers for 16 years and have warned of health problems that are being covered up by the Indonesian dictatorship.

Freeport categorically denies the charges. "In each authoritative investigation, there has been no evidence that anything Freeport is doing in carrying out its mining operations has anything to do with real or perceived health problems," states Edward Pressman, a company spokesperson.

Human rights groups have criticized Freeport for its complicity in human rights violations committed by the Indonesian military in the vicinity of the mines.

In April 1995, the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) reported that 37 Irianese civilians had been killed by Indonesian military personnel operating in an area of a Freeport mine, and alleged that Freeport security personnel "engaged in acts of intimidation, extracted forced confessions, shot three civilians, disappeared five Dani villagers and arrested and tortured 13 people." In August 1995, Bishop Munninghoff of the Roman Catholic Church of Jayapura published a detailed report which reaffirmed many of the allegations in the ACFOA report and included additional allegations, including "abuses at the Freeport workshop where three civilians died under torture."

The company denies that it assists any "military personnel involved in combat operations," but admits that it provides "food, transportation and shelter to military personnel."

After riots broke out around Freeport's mining operations in March 1996, the company's CEO, Jim Bob Moffet, flew from the United States to Irian Jaya to meet with community leaders. One month later, Moffet offered to place 1 percent of PT Freeport Indonesia's revenues into a community trust fund.

Community leaders rejected the offer because more than 96 percent of the money will be given to the military and government-sponsored programs and local people will have no voice in how the money will be spent.

In April 1996, the Amungme people of Irian Jaya filed a $6 billion class action lawsuit against Freeport in U.S. federal court in New Orleans. The lawsuit alleges human rights violations and environmental damages caused by Freeport's Indonesian operations. The company has said that the lawsuit is "frivolous and opportunistic" and has "no basis in fact." So far, the company's efforts to have the case thrown out of court have failed.



GERBER: Threatening Guatemala

In a little-noticed victory for Gerber Products Company and other multinational corporations seeking to upend national health and safety laws as barriers to international trade, the Supreme Court in Guatemala earlier this year exempted imported baby food products from the country's tough infant health law.

According to former UNICEF legal adviser Leah Margulies, the Supreme Court decision represents the culmination of a successful four-year campaign waged by Gerber to force Guatemala to allow imports of Gerber food with packages picturing the healthy, fat Gerber baby. In 1983, Guatemala became one of the first countries to adopt the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes into law. The code and Guatemala's law were developed to protect the lives of infants by promoting breast-feeding over breast-milk substitutes.

The law forbids the use of pictures of babies on baby food labels for children under two years of age. One goal of the law and the code is to counter aggressive marketing by baby food companies aimed at convincing mothers their products are superior to breast milk for their babies, Margulies says.

"You don't want to market these products in any way that would induce the mother to use them inappropriately or abandon breast feeding," Margulies says. "Breast milk protects infants from a wide range of diseases and is more nutritious than any man-made replacement."

"A fat, chubby, blue-eyed westernized baby is an absolutely winning marketing strategy for Gerber," she says. "It seduces the mother into using baby food early. The idea behind the law prohibiting this kind of marketing is to minimize the corporate seduction of the mother." According to Margulies, in 1990, the Guatemala Ministry of Health ordered Gerber to phase out use of the baby face from its packaging on foods for infants under the age of two.

But, after several years had passed, "it became clear that Gerber did not intend to make the necessary changes to comply with the law, and Guatemala notified Gerber that it could no longer sell the nonconforming products in the country," Margulies says.

At this point, Gerber began threatening Guatemala with trade sanctions under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and other trade measures. Gerber argued to the Guatemalan government that the country was violating its Gerber baby trademark by not allowing it to use the picture on its food labels.

"Upon the favorable and permanent resolution of this matter, we will withdraw all complaints before the CBI [Caribbean Basin Initiative], GATT and any other future instance before the authorities of the General System of Preferences," wrote Gerber's Vice President for Latin America, Frank T. Kelly to the president of Guatemala in a letter dated June 16, 1994.

