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fictionfromafar · 4 years ago

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Unmissable International Crime Fiction Novels from April 2021 onwards

1 April

The Untamable by Guillermo Arriaga

MacLehose Press

A gripping coming of age thriller of vengeance and destiny set between Mexico City's murderous 1960s underworld and the bleak tundras of Canada's most remote province. By the BAFTA-winning screenwriter of Amores Perros.

Yukon, Canada's far north. A young man tracks a wolf through the wilderness. In Mexico City, Juan Guillermo has pledged vengeance.

1 April

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Marissa

Harvill Secker

Five killers find themselves on a bullet train from Tokyo competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? A bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller which fizzes with an incredible energy as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwinds to the last station.

15 April

Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates

Corylus Books

After a turbulent few years, Guðgeir Fransson is back with the Reykjavík police force and is called on to look into the suspicious suicide of a young woman in a cell at the Hólmsheiði prison. On the surface, it looks like a straightforward investigation. As he digs into the dead woman’s past, he unearths links to a man’s disappearance more than twenty years ago.

My review of The Fox:

15 April

We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day by Ivana Bodrožić, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac

Penguin Random House

Nora is a journalist assigned to do a puff piece on the perpetrator of a crime of passion–a Croatian high school teacher who fell in love with one of her students, a Serb, and is now in prison for having murdered her husband. But Nora herself is the daughter of a man who was murdered years earlier under mysterious circumstances. And she wants, if not to avenge her father, at least to bring to justice whoever committed the crime.

15 April

How To Betray Your Country by James Wolff

Bitter Lemon Press

Following on from the acclaimed debut novel Beside the Syrian Sea, this is the second title in a planned trilogy about loyalty and betrayal in the modern world. An authentic thriller about the thin line between following your conscience and following orders. James Wolff is the pseudonym of a young English novelist who “has been working for the British government for the last ten years”.

22 April

Trap for Cinderella by Sebastien Japrisot

Gallic Books

A beach house at a French resort is gutted by fire. Trapped inside are two women - one rich and the other poor. Only one of them survives, burnt beyond recognition and in a state of total amnesia. Who is she, the heiress or her penniless friend? A killer, or an intended victim?

29 April

Geiger by Gustaf Skordeman

Zaffre

The landline rings as Agneta is waving off her grandchildren. Just one word comes out of the receiver: 'Geiger'. For decades, Agneta has always known that this moment would come, but she is shaken. She knows what it means. Retrieving her weapon from its hiding place, she attaches the silencer and creeps up behind her husband before pressing the barrel to his temple.

29 April

Facets of Death by Michael Stanley

Orenda Books

Detective Kubu, renowned international detective, has faced off with death more times than he can count... But what was the case that established him as a force to be reckoned with? In Facets of Death, a prequel to the acclaimed Detective Kubu series, the fresh-faced cop gets ensnared in an international web of danger—can he get out before disaster strikes?

29 April

The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson

Michael Joseph

Una knows she is struggling to deal with her father's sudden, tragic suicide. She spends her nights drinking alone in Reykjavik, stricken with thoughts that she might one day follow in his footsteps.

So when she sees an advert seeking a teacher for two girls in the tiny village of Skálar - population of ten - on the storm-battered north coast of the island, she sees it as a chance to escape.

13 May

Seat 7a by Sebastian Fitzek, translated by Jamie Bulloch

Head of Zeus

Psychiatrist Mats Krüger knows that his irrational fear of flying is just that – irrational. He knows that flying is nineteen times safer than driving. He also knows that if something does happen on a plane, the worst place to be is seat 7A. That's why on his first plane journey in 20 years – to be with his only daughter as she gives birth – he's booked seat 7A, so no one else can sit there. If no one is sat there, surely nothing will go wrong.

My review of Passenger 23 :

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/643950323513311232/passenger-23-by-sebastian-fitzek-passenger-23-by

13 May

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett

Orenda Books

Oslo, 1938. When a woman turns up at the office of police-turned-private investigator Ludvig Paaske, has accepted a routine case to find evidence of a cheating husband but soon enough his assistant Jack Rivers has been accused of murder. Rivers is no angel, and Paaske must dig deep to find out what’s going on. The secrets he uncovers go all the way back to 1920s Norway when smugglers, pimps and racketeers ruled the Oslo underworld.

20 May

Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored by Philippe Georget, Translated by Steven Rendall

Europa Editions

It’s the middle of a long hot summer on the French Mediterranean shore and the town is full of tourists. Sebag and Molina, two tired cops who are being slowly devoured by dull routine and family worries, deal with the day’s misdemeanors and petty complaints at the Perpignan police headquarters without a trace of enthusiasm. Out of the blue a young Dutch woman is brutally murdered on a beach at Argelès, and another disappears without a trace in the alleys of the city. A serial killer obsessed with Dutch women?

20 May

Oxygen by Sacha Naspini, Translated by Clarissa Botsford

Europa Editions

Laura disappeared into thin air in 1999, at eight years old. She was found in a metal container, fourteen years later.

Luca is having dinner with his father dinner when they are interrupted by a visit from the carabinieri, who take his father away. Luca can only watch the scene unfold, helpless. The charges brought against esteemed anthropologist Carlo Maria Balestri are extremely grave: multiple counts of abduction, torture, murder, and concealing his victims’ bodies.

27 May

The Waiter by Ajay Chowdhury

Harvill Secker

Disgraced detective Kamil Rahman moves from Kolkata to London to start afresh as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. But the day he caters a birthday party for his boss's friend on Millionaire's Row, his simple new life becomes rather complicated. The event is a success, the food is delicious, but later that evening the host, Rakesh, is found dead in his swimming pool.

27 May

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

Viking

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer.

So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served.

10 June

In the Shadow of the Fire by Herve Le Corre, translated by Tina Kover

Europa Editions

The Paris Commune’s “bloody week” sees the climax of the savagery of the clashes between the Communards and the French Armed Forces loyal to Versailles. Amid the shrapnel and the chaos, while the entire west side of Paris is a field of ruins, a photographer fascinated by the suffering of young women takes “suggestive” photos to sell to a particular clientele. Young women begin disappearing, and when Caroline, a seamstress who volunteers at a first aid station, is counted among the missing, her fiancé Nicolas, a member of the Commune’s National Guard, and Communal security officer Antoine, sets off independently in search of her.

10 June

The All Human Wisdom by Pierre Lemaitre

MacLehose Press

In 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Péricourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Péricourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months.

15 June

The Transparency Of Time, Leonardo Padura, translated by Anna Kushner,

Bitter Lemon Press

Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favor of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money. Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santería appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla—a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past to uncover the true provenance of the statue.

My review of Havana Fever:

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/631759758177746944/havana-fever-written-by-leonardo-padura

24 June

The Wrong Goodbye by Toshihiko Yahagi, translated by Alfred Birnbaum

MacLehose Press

In a nod to Raymond Chandler, The Wrong Goodbye pits homicide detective Eiji Futamura against a shady Chinese business empire and U.S. military intelligence in the docklands of recession hit Japan. After the frozen corpse of immigrant barman Tran Binh Long washes up in midsummer near Yokosuka U.S. Navy Base, Futamura meets a strange customer from Tran’s bar. Vietnam vet pilot Billy Lou Bonney talks Futamura into hauling three suitcases of “goods” to Yokota US Air Base late at night and flies off leaving a dead woman behind. My review:

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/641412317374988288/the-wrong-goodbye

24 June

Sleepless by Romy Haussmann, translated by Jamie Bulloch

Quercus

It's been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven - free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss - kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to be able to refuse.

