Lucy Komisar

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Lucy Komisar is a New York City-based investigative journalist. She writes about offshore banking, corporate secrecy, international money-laundering, and how they relate to corporate fraud; international corruption; the looting by dictators; financing of terrorism; international crime including arms, drug and people trafficking; and tax evasion.

She wrote about Gladio, the secret American funding of a rightist paramilitary in Europe after World War II (Turkey's Terrorists: A CIA Legacy Lives On) - The Progressive, April 1997, and also investigated on the Clearstream affair, first uncovered by the French journalist Denis Robert. (Her article "Explosive Revelations$," In These Times, April 15, 2002.)

She wrote a chapter called BCCI's Double Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad, for the 2007 book, A Game As Old As Empire.

Her articles on offshore -- collected on The Komisar Scoop [1] -- include:

"Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI," Inter Press Service (IPS), April 4, 2007.
"Corporate Profits Take an Offshore Vacation," Inter Press Service (IPS), Feb 23, 2007.
"US/Haiti: Top Republicans Leave Telecom Accused of Bribery," Inter Press Service (IPS), Nov. 6, 2006.
"Confessions of a Banker," New Internationalist (UK), Aug. 2006.
Haiti Telecom Kickbacks Tarnish Aristide - CorpWatch, December 29, 2005.
Follow Aristide's Money Offshore: How Haiti was looted with the help of tax haven shell companies & secret bank accounts and U.S. Citizens & Corporations - Haiti Democracy Project, November 10, 2005.
Yukos Kingpin on Trial - CorpWatch, May 10, 2005.
"Tax Activists: Big Business Must Pay Its Fair Share," Pacific News Service, April 12, 2005.
"Profit Laundering and Tax Evasion," Dissent, Spring 2005.
"Bringing Business Back Ashore: Buenos Aires issues world's first ban on offshore shell companies," CorpWatch, April 4th, 2005.
"The Fall of a Titan," AlterNet, March 17, 2005 (about AIG)
"Take The Money And Run Offshore," AlterNet, Dec. 22, 2004. (about AIG)
"Cooking the Insurance Books," CorpWatch, Nov. 17, 2004.
"The Case That Kerry Cracked," AlterNet, Oct 22, 2004.
"Rich Dodge Taxes Says Bush – A Flash of Honesty or Another Slip of the Tongue?" Pacific News Service, Sept 9, 2004.
"Saddam's secret money-laundering trail," UPI June 2, 2004.
"How Big Business Evades Taxes," Pacific News Service, April 9, 2004
"Menatep paper trail," The Russia Journal (Moscow), Nov. 5, 2003.
"Offshore Banking: Secret Threat to America," Dissent, Spring 2003.
"KPMG and the Marcos Money Trail," Multinational Monitor, March 2003.
"U.S. on the trail of the Marcos millions," Asia Times (Hong Kong), Jan. 8, 2003.
"Taking Stock: Unions join fight against offshore corporations," In These Times, Feb. 17, 2003.
"Funding Terror: Investigating the role of Saudi banks," In These Times, Jan. 20, 2003.
"Document shows Tunisian with alleged al-Qaida links gave information to Italians two years ago," MSNBC, Sept. 16, 2002.
"Dealing with Dictators: Bell Helicopters skirted U.N. embargo to sell to Serbia," In These Times, Sept. 12, 2002.
"Marcos’ Missing Millions," In These Times, Sept. 2, 2002.
"Serbia's Deadly Choppers - U.S. Firm Sold Parts to Milosevic," Pacific News Service, Aug. 16, 2002.
"U.S. Investigators Missed Russian Mob in N.Y. Bank Scandal," with Ivan Feranec, Pacific News Service, Aug. 6, 2002.
"Explosive Revelations$," In These Times, April 15, 2002.
"Shareholders in the Bank of Terror," Salon, March 15, 2002.
Offshore Game Bares Sinister System," NY Daily News, Jan. 25, 2002.
"How Enron used the offshore system to hide millions," San Diego Union, January 23, 2002)
"Swiss Bank Handled Sale from Russian Bioweapons Company," Earth Times, Nov. 12, 01.
"A Book Too Hot For U.S. to Handle? Tracking Terrorist Money," Pacific News Service, Oct. 4, 2001.
"How U.S. Bank Laws Fund Terrorists, Pacific News Service, Sept. 21, 2001
"Bank Secrecy Gives Terror Safe Haven," MSNBC Sept. 19, 2001.
"Rich Benefit From Offshore Tax Havens,' Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2001 (also Sacramento Bee).
"After Dirty Air, Dirty Money," The Nation, June 18, 2001.
"Rubin in UN Finance Panel – a Case of Fox Guarding the Henhouse?" Pacific News Service, Dec. 20, 2000.
"While Washington Denies Any Problem, Swiss Probe 'Missing" $4.8 billion loan to Russia," Pacific News Service, Oct. 16, 2000.
"Money Trail," The Moscow Times, Oct. 3, 2000.
"Russian Cons and New York Banks," The Village Voice, Dec. 7, 1999.
"Fool Me Twice," (about offshore bank and corporate secrecy), The Progressive, Dec. 1999.
"Cleaning Up the Murky Waters of Offshore Banking," Global Finance, Nov. 1999.
"Some Poetic Justice for Swiss Bankers," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 22, 1998.
"Drug Smugglers' Dutch Treat," Wall Street Journal, May 29, 1997.

