{"id":14241,"date":"2014-01-10T15:49:58","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T20:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=14241"},"modified":"2014-01-10T15:49:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T20:49:58","slug":"alcoa-reports-losses-will-pay-huge-sec-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2014\/01\/10\/alcoa-reports-losses-will-pay-huge-sec-settlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcoa reports losses, will pay huge SEC settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alcoa's<\/a>

Alcoa’s Massena East smelter plant. NCPR file photo<\/p><\/div>\n

Alcoa, which employs hundreds in Massena<\/a> and is the North Country’s largest private employer, is having a bad couple of days. The company reported Thursday that it lost $2.34 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013 (WWNY-TV<\/a>); the company’s also dealing with low aluminum prices that could negatively impact its profits.<\/p>\n

More stunningly, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced yesterday<\/a> that Alcoa and an affiliate will pay fines totaling $384 million in criminal and civil penalties for paying bribes to royal family members in Bahrain (NPR.org<\/a>). Specifically,<\/p>\n

An SEC investigation found that more than $110 million in corrupt payments were made to Bahraini officials with influence over contract negotiations between Alcoa and a major government-operated aluminum plant.\u00a0 Alcoa\u2019s subsidiaries used a London-based consultant with connections to Bahrain\u2019s royal family as an intermediary to negotiate with government officials and funnel the illicit payments to retain Alcoa\u2019s business as a supplier to the plant.\u00a0 Alcoa lacked sufficient internal controls to prevent and detect the bribes, which were improperly recorded in Alcoa\u2019s books and records as legitimate commissions or sales to a distributor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s much more detail in the SEC’s press release. Needless to say, this did not <\/em>happen locally in Massena.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alcoa, which employs hundreds in Massena and is the North Country’s largest private employer, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[5612,11481,10,181,11471],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14241"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14258,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14241\/revisions\/14258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}