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* [Politics](/section/politics/)

# Bloomberg Investigates the Koch Brothers

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by 

[TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/)

Oct 3, 2011 3:37 PM UTC

by 

[TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/)

Oct 3, 2011 3:37 PM UTC

Bloomberg has [a good, old-fashioned investigative piece](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html) on the private business empire of David and Charles Koch, the billionaire conservative political activists who inherited their father’s small oil company and now produce everything from Dixie cups and Stainmaster Carpet to petrochemical equipment.

“Koch Industries tells all of its employees around the world that its top two values, which it calls Guiding Principles, are integrity and compliance,” Bloomberg says. The reporters, Asjylyn Loder and David Evans then methodically detail the actions taken by the company over the years that fly in the face of those principles.

In what Koch itself concluded last year “constitute violations of criminal law”, a subsidiary in France authorized improper payments dating back to 2002 to secure contracts in six countries where they did business. The Koch ethics manager who uncovered the practices was fired for incompetence.more

Koch Industries “rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly \[ran\] afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada,” says Bloomberg.

---

> “”

---

Working through overseas subsidiaries, Koch Industries circumvented a 1995 ban on trade with Iran, selling the state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co. products to help build what is now the largest methanol plant in the world. “Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” said German engineer George Bentu who worked for Koch from 2001 to 2007, according to Bloomberg.

---

> “”

---

There’s a lot more there–a lot more, like allegations of stealing oil on American Indian reservations, allegations of toxic waste dumping, the deaths of two teenagers in an explosion of a butane pipeline–and the piece is worth reading from start to finish.

By the end the Koch’s supposedly patriotic libertarianism takes on a different cast:

---

> “”

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