underXposed

Every year the Multinational Monitor applies guidelines to compile the 10 worst corporations. It never lists the same corporations two years in a row, since the idea is to expand the pool for exposure. Apparently they haven’t compiled a list for 2007 yet. But here are the ones for 2006.

1. BP: In March 2006, a leak in the Alaska pipeline that BP maintains led to the second biggest oil spill in Alaskan history. Then, in August 2006, BP was forced to shut down the pipeline because of massive corrosion problems the company had permitted to fester.
2. Delphi: Delphi continued in bankruptcy through 2006, plowing ahead with its shameful scheme to manipulate the bankruptcy system to escape wage and pension payments owed to past and present workers. Final arrangements are still pending for Delphi to emerge from bankruptcy, but it’s fair to say the company will have achieved much of what it desired — trashing its unionized wage and benefit structure, if perhaps not as fully as it fantasized doing.
3. Dupont: Dupont appeared on our list in 2005 for a decades-long cover-up on the effects of a chemical used to make Teflon and grease-resistant coatings. At the end of 2005, the company agreed to phase out its use, over the course of a decade. But the company continues to deny it has any harmful effect on humans. Meanwhile, a federal criminal investigation is ongoing.
4. ExxonMobil: In 2005, ExxonMobil appeared on our list for its global warming denialism, and price-gouging that resulted in record profits of $36 billion. In 2006, the company began massaging its position on global warming — ExxonMobil now agrees that “climate change is a serious and long-term challenge,” but doesn’t want governments to do anything serious about it — and its continued mass rip-off of consumers enabled it to rake in $39.5 billion in profits, a new record.
5. Ford: Ford lost more than $12 billion in 2006, the legacy of the company’s complete failure to recognize that the future rests with fuel efficient vehicles (and soon, petroleum-free transportation) rather than gas-guzzling giant SUVs. Investors took a big hit, but workers felt the worst impact; at the start of 2006, Ford announced it would eliminate a quarter of its U.S. jobs.
6. Halliburton: Halliburton continued with its scandalous looting of taxpayers. In a small but totally typical example, the Associated Press in September reported that a company whistleblower revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2005 that Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary in Iraq billed millions to U.S. taxpayers for nonexistent recreational activities. In July 2006, the Army fired Halliburton from its contract (which Halliburton called a routine decision to suspend the contract). The contract to rebid will be broken up into several pieces — Halliburton may yet end up as the overseer of the companies that take over its old contractual duties.
7. KPMG: KPMG, the accounting firm mired in controversy over the sweetheart deal it negotiated in 2005 to escape prosecution for peddling illegal tax shelter schemes, started off 2006 with a bang. On January 3, the esteemed accountants at KPMG agreed to pay $2.77 million for failing to disclose rebates the firm received for travel expenses billed to the U.S. government.
8. Roche: In July, the newspaper The Australian reported that Roche had spent a remarkable $49,000 on a dinner for 300 doctors. Held at a restaurant in the Sydney Opera House, the purpose of the dinner was to promote the drug makers’ pill rituximab, used to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The dinner violated the Australian drug industry’s code that donated meals to doctors be “simple and modest.”
9. Suez: Suez struggled to hold on to its privatized water business, which seems increasingly non-viable in developing countries. In March, Argentina threw Suez out of the country, terminating its 30-year contract on the grounds that Suez had failed to make promised investments. Suez also left Bolivia in October, extracting a $5 million payment, but backing down on threats to sue the country’s government in international arbitration.
10. W.R. Grace: In 2005, W.R. Grace appeared on our 10 worst list after being indicted for its operations in Libby, Montana, a mining town where the company let hundreds be exposed to deadly doses of asbestos and then concealed the problem. In April 2006, the New York Times reported that “doctors at the clinic that has treated hundreds of asbestos victims accuse the company of trying to discredit them and force the clinic to close.”