Search Results for: united nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PRACTICE of allowing companies to deduct bribes paid to secure contracts overseas from their domestic tax bills is still widespread, with a United Nations report saying it was allowed in 50 per cent of countries surveyed. The paper on how the organisation’s 1996 declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions said that it was however banned in Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iceland, Nigeria, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE LOCATION of Afghanistan’s national museum in a southern Kabul suburb must have been idyllic when it opened in 1931, set against a pastoral backdrop of farmland and mountains. The museum was once one of the richest cultural repositories in the world, home to a collection of the most elegant antiquities from the Ashokan, Greek, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Muslim periods.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CASPIAN Sea countries Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Iran have launched a coordinated programme for surveying and managing sturgeon stocks, paving the way for resuming the US$100 million caviar industry, the United Nations Environment Programme has announced. The trade had been halted by UN conservation agency CITES.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SLOWLY but surely, the world is becoming a little more open and honest in its business transactions. Bribery and corruption have existed as long as people have traded with each other and in some parts of the world remain as matter-of-fact as ever.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union, the USA, China and 87 other countries have agreed new global guidelines on how to rid wood packaging material of wood-eating insects, the United Nations has announced. To guarantee that packaging is pest-free, exporters would need to certify with a globally recognised symbol that the material has been heated or fumigated.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations has highlighted how some member countries have been using their money laundering laws to criminalise corruption, while employing bribery or corruption laws to outlaw money laundering. A report by the UN Secretary General’s department on how the organisation’s 1996 declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions has lead to national laws being tightened regarding these crimes lists a number of case studies.…

BY PHILIP FINE

CONAGRA Foods Inc is to sell its red-meat business in the United States and Australia, according to the US Cattle Buyers Weekly. The multinational, with sales of US$27 billion a year, will sell processing operations, cattle feeding operations and Australia Meat Holdings, says the newsletter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CLOTHING imports from the United States are to bear the brunt of retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union because of the erection of controversial ‘safeguard’ duties by Washington to protect the American steel industry.

The European Commission has announced that it is asking EU ministers to approve a selected range of products, where the levying of duty will cause the most pain to US exporters, in a bid to force the Bush administration to drop its steel tariffs.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN ENVIRONMENTAL group is taking the world’s largest poultry company to court for allegedly failing to take care of noxious releases on one of their contracted farms. The Sierra Club alleges that the US’s Kentucky-based Tyson Foods failed to report releases of ammonia on four large ‘chicken houses.’…

BY PHILIP FINE

US textile manufacturers are anxious to tell US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill how his department’s high dollar policy has contributed to devastating job losses for the country’s textile and apparel workers.

American Textile Manufacturers Institute spokesman, Cass Johnson, says his organisation would be attending O’Neill’s senate banking hearings on May 1st and will also lobby federal officials on how propping up US currency has translated into his sector losing 13 per cent of its workforce in one year.…