29 June

Black Ice by Carin Gerhardsen

Scarlet

January in Gotland. The days are short, the air is cold, and all the roads are covered in snow. On a deserted, icy backroad, these wintery conditions will soon bring together a group of strangers with a force devastating enough to change their lives forever when, in the midst of a brief period, a deadly accident and two separate crimes leave victims in their wake.

1st July

The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason

Harvill Secker

A woman approaches Konrad with new information and progress can finally be made. But as Konrad starts to look back at the case and secrets of the past, he is forced to come face to face with his own dark side. In What the Darkness Knows, the master of Icelandic crime writing reunites readers with Konrad, the unforgettable retired detective from The Shadow District.

1 July

Resilience by Bogdan Hrib, translated by Marina Sofia

Corylus Books

Stelian Munteanu has had enough of being an international man of mystery: all he wants to do is make the long-distance relationship with his wife Sofia work. But when the notorious Romanian businessman Pavel Coman asks him to investigate the death of his daughter in the north of England, he reluctantly gets involved once more in what proves to be a tangled web of shady business dealings and political conspiracies. Moving rapidly between London, Newcastle, Bucharest and Iasi, this novel shows just how easy it is to fall prey to fake news and social media manipulation.

8 July

The Therapist by Helene Flood, translated by Alison McCulloch

MacLehose Press

A voicemail from her husband tells Sara he's arrived at the holiday cabin. Then a call from his friend confirms he never did. She tries to carry on as normal, teasing out her clients' deepest fears, but as the hours stretch out, her own begin to surface. And when the police finally take an interest, they want to know why Sara deleted that voicemail.

13 July

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro translated by Frances Riddle

Charco Press

After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.

My review of Betty Boo:

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/633225446612484096/

15 July

The Basel Killings

Hansjörg Schneider

Bitter Lemon Press

It the end of October, the city of Basel is grey and wet. It could be December. It is just after midnight when Police Inspector Peter Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly worse for wear, spots old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a street light. He wants to smoke a cigarette with him, but the usually very loquacious Hardy is silent—his throat a gaping wound. Turns out he was first strangled, then his left earlobe slit, his diamond stud stolen. The media and the police come quickly to the same conclusion: Hardy’s murder was the work of a gang of Albanian drug smugglers. But for Hunkeler that seems too obvious.

20 July

The Double Mother by Michel Bussi, translated by Sam Taylor

W&N

Already shown as a serial on Channel4’s Walter Presents (as The Other Mother), four-year-old Malone Moulin is haunted by nightmares of being handed over to a complete stranger and begins claiming his mother is not his real mother. His teachers at school say that it is all in his imagination as his mother has a birth certificate, photos of him as a child and even the pediatrician confirms Malone is her son. The school psychologist, Vasily, believes otherwise as the child vividly describes an exchange between two women.

22 July

Girls Who Lie Eva Bjorg AEgisdottir

Orenda

When single mother Maríanna disappears from her home, leaving an apologetic note on the kitchen table, everyone assumes that she’s taken her own life … until her body is found on the Grábrók lava fields seven months later, clearly the victim of murder. Her neglected fifteen-year-old daughter Hekla has been placed in foster care, but is her perfect new life hiding something sinister?

My Review of A Creak On The Stairs:

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/631717704661942273/

22nd July

The Doll Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Hodder & Stoughton

It was meant to be a quiet family fishing trip, a chance for mother and daughter to talk. But it changes the course of their lives forever. They catch nothing except a broken doll that gets tangled in the net. After years in the ocean, the doll a terrifying sight and the mother's first instinct is to throw it back, but she relents when her daughter pleads to keep it. This simple act of kindness proves fatal. That evening, the mother posts a picture of the doll on social media. By the morning, she is dead and the doll has disappeared.

5 August

The Soul Breaker by Sebastian Fitzek, translated by Jamie Bulloch

Head Of Zeus

He doesn't kill them, or mutilate them. But he leaves them completely dead inside, paralysed and catatonic. His only trace a note left in their hands. There are three known victims when suddenly the abductions stop. The Soul Breaker has tired of his game, it seems. Meanwhile, a man has been found in the snow outside an exclusive psychiatric clinic. He has no recollection of who he is, or why he is there. Unable to match him to any of the police's missing people, the nurses call him Casper.

12 August

Cold Sun by Anita Sivakumaran

Dialogue Books

Bangalore. Three high-profile women murdered, their bodies draped in identical red saris. When the killer targets the British Foreign Minister's ex-wife, Scotland Yard sends the troubled, brilliant DI Vijay Patel to lend his expertise to the Indian police investigation. Stranger in a strange land, ex-professional cricketer Patel must battle local resentment and his own ignorance of his ancestral country, while trying to save his failing relationship back home.

August date TBC

Skin Deep by Antonia Lassa, translated by Jacky Collins

Corylus Books

The corpse of an elderly millionaire is discovered brutally scarred with acid burns. Her young lover is the chief suspect but the authorities admit they are baffled. It will take the intervention of private detective Albert Larten to explore all the complexities of desire, and ultimately reveal the truth.

19 August

Come Hell Or High Water by Christian Unge

MacLehose Press

The first in a new Swedish crime series featuring Tekla Berg – a fearless doctor with a remarkable photographic memory

With 85% per cent burns to his body and a 115% risk of dying, it’s a miracle the patient is still alive. That he made it this far is thanks to Tekla Berg, an emergency physician whose unorthodox methods and photographic memory are often the difference between life and death.

30 September

Night Hunters by Oliver Bottini

MacLehose Press

The fourth in the Black Forest Investigations - by the four-time winner of the German Crime Fiction Award. Over the course of several days one hot summer, a female student from Freiburg disappears, a father is murdered in a brutal attack, a teenage boy drowns in the Rhine in suspicious circumstances. It soon becomes evident to Chief Inspector Louise Boni and her colleagues at Freiburg's criminal police that the three cases are connected - and that others are now in terrible danger. Including Boni herself.

07 October

Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun

House Of Zeus

Focusing on the unsolved murder of teenage girl, this literary crime novel offers insights into gender, class and privilege in Seoul, and marks the English-language debut for award-winning Korean author, Kwon Yeo-sun.

In the summer of 2002, my big sister Hae-on was murdered. She was beautiful, intelligent, and only nineteen years old. Two boys were questioned, but the case was never solved. Her killer still walks free.

12 October

Bread: The Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

Europa Editions

Sometimes it takes facing a formidable adversary to truly know one’s worth. The Bastards of Pizzofalcone may have found just that: when the brutal murder of a baker rattles the city, they are ready to investigate. There’s nothing they wouldn’t do to prove themselves to their community. But this time the police are divided: for the special anti-mob branch, the local mafia is doubtlessly responsible for the crime, but the Bastards are not so sure and think there may be another reason for the murder of the renowned artisan, whose traditionally baked bread attracted customers from far and wide. A rivalry between the policeman and the magistrate is formed, one that, in the end, will extend to more than just their work lives.

12 October

The Corpse Flower by Anne Mette Hancock

Crooked Lane Books

It's early September in Copenhagen, the rain has been coming down for weeks, and 36-year-old journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare. One of her sources has been caught lying, and she could lose her job over it. And then she receives the first in a series of cryptic and ominous letters from an alleged killer.

28 October

Inertia by Camilla Grebe

Zaffre

Inertia is an eerie psychological thriller from the award-winning Swedish bestselling author Camilla Grebe. When 18-year old Samuel finds himself at the centre of a drug deal gone wrong, he is forced to go underground to escape the police and an infamous drug lord.

October date TBC

The Commandments by Oskar Gudmundsson

Corylus Books

On a cold winter morning in 1995, Anton, a 19-year-old boy, met a priest outside Glerárkirkja in Akureyri. After that, he was never seen again. Two decades later a priest is found murdered in the church in Grenivík. When the police investigate the case, they finds that a deacon has also been executed inside Akureyri.