She exposed the secret 1976 meeting in Santiago at which Henry Kissinger told Augusto Pinochet to ignore the criticisms Kissinger had been pressured to make publicly regarding Pinochet's violations of human rights.

Her articles about Kissinger and Chile are:

"Documented Complicity," The Progressive, Sept. 1999.
"Kissinger Declassified," The Progressive, May 1999.
"Newly Opened Files Show Kissinger Privately Promised Pinochet Support While Publicly Decrying Human Rights Abuses," Pacific News Service, March 1, 1999.
"Kissinger Covered Up Chile Torture," The Observer (London), Feb. 28, 1999.
"Kissinger Alentó a Pinochet en la Represión," El Pais (Madrid), Feb. 28, 1999.
"Into the Murky Depths of Operation Condor," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 1998.

Earlier writing

In the 1980s and 90s, she wrote about international affairs, with a focus on movements for democracy in the developing world. In that context she reported from Central America, the Philippines, Zaire and elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. She also wrote about European politics and foreign policy and covered dissident movements in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. She was banned from East Germany and harassed by security police in Zaire.

She was editor of the Mississippi Free Press in Jackson, Miss., 1962-63. The weekly covered the civil rights movement and related political and labor issues and was read largely by black people in Mississippi. (The newspapers and her other civil rights papers are archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.)[2]

Books

Corazon Aquino: The Story of a Revolution (New York: George Braziller, 1987), political biography of former president of the Philippines. (Zurich: Benziger Verlag, 1988; Manila: The National Bookstore, 1988)
Down and Out in the U.S.A. A History of Public Welfare (New York: Franklin Watts, 1973 and 1977; New Viewpoints, 1973 and 1977), history of the American welfare system from colonial times to the present.
The New Feminism (New York: Franklin Watts, 1972; Paperback Library, 1972), primer on feminism, including history, law, work, education and origins of contemporary movement.

Organizations

Komisar is a founder of the international Tax Justice Network (located at [3]) and author of its report, Citigroup: a History and Culture of Tax Evasion (January 2006). She is co-chair of TJN-USA, TJN's American branch. [4])

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, 1994 to present.

She is a member of The Drama Desk, the organization of New York theater critics, writers and editors, 1998 to present.

She was a member of the board of PEN American Center, the writers organization, 1976-1996.

She was a national Vice-President of the National Organization for Women, 1970-71 and was successful, with Legislative VP Ann Scott, in getting the US government to extend federal contractor and cable TV affirmative action rules to women. (Her NOW papers are in the Schlesinger archives at Harvard University.) [5]

Honors

She is a past John Simon Guggenheim fellow.

She is a past John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grantee.