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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS OF 2002 he year 2002 will forever be remembered as the year of corporate crime. For Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst Corporations of 2002 list, we included only Andersen from the ranks of the financial criminals and miscreants. Andersen's assembly-line document destruction certainly merits a place on the list. (Citigroup appears on the list as well, but primarily for a subsidiary's involvement in predatory lending, as well as the company's funding of environmentally destructive projects around the world.) As for the rest, we present a collection of polluters, dangerous pill peddlers, modern-day mercenaries, enablers of human rights abuses, merchants of death and beneficiaries of rural destruction and misery. Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst Corporations of 2002, appearing in alphabetical order, are: - Arthur Andersen , for a massive scheme to destroy documents related to the Enron meltdown. "Tons of paper relating to the Enron audit were promptly shredded as part of the orchestrated document destruction," a federal indictment against Andersen alleged. "The shredder at the Andersen office at the Enron building was used virtually constantly and, to handle the overload, dozens of large trunks filled, with Enron documents" to be shredded, were sent to Andersen's main Houston office. Andersen was convicted for illegal document destruction, effectively putting the com- pany out of business. - BAT, for operating worldwide programs supposedly designed to prevent youth smoking but which actually make the practice more attractive to kids (by suggesting smoking is an adult activity), continuing to deny the harmful health effects of second- hand smoke, and working to oppose efforts at the World Health Organization to adopt a strong Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. - Caterpillar, for selling bulldozers to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which are used as an instrument of war to destroy Palestinian homes and buildings. The IDF has destroyed more than 7,000 Palestinian homes since the beginning of the Israeli occu- pation in 1967, leaving 30,000 people homeless. = Citigroup, both for its deep involvement in the Enron and other financial scandals and its predatory lending practices through its recently acquired subsidiary, The Associates. Citigroup paid US$215 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that The Associates engaged in systematic and widespread deceptive and abusive lending practices. + DynCorp, a controversial private firm which subcontracts military services with the US Defense Department, for flying planes that spray herbicides on coca crops in Colombia. Farmers on the ground allege that the herbicides are killing their legal crops, and exposing them to dangerous toxins. - M&M/Mars, for responding tepidly to revelations about child slaves in the West African fields where much of the world's cocoa is grown, and refusing to commit to purchasing a modest 5% of its product from Fair Trade providers. - Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of Folger's coffee and part of the coffee roaster oligopoly, for failing to take action to address plummeting coffee bean prices. Low prices have pushed tens of thousands of farmers in Central America, Ethiopia, Uganda and elsewhere to the edge of survival, or destroyed their means of livelihood altogether. + Schering Plough, for a series of scandals, most prominently allegations of repeat- ed failure over recent years to fix problems in manufacturing dozens of drugs at four of its facilities in New Jersey, USA and Puerto Rico. Schering paid US$500 million to settle the case with the US Food and Drug Administration. Shell Oil, for continuing business as usual as one of the world's leading environ- mental violators—while marketing itself as a socially and environmentally responsible company. + Wyeth, for using duplicitous means, and without sufficient scientific proof, to market hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to women as a fountain of youth. Scientific evidence reported in 2002 showed that long-term HRT actually threatens women's lives, by increasing the risks of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and pul- monary embolism. What's the lesson to be drawn from the 10 Worst Corporations list? Not only are Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and the rest indicative of a fundamentally corrupt financial system, they are representative of a rotten system of corporate dominance. (Source: Multinational Monitor, January 2003, http:/;www.multinationalmonitor.org) menopausal women, and physicians are supposed to weigh the risks of cancer against the benefits of the drugs. (Source: Reuters, December 11, 2002; see Sherrill Sellman's article this issue) FDA APPROVES PROZAC FOR CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS n January 4, 2003, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Eli Lilly & Company's Prozac (fluoxetine) to treat depression and obsessive com- pulsive disorder (OCD) in children and adolescents aged seven to 17 years. According to the FDA, Prozac is the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRD to receive approval for treating depression in children. Indianapolis-based Lilly lost its patent protection on Prozac in August 2001. The drug was once a blockbuster, pulling in sales of US$2.5 billion in 2000. Since osing patent protection, several generic formulations of Prozac have flooded the US market, cutting sharply into Lilly's revenues. In the meantime, Lilly intro- duced Sarafem—Prozac by another name—to treat "PMDD" in women. (Source: Reuters, January 4, 2003; also see Sherrill Sellman's article this issue) POLICE FRAMED GENOA ANTI- GLOBALISATION ACTIVISTS pers in Genoa, Italy, have admitted to fabricating evidence against anti- globalisation activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. More than 100,000 people participated in the 2001 Genoa protests, most of them peacefully. According to BBC and Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports, a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admit- ted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were appar- ently planted to justify the brutal July 22 raid on the school, when 200 officers took the sleeping activists by surprise. Another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged during a parliamentary inquiry into police con- duct. Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges. (Source: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR], January 10, 2003, http://www fair.org) NEXUS +9 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2003 www.nexusmagazine.com