28 October

Cold as Hell by Lilja Sigurdardottir

Orenda Books

Icelandic sisters Áróra and Ísafold live in different countries and aren‘t on speaking terms, but when their mother loses contact with Ísafold, Áróra reluctantly returns to Iceland to find her sister. But she soon realizes that her sister isn’t avoiding her … she has disappeared, without trace.

As she confonts Ísafold’s abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend Björn, and begins to probe her sister’s reclusive neighbours – who have their own reasons for staying out of sight – leads Áróra into an ever darker web of intrigue and manipulation.

28 October

The Rabbit Factor by Antti Toumainen

Orenda Books

What makes life perfect? Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen knows the answer because he calculates everything down to the very last decimal.

And then, for the first time, Henri is faced with the incalculable. After suddenly losing his job, Henri inherits an adventure park from his brother – its peculiar employees and troubling financial problems included. The worst of the financial issues appear to originate from big loans taken from criminal quarters … and some dangerous men are very keen to get their money back.

2 November

Bricklayers

Selva Almada

Charco Press

Oscar Tamai and Elvio Miranda, the patriarchs of two families of brickmakers, have for years nursed a mutual hatred, but their teenage sons, Pájaro and Ángelito, somehow fell in love. Brickmakers begins as Pájaro and Marciano, Ángelito’s older brother, lie dying in the mud at the base of a Ferris wheel. Inhabiting a dreamlike state between life and death, they recall the events that forced them to pay the price of their fathers’ petty feud.

My review of Dead Girls:

https://fictionfromafar.tumblr.com/post/642554449326489600/dead-girls-charco-press

4 November

The Night Will Be Long

Santiago Gamboa

Europa Editions

When a horribly violent confrontation occurs outside of Cauca, Colombia, only a young boy is around to witness it. But no sooner does the violence happen than it disappears, vanished without a trace. Nobody claims to have seen anything. Nobody claims to have heard anything. That is, until an anonymous accusation catalyzes a dangerous investigation into the deep underbelly of the Christian churches present today in Latin America. The Night Will Be Long is a dark, twisting thriller filled with moments of humor and pain--a story that will stick with readers long after they turn the last page.

11 November

The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee

Harvill Secker

When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war. Can officers of the Imperial Police Force, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee track down those responsible in time to stop a bloodbath? Set at a time of heightened political tension, beginning in atmospheric Calcutta and taking the detectives all the way to bustling Bombay, the latest instalment in this 'unmissable' (The Times) series presents Wyndham and Banerjee with an unprecedented challenge.

#crimeintranslation #crime fiction #european literature #latinamericancrimefiction #Nordic noir #Japanese crime fiction

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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years ago

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CLAIRE DENIS’ ‘BASTARDS’ “I figured a captain would be more serene…”

Our film today brims with startling distemper. It also provides one of the most handsome instances of generosity to be found, in and out, of the once-called “silver screen.” A woman in Paris, Raphael, accompanies, one morning, her elementary school boy son to a carriage trade, very private institute. Then she walks by an antique clock and watch shop which attracts her. She asks to see a waterproof wrist watch which had now become important to her, on account of her becoming an underwater athlete and investigator during her summer with her family at their villa on the Cote d’Azure. She chooses an alpha-trade item, sturdy and designed with great taste. There is an inscription of dedication, which runs, “To my son who sails the seas.”

The love in that missive means nothing to her. But with that good will, the writer, a skilled entrepreneur in the field of premier women’s shoes, has found himself, in his last days, without a valid successor. The shambles that follow are showy, but not terribly unique. What does take our breath away is the father’s benevolence. Claire Denis does not want of a compass, for her intense offerings. She finds all the work in the world in the filmic cataclysms of Ingmar Bergman. With the film, Bastards (2013), that stream of clannish patricians which became disturbing in the film, Scenes from a Marriage (1973), and followed even more violently (in subsequent films) when unity failed, transfigured to venomous proportions pertaining to clinging for generations to murderous advantage. Whereas the disinterested father, Mr. Silvestri, who had left Italy for the opportunities of Paris, had become a cosmopolitan, his daughter, Sandra, had remained a lead-pipe savage, not to be dealing in nuance when the going got rough. (Denis’ early experiences in Africa now putting on the table another range of clannish perversity to complicate an already challenged discernment.)

Sandra of the Dark Ages had a husband who had nominally taken over the business. We find him, Jacques by name, in the first scene, committing suicide due to financial and sexual bankruptcy. During the police presentation, to her, of the suicide note, she rails against that agency. “My husband filed a complaint against that pig, that piece of shit. The police questioned Edouard Laponte and our daughter. Then nothing! It’s your fault Jacques died… Alone, I’m not strong enough. I have no one now… besides my brother… who’s never here. He’s always abroad.” (That last remark delivered as if his brother had no right to leave the nest.) A police lady intervenes with, “Marco Silvestri is your brother? The letter is in his name…” Sandra goes on to explains that Marco and Jacques had been good friends, having met at the naval academy, and that Marco had introduced them. Far less routine, however, is Sandra’s response to the cop’s mentioning, “You can read it” [the suicide note]. She glances at it, but soon puts it away. Her excuse for not completing her husband’s last words is, “It’s embarrassing…”/ “What?” the coroner asks. “That you read it,” she says. Perhaps the communication was ambiguous. Sandra being hard to embarrass; but not wanting to touch upon the bankrupt couple’s involvement in prostituting their daughter, Justine, at a sadomasochist attraction and having trysts themselves with several adventurers at Laponte’s, the creditor and brothel owner, for more solvent business clients. Of course, that area of the family has no more significance than rabid hyenas. Our saga, on the other hand, pertains to Marco, who had given his share of his father’s inheritance to them.

At the end of Bergman’s film, Dreams (1955), the gullible but game protagonist is confronted with another’s wisdom that, “One has to say no, at some point.” Marco, on his slow boat to wisdom, had no one to encourage him to wake up to the shabbiness of pleasing gauche and poisonous appetites. That his weakness for being led has to be carefully grasped, constitutes the heart of this film. Some preparatory considerations are needed. While his father could thrill to a son possibly making an important difference, Marco would soon be exposed as unable to maintain the concentration of sensibility by which to reveal and share something very different. As he plods back to a lowest common denominator, we realize that his honeymoon with very rare love has waned, leaving him ready for less demanding adventure. However, Marco’s waning, remains rather wild (or, better, pretty crazy), a function of following in the melodramatic footsteps of Jacques. A wealth of cinematic primordiality being overlooked, along with an irony of cinematic also rans, will help establish the terrain for future venture.

The actress playing “the woman in Paris,” with her child at the school house door, and her monied, sea-sport, has a fascinating and incisive pedigree. She is Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of actress, Catherine Deneuve and actor, Marcello Mastroianni. In her role in the film, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), she is tasked to bring her elementary school brother, Boo-Boo, to the school house door every morning. In another of her roles, namely, the film, Donkey Skin (1970), she, a princess, finds nothing amiss about marrying her father, the king. The former film is implicated in the naval port of Rochefort. The latter film becomes implicated, for Denis’ purposes, with Sandra and Jacques’ resort to incest. (Jacques Demy being the filmmaker of the Deneuve “comedies.”) Mastroianni starred in the film, La Dolce Vita (1960), pertaining to anything goes. Good luck, Marco! The gloom pervading this gloomy tale could—and largely does, for the pundits—resemble the strictures of film noir, becoming neo-noir. However, the woes and woos of this action do not coincide with the sentimental perils of sweet but unstable business. The jaunty Raymond Chandler slogan, “Trouble is my Business,” does not even begin to touch the conflict, beauties and love which our protagonist had begun to fathom. Out there on the L’Avventura aerie, we find him on the craft’s bridge for the last time, embraced by light and waves and skies, soon bound for darkness and hatred.