After years of resisting Gerber's pressure, Margulies says, the government stopped enforcing the law in 1995, and, earlier this year, the Guatemalan Supreme Court held that imported products were exempted from the law's dictates.

Gerber spokesperson Van Hindes says that the company has been marketing infant food products, including pureed fruits, vegetables, meats and infant cereals, in Guatemala for 50 years. Hindes says that no Gerber-brand infant formulas are marketed or sold in Guatemala. Hindes calls the infant health law a "trade restriction placed on U.S. goods by the government of Guatemala."

"The courts ruled that the law did not apply to our product, and we were allowed to continue to import and sell our baby food, with the use of the Gerber baby trademark," Hindes says.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, says that the Supreme Court of Guatemala only agreed to override its own domestic health laws because of the "threat of huge trade sanctions."

In the United States, for the past year Gerber Products Company has been under fire from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and others for diluting its baby foods with water, sugar and chemically modified starch. Buckling under mounting consumer and government pressure, Gerber now says it is reformulating its best-selling 2nd-Foods Bananas with Tapioca and a number of other products so as to eliminate those fillers.

But Gerber, which controls 69 percent of the U.S. market, and other non-organic baby foods still contain pesticides, according to a report from the Environmental Working Group.

The report, "Pesticides in Baby Food," found 16 different pesticides in eight major foods, including three probable human carcinogens, five possible human carcinogens, five pesticides that disrupt the hormone system and eight nervous system toxins. All the pesticides found were well below federal limits.

"Pesticides should not be allowed in baby food until they have been proven safe for infants," says Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chair of the Department of Community Medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York.

In a prepared statement, Gerber said "you cannot buy or make a safer baby food than Gerber."



MITSUBISHI: Boycott in Full Gear

What do Value-Rent-A-Car, Kirin Beer, Nikon Camera and Mitsubishi automobiles have in common? These products are produced by companies controlled by Mitsubishi Corporation, the Japanese consumer products giant, that is also known for destroying tropical rainforest lands and threatening endangered species and indigenous peoples around the world.

Mitsubishi has timber operations on nearly every continent. It exports logs from the Pacific Northwest and trades in logs from Canada to Southeast Asia to the Amazon. In Canada, the company owns Alberta-Pacific, the largest single-line pulp mill in the world. Mitsubishi also owns the world's largest milling operation, Eidai do Brazil, in the Amazon.

Since 1989, the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has urged consumers in the United States not to buy consumer products produced by Mitsubishi.

The Boycott Mitsubishi Campaign is a worldwide effort to stop Mitsubishi Corporation's "destructive activities in the world's forests," according to boycott director Donna Parker.

RAN continues to call for a total boycott of all products or services from Mitsubishi companies, including Mitsubishi automobiles, trucks, bicycles, televisions, VCRs, fax machines, microchips, Nikon cameras, Kirin beer, Value-Rent-A-Car and the Bank of California.

"Mitsubishi is devastating thousands of square miles of forests and broadly contributing to cultural disintegration," Parker says.

Steve Wechselblatt, vice president of Mitsubishi International Corporation, says RAN's claims about the company "are not valid." "We have rainforest operations only in one place -- in Brazil," Wechselblatt says. "And its not a rainforest logging operation. The one in Brazil is the only one we have in the world."

Wechselblatt admits that the company is also a trading company. "But it handles less than 0.03 percent of tropical timber used around the world," he says. "Our trade is not really great. We are not the largest company that trades tropical timber. RAN knows this. We are not even in the top five."

What could Mitsubishi do for RAN to call off the boycott?

"We want Mitsubishi to stop the destructive practices and look at systemic solutions," Parker says. "And we want them to stop any plans for new logging projects in rainforests. They must put real dollars and time into alternatives to trees -- like kenaf. Selling their operations is not acceptable. If they sell, someone else will do what they are now doing. They have to change their operations."

The U.S. federal government also wants Mitsubishi to change the way it operates.

Earlier this year, the Equal Employee Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a major sexual harassment lawsuit in Peoria, Illinois against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America.

The EEOC lawsuit alleges that sexual harassment has been ongoing at the automaker's Normal, Illinois plant since at least 1990. EEOC officials say hundreds of female employees may have been victimized. EEOC also alleges that Mitsubishi retaliated against a number of women who opposed the discrimination and effectively forced them to resign.

