Leading Monday's corporations and securities law news, the Financial Times is reporting that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has expanded his inquiry into the corporate governance and accounting practices at American International Group (AIG) by looking at the company's relationship with Barbados-based Coral Reinsurance. Spitzer also requested information from the Delaware insurance regulator about [...]

The Iraqi Special Tribunal has finished preliminary investigations into some of the crimes allegedly committed by Saddam Hussein’s top aides and announced Monday that the first group of five will be sent to trial. The five include Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti , former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan , and three other senior [...]

A lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky , former CEO of Russian oil giant Yukos , has said that his client's trial on tax fraud and other charges could end in April. Yuri Shmidt said that while he doubts the judge's ruling will exonerate his client, he is confident that Khodorkovsky will prevail in the end. Khodorkovsky [...]

General Rasim Delic , who headed the Bosnian Muslim army during most of the Bosnian civil war that spanned the 1990s, left Sarajevo for the Hague Monday to surrender to the UN tribunal and face trial for war crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) released an indictment last week charging Delic [...]

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will face trial in a reinforced metal cage, much like the one used for the character Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 film, the Silence of the Lambs, London's Sun reports in its Monday edition. The tabloid quoted an unidentified source who stated that Hussein will be kept in an underground [...]

A controversial bankruptcy bill first introduced in 1997 goes up for consideration again Monday in the US Senate . The bill aims to limit the ability of consumers to declare bankruptcy and have their debts nullified. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley , author of the legislation, asserts that instead of being used as a last resort, [...]

Saajid Badat, a British citizen, pleaded guilty in court in London Monday on charges of conspiring to place an explosive device on an aircraft in service. Prosecutors plea-bargained Badat in light of evidence indicating that he voluntarily withdrew from the plot after returning from his training. Badat, a 25 year old from Gloucester, received suicide [...]

Mohamed ElBaradei , Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency , called Monday for Iran to be more open and proactive in providing information to the UN nuclear watchdog organization concerning its nuclear programs. His remarks were made at the opening session of the IAEA Board of Directors meeting, just one day after Iran [...]

Opposition parties, as well as election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe , alleged Monday that fraud had tainted the weekend parliamentary elections held in Tajikistan . Tajikistan's largest opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party, has accused government agents of vote-rigging and false reporting. OSCE observers stated that they witnessed "direct [...]

Citizens in Burundi voted Monday for the first time in 12 years on a constitutional referendum. The proposed constitution is designed to create an ethnically balanced government for the nation that has been suffering from an intense civil war ever since President Melchior Ndaday, Burundi's first democratically elected president, was assassinated by Tutsi rebels following [...]