After the tantrums at the police station, Sandra gets into her stylish and reddish car (reddish factors early on in a film being a staple of Bergman’s), and she slumps over the steering wheel, unable to drive. She’s seen from outside at the front, and the overhanging trees convey a reflection on the windshield, all but submersing her self-pity, a magical moment from our point of view, but entirely lost upon her. With narrative so nearly complete to being a travesty, such figuration as that reflection becomes an elicitation of what life can be. (On the other hand, the first imagery we encounter in the film is a torrent of nocturnal rain, its one-track force approximating the odds which Marco had recently retreated from, without consulting the gamut of knacks to turn the tide. Along with the rains, there is the soundtrack of the band, Tindersticks, beginning with a singular drive which transcends to richer ambiance.) It is such cinematic invention which we will track in detail here, the melodrama being oddly close to those Bergman parodies of Hollywood “sensations.” However, Marco’s mad bid, to dovetail his early seaboard serenity with subsequent mean Parisian advantages, increases the dimensions which Bergman found urgent about not speaking the same language.

We’ll march right through such optics and sonics, in order to touch upon agencies of sensibility defining the drama. Jacques, en route to his suicide, overlooks, in his mundane office, another crushing blast of nighttime rain, making of the façade of the factory a relentless and attractive cataract. His death is metaphorically presented by his gradually backing out of the film frame. A touch of couth, after a lifetime of tastelessness. Along with that, an aural complement of ringing maintains that life itself goes on. That the exiting executive is bald might imply that his was an anxious life, bereft of a poise which nature calls for. Three lights are displayed vertically upon the exterior. A pan to the sidewalk, like a fast-moving stream. Steel and cement. The triad could have rung out in a joyful achievement of sharing. But it didn’t. A life of harsh interruptions. A white shroud on the pavement. This is followed with a nude young woman wearing high-heeled shoes, walking away from us in a square. In this of the first of two such apparitions, she vaguely evokes the mysterious nocturnal nudes of the surrealist painter, Paul Delvaux. The school seen in the early part of the film is called, “Ecole Action Bilingue,” which is to say, “not speaking the same language.” (Meaning heavy weather for many, in the world of Bergman and the in world of all of us.) The school might have a sanguine touch. But its focus of advantage at that juncture could be enough to kill. In the second meander of Sandra’s daughter, she is bleeding from her vagina, having submitted to sadistic assault. This shock brings to light many concerns—a major embrace being “marionettes,” as in the Bergman film, From the Life of the Marionettes (1980). (Now underway to the impossible, Marco’s last glimpses of a once-seeming-Mediterranean-idyll evokes a filmmaker, Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Bergman hated, but shouldn’t have. Denis knowing better, along lines of something missing.) Now on the hunt in Paris, he’s seen driving up to the enemy’s chic digs in an Alpha Romero, which, from the perspective of upper floors (one of them now being his) recalls a batmobile. (Marco, in classic crime adventure style, having sold all he has but that prop, not to mention nearly a dozen of $400 white shirts. Such trappings being a reprise of bourgeois, same-language advantage, conformists in several Bergman films.) The amateur sleuth, having no trouble pretending being a majoritarian, checks his laptop for Laporte’s wherewithal: “a personal success-story… biggest chairman ever… seen in “The Expansion”… dancing with the stars… a golden girl [the mom at the schoolhouse]…” The latter being a chain-smoker, like chain-smoking and non-patrician, Katarina, in Marionettes and chain-smoking and non-patrician, Pauline, in In the Presence of a Clown (1997), she discovers late at night that she’s out of smokes and rushes to the tobacconist’s. Her grotty concern is not without magic. The dark reflections of the street with its bumper-to-bumper parking, and a swatch of gold light on the wet cobblestones reign as if in absentia. One of Marco’s young daughters from his divorce several years ago spends a weekend, where, at the beginning of the get-together, she is stranded at the Montparnasse train station due to his being late. She tells him, “I’m not here to be treated like shit.” At the premises, with a mattress on the floor, he presents her with a very stylish jacket, and is rewarded with a quick kiss on the cheek. The roiling mood has, however, unearthed a heaven on earth, in the presence of the Montparnasse district, where more than 200 years ago a site apropos of the arts of the City sprang up and thrives to this day. Denis’ trademark of an instance of “naïve,” art for the sake of food for thought, appears here in the form of the enormous woman’s shoe on the roof of the now defunct profit centre. A case of big shoes to fill, aspiration and its perils. The license plate of the Alpha: W319EK—WEAK. At the cigarette handoff, early on, Marco is graced with two lights, desperately needing a third. As he turns away, a third, being a blue neon, to the right of his head, appears—to no effect. The ship Marco sailed was a freighter. Do the mundane factors swamp the poetry? Raphael congratulates a young man working as a concierge while his mother recovers from some malady. He signs off with, “It’s family…” The virtually empty bivouac of his lodgings exposes his disarray in a field of great beauty. Something more directly gratifying finally emerges. He not only sells his expensive car at a premium, but the buyer is another former naval academy grad having enjoyed together the volatile two. (The three of them constitute a loose but quite striking dialectical process, only due to the disinterestedness of the newcomer. A “businessman;” a “daredevil;” and, now, someone who can see and feel.) The latter tells Marco, “There’s no denying I miss it” [the deep sea]. (But he, and his wife, have a sailboat—a dynamic force; and a solvent business, buying and selling cars.) More than a casual friend, Marco, unaware, is in the presence of an oracle—oracles being very important in Bergman films. Soon Marco is back. “I need a car and I’m broke.” The dealer doesn’t hesitate to say, “I think I can count on you [his having made a bid that few can]. Take back the Alpha. I don’t need it… We’ll figure something else later.” A moment of vision in a dynasty of blindness.

The most deeply ranging visual resource announces itself in the least auspicious form. Raphael, the mom and Laporte’s wife, is lying in bed and Laporte, nude, lies down with her. They clasp hands gently. He says, “Jerk me off…” Next morning, Raphael and the boy bump into Marco, and he repairs the boy’s bike. He expertly does the repair, his hands and fingers displaying grace and strength. She watches him with envy. Raphael misses that closing time of the tobacconist’s and alert Marco, again to the rescue, tosses down from the balcony several cartons wrapped up in one of his white shirts. As she retrieves the godsend, her fingers on the white cloth and the plastic sheets describe ironically receiving a treasure. The treasure in those hands carries far more than she recognizes. The ambient ringing which accompanies that moment complements a further nudge for the sake of disinterestedness. Lying in her bed, smoking, she misses the best part of such a manipulation. He’s wakened by a nightmare, and his fingers are frozen stiff. As the suspicion of Laporte rises, there is a moment showing the magnate and the boy with hands clutched. A statement, not a launch. During their first reckless swing at coitus, both of their hands caress each other like an insurrection. Their hands and fingers create a grinning mask. Her fingers are splayed on his chest. His hands and fingers are at her mouth, and then his fingers light upon her his arm. A gung-ho maneuver, lost in hostility and impotence. Then Marco walks through her doorway as if she were a stranger. Marco and Sandra, on the proceeds of the Alpha, crash the “daredevil’s” brothel in the afternoon, where a huge red ottoman, not so different from the playground of death in the film, From the Life of the Marionettes, becomes prominent. A girl matches her red fingernails with that bed. Her fingers are frozen on that surface. The second lovemaking at the best of Paris, this time in the stairwell, shows nuance and knack (that latter word being magic in Bergman’s endeavor.) Laporte takes the boy away from the lovers. On a large sailboat, the two enjoy the navigations, the handiness. Laporte’s skills match Marco’s bicycle repairs. Right touches; lost finishes. Raphael storms Marco’s flat, in fury that her son has been taken away. “He took him because of you… Because I slept with you. You used me.”/ “I had my reasons.” During the fracas, one of his fingers is in her face, in her eye. The film on the expensive key, shows Jacques, Justine and another woman—with Laporte watching in the wings. Also there we find an anonymous player outfitted with very long fingernails, for pain or gain. The gain occurring with the clown in the Bergman film, In the Presence of a Clown (1997), whose elongated touch could, given the right heart attending, race or poise, to lend a hand in nature itself.

