This all goes back to the gung-ho days of the cable boom when it was all about ‘get in the ground and
Posted in General on 22. Aug, 2010
This all goes back to the gung-ho days of the cable boom when it was all about ‘get in the ground, and what’s next lads?’Councils now fear the mistakes of the 1990s will be repeated by the new generation of industry-oriented cable installation. Several major trunk networks are currently under construction that will loop around the country connecting businesses to BT exchanges.The big cable companies are keen to downplay the extent of remedial works currently under way.A construction manager at CWC, who did not want to be named, said: “We do have remedial work that is ongoing, but no more than you would expect based on the volume of work completed We hold retentions in cash for the majority of contracts. Whether they will be sufficient in the long term is difficult to say.”. America’s second largest bank, Chase Manhattan, is facing a potentially damaging stand-off with Holocaust investigators.
America’s second largest bank, Chase Manhattan, is facing a potentially damaging stand-off with Holocaust investigators.
It is refusing to hand over further information relating to an investigation into billions of dollars plundered by the Nazis during the Second World Warfearing it could go into the wrong hands.The stalemate has led to a breakdown in communications between Chase Manhattan and the World Jewish Congress, which has been unearthing and publicising US government documents which allege that the financial institution was really Adolf Hitler’s bank.The beachhead is the bank’s alleged records of the events during the occupation of France just as the US entered the war in 1941. Those secret records, says the WJC, are in the archives of the bank. They want unfettered access to them so they can carry out a transparent investigation to see how far Chase went in helping Hitler fulfil his dream of an Aryan race.But Chase insists there are no secret bank archives and is refusing to hand over any more documents after WJC executive director Elan Steinberg said last Tuesday that they had broken off talks with the bank.The bank confirmed there had been a breakdown in talks. Their spokesman, James Finn, said: “We’ve put in a lot of leg work to go find out what the story is in looking at these archives (US public archives). And there really is no appetite at Chase for handing to somebody that can just turn it over to plaintiffs’ lawyers who made the decision to go adversarial on us.”"They say there is nothing there. Do you think we are going to take their word for that?,” said Mr Steinberg. Negotiations were also made difficult when Chase infuriated the WJC when the bank asked the WJC to side with them in a class-action suit filed by Holocaust victims.Chase, which has since merged with Chemical Bank, does admit investors’ accounts were plundered.US Treasury Department documents show the German embassy made arrangements with the bank’s manager, who was sympathetic to Hitler, to funnel cash back to Germany once the US entered the war And records prove they did.”This is not about money What we want is unfettered access to their archives And they have denied us that This is about moral restitution.
Chase French branches were aiding the enemy, contrary to British and American war policy,” said Mr Steinberg.”But we’re not making any claims to any accounts We just want to know what collaboration there was. But there may be financial litigation.”The WJC has been very successful in the past in recovering plundered accounts. Barclays agreed to settle its part of a class-action suit by paying $3.6m. The US report also found that the manager of JP Morgan’s Paris office worked closely with the Nazis..