A just-published bombshell article in the November issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine implicates Koch Industries, the company controlled by Republican mega-donors Charles and David Koch, in dozens of criminal acts around the globe over the past three decades.

Koch Industries allegedly made improper payments to win business in 6 countries over 8 years (through 2008) — a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company described them as "activities constitute[ing] violations of criminal law."

Koch Industries sold millions of dollars of oil refining equipment to Iran — even after President George W. Bush described the nation as a member of the 'Axis of Evil.' The company maintains these sales were legal at the time, and says it has since cut ties with the rogue nation.

Originally posted by shortywarn
bribes are wrong,,,,,,,,,, but in international and when dealing with dictators, foreign regimes,,,,it's unfortunately standard operating procedure

Four federal agencies -- the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration -- say that benzene is a cause of cancer.

On Jan. 6, 1995, Koch’s refining unit informed the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, or TNRCC, that it had installed a new anti-pollution device called a Thermatrix that used flameless heat to burn off the benzene. The machine lacked sufficient capacity for the job, Barnes-Soliz says, and refinery workers disconnected it within days.

“The refinery was just hemorrhaging benzene into the atmosphere,” she says.

Three months after disconnecting the machine, Koch filed a quarterly report with Texas regulators, while concealing that it had violated the emission rules.

Pressured to Change

On Aug. 17, 1995, Koch Industries attorney Vincent Mietlicki wrote a memo to another company lawyer, Thomas Meek, saying the refinery had given the state incorrect information about its uncontrolled benzene emissions.

“I think it goes without saying that there is a need to correct our first quarterly report which is misleading and inaccurate,” he wrote.

That December, a refinery manager asked Barnes-Soliz to tally the plant’s annual benzene emissions for a report to state regulators, Barnes-Soliz says. She found 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene emissions, more than 15 times higher than what the rules allowed.

“I redid the calculation a lot of times,” Barnes-Soliz says.

Those levels of emissions could increase the cancer risk to refinery employees and the public, she says. Barnes-Soliz reported the results in a document dated Jan. 4, 1996, to Mietlicki, the same lawyer who had written the memo calling out the inaccuracies in the quarterly report Koch filed with the state. She says Mietlicki and other Koch executives pressured her to lower the figures in her report.

Falsified Document

“There were a lot of meetings to try and get me to change the number,” she says. “It was hard, but I held firm to my convictions.”

Barnes-Soliz’s bosses went around her. On April 8, 1996, Koch reported to Texas regulators that its Corpus Christi plant had uncontrolled emissions of 0.61 metric tons for 1995, or 1/149th the quantity she had found.

“When I saw they had actually falsified that document, I had no recourse but to notify the authorities,” Barnes-Soliz says.

On April 18, 1996, on her lunch break, she drove to the state’s TNRCC office and reported that Koch had lied about its benzene emissions. By the time Barnes-Soliz walked in, environmental regulators were already investigating Koch in Corpus Christi.