How, the question is now, having seen an infrastructure of sensibility ignored in favor of hardware and software, can we confirm that Marco is not a killer but a tedious gamester, having overcome his fondest reflections because they were extremely difficult? Soon after reaching Paris, he visits an insurance office to max out his premiums. He tells the clerk, “It’s just a year off. Everyone is entitled to one.” (I doubt if Denis is a subscriber to that term.) “It’s nice in a man’s life. One year…” One year to do some good and have some thrills. The baying of Sandra (though the suicide would definitely have a melancholy appeal) must probably have come to Marco of more of the same hyperbole. Whereas his sister is a walking prehistoric, Marco, as we see him in action, is something more recent, more ambiguous. Though he was pretty much obliged to take seriously the crisis, he was not at all obliged to become a murderer, despite his sister’s personal and cultural hysteria. The cat and mouse game would, perhaps, get to the bottom of Sandra’s small war, which hopefully, to Marco, might develop into something, “nice in a man’s life…” Jacobean drama, with its fiery revenge, worked with a will in 17th century England. Those days are gone. Hot heads abound, and drag thigs down. But the complexities of major urbanism demand innovation, not devotion to the old.

Having not what it takes for his father’s hopes of dynamic logic, Marco faces a problematic in Paris not that far from where he deserted. His last moments on the bridge face a fixed fog in the middle distance. His early moments in the orbit of his sister come in the form of a fixed fog of calumny, clearly without transparency. “You’re hiding things! I gave everything up! I need to know, goddammit!” With this lack of acquiescence, she declares, “I wish I were dead!” (People like her being unfortunately and insectile resilient. Justine will insist she’s in love with her pimp. Marco had spoken to her in her hospital bed, “I’m here for you…”) Marco signs several checks to keep Sandra out of penury. She complains, “You’ve changed styles.” In face of the inventory of shoes, he complains, “Low quality and tacky.”/ “Thanks,” is her non-care. She hands over her dad’s gun. “What do I do with this?” is his response. She tells him, “Hold on to it, please. You’ll need it.” Hoping to solidify a modern love, he tells Raphael, “I can’t believe there’s any love. You’re not even part of his life. He treats you like a concubine. He’s turned you into his slut.” She argues, “He was younger when I met him. He gave me the confidence I never had. I had no ties. I was floating. Then I got pregnant with Joseph. I don’t judge…”

The doctor on Justine’s case also knows more than he says. We find him being dragged over the coals by Sandra, for one of Justine’s getaways. “You should have done your job beforehand. We pay enough. You’re in charge here. It’s your negligence.” He, fortunately, has drawn a more incisive bead upon his attacker. “You’re one to talk. She’s underage. You’re her guardian.” (A choir tone ironically sums it up.) Later that night, the doctor notices Marco at a bus stop and gives him a ride. “I figured a captain would be more serene.” The short-cut exponent excuses his disarray by way of poor form. “I came back for them. My kid sister and my niece… How am I supposed to stay calm with a suicide.” The no-nonsense doc states, “Justine has problems to work through. Part of the trouble comes from her family. Something went wrong.” By this time, Marco is able to report, “I’ve broken off from my family… I know little about them… I’ve cut myself off from everyone.” The driver adds, “It’s for what Marines do.” He trolls a red-light district, to confirm his sense of mountainous decadence. A solid citizen in the making. (The key, detailing the ways of the brothel, opens Marco’s eyes about as wide as they can be. To a refrain of Sandra yelling, “I’m so ashamed!” and adding, “You can’t understand. It all went wrong!” he slaps her and she falls to the floor. “Get up!” he demands. She sits on the floor, bawling. He grabs her by her hair and says, “You disgust me!” She cries out, “You weren’t here!” Then he prudishly declares, “I’m glad I divorced. My girls won’t be contaminated. So this is my family!”

Being prudish, as Marco will find to his horror, won’t get you far in the world of high stakes. Back at home, as it were, he enacts a nightmare, where the Alpha has been stolen for a joy ride by Sandra, Justine the pimp and Raphael. (A Hollywood melodrama, for prudes.) He goes on to interrupt the neighbors’ preparations for their summer, a brawl ensues and Raphael, picking up the gun from the floor, shoots him dead. The doctor accompanies Sandra for a viewing of the family at play. That big shoe being taken to the junkyard could be one way to start again; but where could it go? The treasure in the cinematic current awaits a true voyager, “who sails the seas.”

#claire denis

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securitieslitgtr · 6 years ago

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Eddie Lyons Lawsuits | Broker Misconduct

Who Is James “Eddie” Lyons? | Shreveport Golfer Turned Broker

James Edward Lyons, better known as Eddie, was a Shreveport broker for Raymond James & Associates in Shreveport, LA. Eddie is well-known in the Shreveport-Bosier City golf community due to his past amateur golfing successes. However, he is now gaining infamy in the area for the recent allegations of losing Millions of Dollars for investors through his unauthorized and reckless securities trading.

Although Eddie is not named in the “Statement of Claims” filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), it is alleged that his wealth management firm, Raymond James & Associates and his Shreveport branch manager failed to supervise Eddie.

So far, nearly 30 investors have asked a FINRA Arbitration Panel to hear their claims. Unfortunately, these investors range from the elderly to charitable organizations that feed the homeless. Even worse, these investors are estimating their losses at around $5 Million. The $5 Million claim stems from the amount the investors expected to realize from the management of a conservative investment portfolio by Eddie Lyons.

The investor allegations are tied to Eddie Lyons‘ investments in risky oil and gas trusts and partnerships. Additionally, these investors are claiming that Lyons was initiating investments and trades without their knowledge. If you believe that you were a victim to broker misconduct, investment fraud or unauthorized trading, contact us by filling out a Contact Form or by calling 585 310-5140 for a FREE Consultation on your potential Eddie Lyons Lawsuit.

Were You a Victim of Investment Fraud or Broker Misconduct?

If you believe you were a victim of investment fraud or broker misconduct, it is imperative to take action. Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane has represented thousands of victims, and we remain committed to fighting on behalf of investors.

Contact Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane today by filling out a Contact Form on our website or by calling 585-310-5140 to schedule a FREE Case Evaluation.

Eddie Lyons Claims | Eddie Lyons Lawsuit

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) BrokerCheck, ex-financial advisor James Eddie Lyons currently has eight total disclosure events on file. So far, Eddie Lyons has been subject to seven customer complaints and one employment termination for cause. Formerly with Raymond James & Associates in Shreveport, Lyons was fired in April 2017 for customer allegations of “suitability and unauthorized trading.”

Since his dismissal from Raymond James, Eddie Lyons is no longer a registered broker. Although unauthorized trading is the most recent allegation he is facing, Lyons has been a party to several customer complaints in the past. Lyons’ disclosure events began in 2009 with Morgan Keegan and continued through his recent firing from Raymond James in 2017.