EEOC Vice Chair Paul Igasaki told reporters in Chicago that the working environment at Mitsubishi was characterized by continuous physical and verbal abuse against women, including the following:


* Male employees repeatedly grabbed female employees breasts, buttocks and genital areas. Apparently at least one male employee put his air gun between a female's legs and pulled the trigger.


* Drawings of genitals, breasts and various acts of sexual intercourse, labeled with female employees' names, were made on car fenders and cardboard signs along the assembly line.


* Male employees and supervisors constantly called female employees sluts, whores, bitches and other names which Igasaki said "I cannot repeat in front of TV cameras." Females were routinely asked questions about their sexual habits and preferences.


* Female employees who had the courage to complain about this conduct were ridiculed, ostracized and physically threatened, and their work was sabotaged.

Mitsubishi Motors originally appeared intent on stonewalling the EEOC investigative process and aggressively fighting the charges, but, amidst a barrage of negative publicity, shifted gears and adopted a more contrite approach.

The company "recognizes it has had some problems," says Gael O'Brien, director of corporate and community communications. Thirteen people have been dismissed for sexual harassment over the last six years, she says, and others have been demoted or given counseling. "One case of sexual harassment is obviously one case too many," she says.

Mitsubishi Motors has implemented what CEO Tsuneo Ohinouye calls "a comprehensive initiative to create a model workplace environment in which the men and women of Mitsubishi feel the respect of their fellow workers and the support of management." The company has hired former U.S. Labor Secretary Lynn Martin to review the company's workplace policies, created new positions to expand opportunities for women and minorities within the company and undertaken a comprehensive sexual harassment training program in which all employees will have participated by early 1997.



SEAGRAM'S: Absolut Profits

In June of this year, liquor giant Seagram Company broke the 48-year voluntary ban on broadcast advertising for distilled spirits. The company has now begun an expanded television advertising campaign for its Chivas Regal scotch and Crown Royal whiskey products. The first markets affected appear to be Boston and Houston, though the ads are expected to air also in Milwaukee, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco.

Within days of Seagram's commencement of advertising on NBC-affiliate KRIS in Corpus Christi, Representative Joseph Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and a bipartisan group of more than a dozen House of Representatives members introduced legislation to ban all advertising for distilled spirits from radio and television.

"Seagram's decision to start running television ads is a cynical, profiteering attempt to exploit a new generation of young people by attracting them to drink hard liquor," says George Hacker, director of alcohol policies at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). "This is a classic example of putting profit ahead of the public's health. The action demonstrates the futility of industry self-regulation and the desperation of liquor marketers."

Seagram's spokesperson Bevin Gove says the company is opposed to the Kennedy legislation. "Distilled spirits should be able to access broadcast advertising in a responsible way, much in the way that beer and wine currently do," Gove says.

When asked whether it was easier to get drunk drinking whiskey than drinking wine or beer, Gove says "alcohol is alcohol."

Since Prohibition, the hard liquor industry has voluntarily agreed not to advertise, first on radio and then on television. Since 1980, the consumption of spirits has declined steadily.



With the clock ticking on the boycott threat, Texaco announced a $175 million settlement of the discrimination suit on November 15. If approved by the federal court, it will be the largest amount ever paid in a U.S. racial discrimination lawsuit.

The terms of the settlement require Texaco to pay $140 million to minority employees at the company. Every minority employee will receive a 10 percent pay increase, and an additional compensation pool for minority employees will also be established. The company will allocate an estimated $35 million for restructuring its business operations to address concerns raised in the suit. It will establish a task force to review its human resources policy; require diversity and sensitivity trainings for its workforce; and change its promotion process.

The U.S. Attorney's office in New York is continuing investigations into obstruction of justice charges against Texaco employees who may have destroyed documents related to the case. On November 20, the U.S. Attorney announced it had brought criminal charges against Richard Lundwall, the employee who gave the tapes to the Texaco employee plaintiffs, for his role in destroying documents.


# END # Website - http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1296.04.html

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