A number has emerged from an investigation by the BBC Panorama program of what private contractors and war profiteers have absconded with. The estimate comes to a staggering $23 billion that did not reach its intended use.

 

Since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq US contractors have provided services and supplies to armed forces with contracts that often were not put out to bid. Halliburton is one of the most well known as the company that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. Halliburton was allocated contracts without competitive bids.

BBC also investigated the Iraqi Minister of Defense, Hazem Shalaan, who apparently skimmed $1.2 billion by substituting old military equipment for claimed top class weapons. Shalaan has fled the country and is on the run after an indictment and 2 jail sentences.

The Bush administration has not only refused to comment on the investigation, it has placed a gag order on any discussion of the allegations. The gag order was applied to 70 cases of fraud against many top US companies.

So far no contractor has faced trial for fraud or misuse of funds. California Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is pursuing action on the allegations, but the gag order is unlikely to be lifted during the current White House administration.

The extent of fraud may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history, Waxman said.

Alltel is in acquisition talks with Verizon. A merger or purchase of cell phone service provider Alltel could create the largest cellphone carrier against rival AT&T. The deal amounts to about $27 billion involving complex discussions with private equity

General Motors is a huge corporation, bigger than the economies of many nations, so it's not surprising that it's a slow responding, hard to turn behemoth: kind of like the obese vehicles it builds for obese people. The writing

Veteran local news anchor Rob Morrison is leaving WNBC. For the past several years Rob Morrison has anchored 'Today in New York,' the lead-in to NBC's lucrative Today Show. Previously, he served as co-anchor on the weekend editions of

A New York judge has reduced Trouble's fortune from 12 to 2 million, awarded $6 million to the children, and $10 million to Leona Helmsley's billion dollar charitable foundation. No need to feel sorry for Trouble. Even

Operation Malicious Mortgage is the name given to a task force project by the US Justice Department. Operation Malicious Mortgage investigated mortgage fraud across the country and netted over 400 people indicting them with mortgage fraud and securities fraud.

src='http://openxoom.com/x/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=2&n=ea35903' />Matt Cohler is heading over to Benchmark Capital and leaving Facebook. Matt Cohler spent nearly four years there as VP of product management. At Benchmark Capital, Matt Cohler will be a general partner. This marks another departure from

MOLLE is used not only to describe the specific system manufactured by Speciality Defense Systems, but is used interchangeably to generically describe all load bearing systems and subsystems that utilize the woven PALS (Pouch Attachment Ladder System) webbing for modular

Run the numbers and the Verizon Alltel merger is a challenge to AT&T, which has been at the top of the major US cellphone carriers for some time now. While AT&T has a solid 71M subscribers, number two Verizon has

What do you know about Puerto Rico? I know very little so I thought I had better find out something about Puerto Rico's history and politics. So here are some quick facts: Christopher Columbus visited in 1493

Wachovia stock plummeted as much as 20% in morning trading, after Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney downgraded Wachovia to underperform from perform. Wachovia stock was down as Washington Mutual lead the steepest ever decline in Bank Stock Index. The biggest US