One Eddie Lyons lawsuit involved an 88-year-old widow with alzheimer’s disease and settled for $400,000.

PeAs reported on FINRA’s BrokerCheck, Eddie Lyons “was terminated due to customer allegation of unauthorized trading” on April 28, 2017. Both Raymond James and Eddie Lyons, personally, were named parties in the civil litigation that followed. Per BrokerReport, his firing was due to the following allegations:

Breach of Duties

Churning

Fraudulent Ommissions

Federal Securities Law Violations

Louisiana Securities Law Violation

Unauthorized Trading

Suitability

It is alleged that Eddie Lyons has been partaking in unauthorized trading activities since February 17, 2011. The above allegations resulted in a $400,000 settlement to the investor. If you believe that you were a victim of broker misconduct, investment fraud or unauthorized trading, Contact Us by filling out a Contact Form or by calling 585-310-5140 for a FREE Consultation.

Were You a Victim of Eddie Lyons?

Contact Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane today by filling out a Contact Form on our website or by calling 585-310-5140 to schedule a FREE Case Evaluation.

FREE Consultation | 585-310-5140

Contact Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane today by filling out a Contact Form on our website or by calling 585-310-5140 to schedule a FREE Case Evaluation.

from Investment Fraud Lawyers | Investor Loss Recovery https://securitieslitigators.com/eddie-lyons-lawsuits-broker-misconduct/

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mikednolan · 6 years ago

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Broker Ronald Rothchild Has Multiple Customer Investment Complaints

According to BrokerCheck records financial advisor Ronald Rothchild (Rothchild), currently employed by National Securities Corporation (National Securities) has been subject to at least four customer complaint, two financial disclosures, and an employment termination for cause. According to records kept by The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), most of Rothchild’s customer complaints allege that Rothchild made was negligent, breached his fiduciary duty, made unsuitable investments, and made misrepresentations.

In July 2018 a customer filed a complaint alleging that Rothchild violated the securities laws including negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and unsuitable investments causing $100,000 in damages. The claim is currently pending.

In March 2018 a customer filed a complaint alleging that Rothchild violated the securities laws including that investments were misrepresented to her and were unsuitable based on her investment objectives and risk tolerance which were also incorrectly stated on new account paperwork. The claim is currently settled.

In December 2016 a customer filed a complaint alleging that Rothchild violated the securities laws including negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and misrepresentations causing $170,000 in damages. The claim is settled for $48,000.

Brokers are required under the securities laws to treat their clients fairly. This obligation includes the duties to disclose material risks of the investments they recommend and to present products, particularly complex or confusing products, in a fair and balanced manner that allows the client to evaluate the recommendation. Another important obligation advisors have is to make only suitable recommendations for investments to the client. There are many investments that are not appropriate for the majority of investors or for certain investors given their risk tolerance, age, and other factors. Advisors should not present these investment options to clients. There are two screens that advisors must employ to determine whether an investment is suitable for a client. First, there must be a reasonable basis for the recommendation – meaning that the product has been investigated and due diligence conducted into the investment’s features, benefits, risks, and other relevant factors. The advisor must conclude that the investment is suitable for at least some investors and some securities may be suitable for no one. Second, the broker then must match the investment as being appropriate for the customer’s specific investment needs and objectives such as the client’s retirement status, long or short term goals, age, disability, income needs, or any other relevant factor.

According to newsources, a study revealed that 7.3% of financial advisors had a customer complaint on their record when records from 2005 to 2015 were examined. Brokers must publicly disclose reportable events on their BrokerCheck reports that include customer complaints, IRS tax liens, judgments, investigations, terminations, and criminal cases. In addition, research has show a disturbing pattern with troublesome brokers where brokers with high numbers of customer complaints are not kicked out of the industry but instead these brokers are sifted to lower quality brokerage firms with loose hiring practices and higher rates of customer complaints. These lower quality firms may average brokers with five times as many complaints as the industry average.

Rothchild entered the securities industry in 2002. From June 2011 until April 2016 Rothchild was associated with Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. Since August 2017 Rothchild has been associated with National Securities out of the firm’s Melville, New York office location.

Investors who have suffered losses are encouraged to contact us at (800) 810-4262 for consultation. At Gana Weinstein LLP, our attorneys are experienced representing investors who have suffered securities losses due to the mishandling of their accounts. Claims may be brought in securities arbitration before FINRA. Our consultations are free of charge and the firm is only compensated if you recover.

from Securities Fraud https://www.securitieslawyersblog.com/broker-ronald-rothchild-has-multiple-customer-investment-complaints/

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rexsecuritieslaw · 2 years ago

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Amit Kumar Bhatia-Former Raymond James Broker-Discloses a Regulatory Suspension - New York, NY

Amit Bhatia Investigation March 2023-New York NY According to publicly available records Amit Kumar Bhatia , a former broker who last worked for Raymond James, discloses a final regulatory matter. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the agency that licenses and regulates stockbrokers and brokerage firms. FINRA requires brokers and brokerage firms to report customer complaints…

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#Amit Bhatia #Amit Bhatia Investigation #Churchill Asset Management #finra arbitration attorney #GSO Capital Partner #Raymond James #recover investment losses #Solar Capital #stockbroker malpractice #stockbroker negligence #texas securities attorney #texas securities fraud lawyer

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deniscollins · 8 years ago

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A Whistle-Blower Tells of Health Insurers Bilking Medicare

If you were an insurance company finance director and the CFO, in determining how much to charge Medicare for a vasculatory disease, sent you an email that read: “You mentioned vasculatory disease opportunities, screening opportunities, etc., with huge $ opportunities. Let’s turn on the gas!” would you try to find ways to charge the highest amount possible for such a diagnosis: (1) yes, (2) no. Either way, would you consider this gaming the system and inform federal authorities? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

When Medicare was facing an impossible $13 trillion funding gap, Congress opted for a bold fix: It handed over part of the program to insurance companies, expecting them to provide better care at a lower cost. The new program was named Medicare Advantage.

Nearly 15 years later, a third of all Americans who receive some form of Medicare have chosen the insurer-provided version, which, by most accounts, has been a success.

But now a whistle-blower, a former well-placed official at UnitedHealth Group, asserts that the big insurance companies have been systematically bilking Medicare Advantage for years, reaping billions of taxpayer dollars from the program by gaming the payment system.

The Justice Department takes the whistle-blower’s claims so seriously that it has said it intends to sue the whistle-blower’s former employer, UnitedHealth Group, even as it investigates other Medicare Advantage participants. The agency has until the end of Tuesday to take action against UnitedHealth.

In the first interview since his allegations were made public, the whistle-blower, Benjamin Poehling of Bloomington, Minn., described in detail how his company and others like it — in his view — gamed the system: Finance directors like him monitored projects that UnitedHealth had designed to make patients look sicker than they were, by scouring patients’ health records electronically and finding ways to goose the diagnosis codes.

The sicker the patient, the more UnitedHealth was paid by Medicare Advantage — and the bigger the bonuses people earned, including Mr. Poehling.

In February, a federal judge unsealed the lawsuit that Mr. Poehling filed against UnitedHealth and 14 other companies involved in Medicare Advantage.

“They’ve set up a perfect scheme here,” Mr. Poehling said in an interview. “It was rigged so there was no way they could lose.”

A spokesman for UnitedHealth, Matthew A. Burns, said the company rejected Mr. Poehling’s allegations and would contest them vigorously.

“We are confident our company and our employees complied with the government’s Medicare Advantage program rules, and we have been transparent with C.M.S. about our approach under its murky policies,” he said, referring to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare Advantage.

Mr. Burns also said Mr. Poehling’s complaints and similar ones held UnitedHealth and other Medicare Advantage participants to higher standards than the ones used by the original Medicare program.

Mr. Poehling’s suit, filed under the False Claims Act, seeks to recover excess payments, and big penalties, for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Mr. Poehling would earn a percentage of any money recovered.) The amounts in question industrywide are mind-boggling: Some analysts estimate improper Medicare Advantage payments at $10 billion a year or more.

At the heart of the dispute: The government pays insurers extra to enroll people with more serious medical problems, to discourage them from cherry-picking healthy people for their Medicare Advantage plans. The higher payments are determined by a complicated risk scoring system, which has nothing to do with the treatments people get from their doctors; rather, it is all about diagnoses.

Diabetes, for example, can raise risk scores by varying amounts, depending on a patient’s complications. So UnitedHealth gave people with diabetes intensive scrutiny, to see if they had any other conditions that the diabetes might have caused.

As Mr. Poehling’s lawyer, Mary Inman, described it, the government would pay UnitedHealth $9,580 a year for enrolling a 76-year-old woman with diabetes and kidney failure, for instance, but if the company claimed that her diabetes had actually caused her kidney failure, the payment rose to $12,902 — an additional $3,322. Ms. Inman is with the law firm of Constantine Cannon in San Francisco.

Mr. Poehling said the data-mining projects that he had monitored could raise the government’s payments to UnitedHealth by nearly $3,000 per new diagnosis found. The company, he said, did not bother looking for conditions like high blood pressure, which, though dangerous, do not raise risk scores.

He included in his complaint an email message from Jerry J. Knutson, the chief financial officer of his division, in which Mr. Knutson urged Mr. Poehling’s team “to really go after the potential risk scoring you have consistently indicated is out there.”

“You mentioned vasculatory disease opportunities, screening opportunities, etc., with huge $ opportunities,” Mr. Knutson wrote. “Let’s turn on the gas!”

There were bonuses when Mr. Poehling and his team hit their revenue targets, Mr. Poehling said, but no bonuses for better health outcomes or for more accurate patients’ charts.

You or I or the average person is probably appalled by this,” Mr. Poehling said. “But the scheme here was not about delivering better care to members — the thing you would expect from a health care company. It was about increasing the bottom line.”

He went to work for UnitedHealth in 2002, filed his lawsuit in 2011 and left the company at the end of 2012, while the case was still under seal.

Mr. Poehling’s allegations, if true, could help explain why insurers are staying in the Medicare Advantage program even as they pull out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges in some states: Medicare Advantage offers a way to get extra money from the federal government.

When a whistle-blower succeeds in recovering money for the government, the False Claims Act calls for him or her to receive a percentage. Many whistle-blower cases fail to reach that point, but when the Justice Department joins a case, in general, the odds of a recovery go up.

Already the Justice Department has declined to intervene in some smaller whistle-blower cases with similar allegations. But in March, it did say it would join a whistle-blower suit filed by James Swoben, a former data manager of SCAN Health Plan, accusing UnitedHealth and several other companies of cheating Medicare Advantage by looking improperly for ways to raise people’s risk scores.

In 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a lower court’s decision to throw out Mr. Swoben’s case. After reviewing the allegations, Judge Raymond C. Fisher wrote, “We do not see how a Medicare Advantage contractor who has engaged in such conduct can in good faith certify” that the diagnosis codes it reports to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “are accurate, complete and truthful.”

That ruling did not decide Mr. Swoben’s case, but merely sent it back to a district court to be adjudicated. His case and Mr. Poehling’s case are both now being handled by the United States District Court in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, UnitedHealth has sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, seeking to vacate a 2014 rule that requires insurers to make sure the diagnoses they report to the government are borne out by what is in people’s charts, and imposing penalties for overstatements. UnitedHealth argues that this rule unlawfully departs from the program’s statutory mandates requiring “actuarial equivalence” with the traditional Medicare program.

“That case could provide further clarity on the program rules,” Mr. Burns of UnitedHealth said. He added that the government seemed to be trying to delay so that the two whistle-blower lawsuits could go first.

The Justice Department has said it is investigating four other Medicare Advantage insurers: Aetna, Humana, Health Net and Cigna’s Bravo Health. That suggests that there are more whistle-blowers in the wings, potentially snarling more insurers in litigation and ultimately forcing a rethinking of the entire program.

“C.M.S. could do a lot to change the rules so it’s not so easy to get away with this stuff,” said Timothy Layton, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who researches insurer behavior in health-insurance markets. He is not involved in Mr. Poehling’s lawsuit.

“It’s a huge waste of money,” Professor Layton said of the quest for higher risk scores. “What the insurers are doing is not socially valuable at all.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declined to comment for this article.

Auditors and analysts have warned for at least a decade that Medicare Advantage has been vulnerable to cheating since risk scoring was phased in, from 2004 to 2008. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the centers reside, audited a small sample of Medicare Advantage plans early on and found overpayments of up to $650 million in 2007. It predicted even more in 2008, but then came budget cuts and those audits stopped.

The Government Accountability Office reported last year that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had identified $14.1 billion of overpayments to insurers in 2013 and did not have a clear plan for recovering the money. It also faulted the agency’s auditing methods.

“I recall a feeling of frustration verging on outrage,” said Ted Doolittle, the deputy director of the Medicare and Medicaid agency’s Center for Program Integrity at that time.

In 2014 the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group, analyzed the only available Medicare Advantage data and reported that insurers had reaped about $70 billion in overpayments from 2008 to 2013.

Fred Schulte, who led the center’s research and now works for Kaiser Health News, also sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to get more data. In January, he reported getting confidential documents showing that the agency had tried to recover $128 million of overpayments to five insurers in 2007 but, “under intense pressure from the health insurance industry,” settled for just $3.4 million in 2012.

Last month, Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to the agency’s administrator, Seema Verma, complaining that it had trumpeted the $3.4 million recovery to him as a sign of good fiscal oversight, without mentioning that it could have gone after $128 million.

“The difference between the assessment and the actual recovery is striking and demands an explanation,” Mr. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote.

As lawmakers and others try to get their arms around the issue, few insurance insiders have come forward with firsthand accounts. Mr. Poehling said he had done so reluctantly.

“I came to the point where I just couldn’t participate in what they were asking me to do anymore,” he said.

#Medicare

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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Can Merkel Bring Trump to Reason?

Der Spiegel, March 11, 2017

The world already knows how Angela Merkel feels about Silvio Berlusconi. The former Italian prime minister allegedly sought pleasure with underage prostitutes, he wasn’t particularly fastidious about the rule of law and he sought to grin away his country’s problems. Italian newspapers also reported a few years ago that he made some rather untoward remarks about the German chancellor’s posterior in a telephone conversation. Berlusconi was precisely the kind of politician Merkel abhors.

Nevertheless, she usually got what she wanted from him. At an EU summit in December 2008, she deployed a mix of charm and toughness to secure his agreement on her climate policies. It was a fabled event, and diplomats still tell stories today about how she wrapped the vain Italian leader around her little finger.

Merkel’s people are hoping for some similar magic at an upcoming encounter that will be even more sensitive. On Tuesday, she will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. It will be the first in-person meeting between the two since the U.S. election in November. And it could be the most difficult meeting Merkel has ever faced as chancellor.

The two couldn’t be more different. On the one side is an unsophisticated yet self-absorbed political neophyte who has made it clear that there is nothing he won’t sacrifice to achieve what he sees as America’s interests. On the other is one of the most experienced leaders in the world, one who many see as being the last defender of democracy and Western values--a view that Merkel herself considers to be a dangerous misjudgment given the limits of German power. Indeed, she calls it “absurd.”

The task at hand could hardly be more important. Trump is not only the most powerful man in the world. He has also shown that he cares nothing about the rules of Western political game. His plans could rupture the European Union and weaken Germany economically.

Trump has announced that he plans to fight Germany’s export surplus. And although his statements on NATO have been contradictory, it is clear that he wants alliance partners to increase their defense spending. Will he back the Western sanctions against Moscow that Merkel worked hard to implement? Merkel and Trump will have no lack of issues to discuss.

But sources close to Merkel are certain about one thing: The chancellor will seek to establish a good relationship with the president. Trump relies less on the traditional mechanism of politics than his predecessors and he often makes decisions impulsively, without regard to well-established procedures.

“Trump’s actions are driven more by his instincts and business experience than by political rationality,” says Norbert Röttgen, the foreign policy spokesman for Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He traveled to Washington a few weeks ago for talks. “That doesn’t make dealing with him any easier.”

Merkel doesn’t want to rely on a charm offensive alone. She’s also prepared to stand her ground on some issues, especially trade policy. The chancellor will be accompanied on her trip by Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser and BMW head Harald Krüger according to an agreement she reached with US Vice President Mike Pence at the Munich Security Conference in February.

Kaeser and Krüger are to explain to Trump how many jobs and training positions their companies create in the United States. The president has greater trust in executives than politicians and Merkel is hoping that Trump will listen to the heads of two blue chip Germany companies.

In terms of foreign policy, Merkel is said to be less pessimistic than she had been right after Trump’s election. Thus far, the president hasn’t moved to implement his most radical demands. The nuclear deal with Iran is still in place and the idea of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been delayed for now.

The clarity with which U.S. representatives at the Munich Security Conference in February expressed their support for NATO also calmed some of the worst fears. Officials in Berlin believe that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will lean much more toward pragmatic realpolitik than initially feared.

In addition, Trump’s new National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster is regarded in Berlin as being much more calculable and well-informed than his addled predecessor Michael Flynn.

Merkel has been studying Trump from afar. She has watched his speeches and she is certain that he intends to do what he can to fulfill his promises. She is also convinced that direct contact with Trump is vital, something she realized during an extensive phone call she had with him on Jan. 28, during which she explained the Ukraine conflict to the new president.

That Saturday afternoon, the president telephoned first with Merkel and afterward with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Officials in the Chancellery believed that the Americans had arranged the sequence intentionally so that Trump, a Putin admirer who has spoken out in favor of a new deal with the Kremlin, could first get an introduction to Russian policy from Merkel. It appears that less Moscow-friendly actors in Washington hoped that the strategy might help prevent Trump from getting too close to Putin.

The plan seems to have worked. Since then, hope has been mounting in Berlin that Washington, even under Trump, will continue to back the Minsk peace process and that it will not move unilaterally to lift sanctions. Merkel also sees it as a good sign that Fiona Hill, a recognized expert on Russia who is also a sharp critic of Putin, was appointed to the National Security Council.

Merkel is hoping to see the same kind of shift on a host of other issues important to the international community, including the Iran deal, the situation in Libya and climate change.

She also plans to explain the tenets of the European Union to the president. Officials in Berlin say that a person who found it surprising after the election that the promises he made about U.S. health care policy would be difficult to implement may have some catching up to do on other issues as well.

The trick will be finding the right tone--to teach without sounding pedantic. “We have to fight for the trans-Atlantic relationship by proposing projects that will lead to mutual success,” says Röttgen. That is Merkel’s view as well. She is likely to point out to Trump, for example, that Germany has already begun implementing the U.S. president’s demand for increased military spending.

Even though there is cautious optimism in the Chancellery about foreign policy, Merkel and her staff are preparing for the worst when it comes to trade. Even as vague as they may still be, Trump’s plans could become the greatest threat to the global economy since the financial crisis, with Germany standing directly in the firing line.

Almost 50 percent of all jobs in Germany are dependent on exports. The Americans alone last year purchased 107 billion euros worth of German goods, whereas only 57 billion worth of U.S. goods got imported to Germany. The country would suffer severely if the U.S. started a trade war with Europe or China.

But what happens in the likely event that Trump sticks to his “America First” plans? If that happens, then Merkel is expected to push for a united EU front to blockade Washington. At a summit in Brussels on Thursday, Merkel noted, “We renewed our support for free trade.”

A few days earlier, European trade ministers met for a working lunch in Brussels and agreed to a joint position. The agreed that the EU should not fuel the conflict, but it should prepare for the possibility of a trade war with the United States.

The goal, in such a case, would be that of isolating the U.S. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström was asked to begin negotiating further agreements with other countries and regions of the world. She is currently touring the Far East in order to expedite current talks on trade agreements with Japan, India and Australia. At the same time, the EU countries are pushing ahead with their plans for public courts that would arbitrate conflicts relating to controversial investment projects. It’s an initiative that the Trump administration wants to put a stop to at all costs.

Trump’s trade policy adviser Peter Navarro has been the most outspoken about calling Germany the enemy. The Harvard graduate views it as a “serious issue. Germany is one of the most difficult trade deficits that we’re going to have to deal with but we’re thinking long and hard about that.” He has also accused EU politicians of deliberately devaluing the euro to give European exporters a price advantage over their American competitors.

Even before Trump’s election, Navarro had been considered an outsider with his views. Now he’s the president’s chief ideologist on trade. Many of Trump’s allies are pushing for a radical tax policy measure to stop the stream of goods from abroad, a measure referred to in official jargon as a border adjustment tax--a plan whereby exports would be exempt from taxes but companies would not be able to deduct money they spend on imports.. “We are taking this very seriously,” says one high-ranking source in the Chancellery.

On her first visit with Trump, Merkel plans to be very open about her views on the tax plans. Her preparatory paper for the meeting states that she plans to call the punitive import measure a “protective tariff” and the tax relief for American exports a “export subsidy.” She views both as being hostile acts that could trigger a trade war.

Merkel also plans to note that a levy like that would violate the pre-existing tax agreement between Germany and the U.S. They would also be out of compliance with World Trade Organization rules. The implicit threat is that Germany would not shy away from lodging a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

If none of that bears fruit, the Chancellery has begun reviewing ways it could strike back at the U.S. One idea would be to incrementally increase duties on American imports. Agreements reached within the World Trade Organization framework provide enough maneuvering room to allow for that. Another possibility would be to allow German companies to write off the U.S. import tax on their German tax declarations, thus compensating them for their competitive disadvantage.

Ultimately, Germany could also take a bigger step: lowering corporate taxes and the amount of social contributions employers are required to pay here. Both would make Germany more attractive to international corporations, but they would also cost tax payers billions of euros--initially at least.

Furthermore, the EU has long been investigating Google for competition violations and other companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks for tax-evasion models. If need be, those investigations could be broadened at any time.

Merkel is hoping things won’t get that bad. Her trip would already be considered a success if she were able to find a reasonable basis for discussion with the U.S. president. At the same time, Merkel is up for re-election in September and she will also have to keep voters in Germany in mind. She can’t alienate the new president, but it also wouldn’t play well domestically if she allowed herself to be treated as a supplicant the way British Prime Minister Theresa May recently did during her visit with Trump.

The fact that a discussion in the Chancellery is even necessary regarding how far the chancellor can go in her criticism of Trump’s violations of Western values and principles is in itself indicative how the situation has changed. In the past, these were the kinds of considerations that Merkel’s staff made prior to trips to Russia or China. Now it’s the government in Washington, once one of Germany’s closest partners, that worries the government in Berlin. “In terms of international policy,” Merkel adviser Röttgen says, the U.S. has now become an “element of uncertainty of a structural nature.”

#Germany #Angela Merkel #Donald trump #US-German relations

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