South Al Mutlaa: Kuwait's $20bn dream city spent nine years stuck at 'about to award'
Kuwait's largest-ever housing project awarded its $1bn infrastructure deal in 2016 — and in 2025 it was still tendering suburb infrastructure.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDTotal wrote off $7bn of oil sands in one quarter, then quit Canada entirely by 2023
Total spent 15 years building a Canadian oil sands position, wrote off US$7 billion in a single quarter in 2020, and had sold its last stakes by end-2023.
Read the caseHaru Invest froze 1.4 trillion won; its CEO was stabbed in court; the fraud case failed
A Korean yield platform paused withdrawals citing 'partner issues,' stood trial for 880 billion won in customer deposits — and a court acquitted it of fraud.
Read the caseAlmap took a 15-cent flip-flop and made it fashion — the client almost fired them
Havaianas were 'poor people's sandals' for 30 years. Almap put them on a supermodel. Sales quadrupled. The client had wanted a price promotion.
Read the caseRite Aid 'restructured' once, kept the stores, and was liquidated eight months later
The pharmacy chain exited its first Chapter 11 in Sept 2024 still running ~1,200 stores it could not afford. It filed again in May 2025 and liquidated the lot.
Read the caseMitsubishi Materials' subsidiaries rewrote inspection data for 800+ customers
Copper and cable subsidiaries faked inspection records from the 1990s; 270 million units were suspect, and the customer list kept growing for months.
Read the caseDan Ariely's fabricated honesty study — the professor who faked data on dishonesty
A famous behavioral economist showed signing an honesty pledge reduced cheating. The data was fabricated. The study was retracted. He kept his job.
Read the caseBossini spent 28 years building 51 stores in Taiwan — then left in 2020
Bossini entered Taiwan in 1992, grew to 51 stores, then announced its exit in 2020 and closed every one of them by July.
Read the caseSequential paid $117M for Jessica Simpson's name — she bought it back for $65M
Sequential Brands paid $117M for 62.5% of Jessica Simpson's namesake line in 2015; in 2021 the parent went bankrupt and she bought the stake back for $65M.
Read the caseLedger's customer file leaked twice in 2020 — CNIL fined it €750K in 2024
Hackers pulled roughly 290K buyers' names and home addresses through Shopify, plus 1M emails via an API-key flaw. Four years later the CNIL fined Ledger €750K.
Read the caseBanesto's €3.6B hole — the Spanish bank that hid its losses with accounting tricks
Mario Conde masked Banesto's bad loans by channelling asset-sale profits into reserves. When the €3.6B hole emerged, the Bank of Spain seized the bank.
Read the caseThe ASA banned Calvin Klein's FKA twigs poster, then reversed its own reasoning
A 'Calvins or nothing' poster was banned for objectifying FKA twigs. Two months later the ASA reversed that finding — but kept the ban on placement grounds.
Read the caseCDK Global ran most US car dealerships on one platform — ransomware took it all down
Ransomware on CDK Global's shared dealer-management platform knocked ~15,000 US dealerships back to pen and paper for two weeks and cost them over $1 billion.
Read the caseYellow Corp shut down and filed Chapter 11 — 30,000 jobs gone despite a $700M federal loan
A 99-year-old trucker kept alive by a national-security pandemic loan died within three years: a strike threat emptied its freight book in days.
Read the caseIndia's 11 biggest cement makers drew a record ₹6,316-crore cartel fine — and beat it
Eleven cement majors ran a price cartel through their trade association — and beat India's record antitrust fine on a procedural defect.
Read the caseFuji TV hid a star's misconduct for six months — then half its advertisers left
A Fuji TV star's assault, hidden six months: 70+ advertisers fled, the president resigned, and Fuji Media posted its first net loss since listing.
Read the caseMiu Lê's drug arrest buried 'Đại tiệc trăng máu 8' mid-release
Vietnam charged Miu Lê in a drug case while her film was in cinemas; the regulator opened a review, tickets fell to zero, and her agency erased her image.
Read the caseHouse of Cards was built on one star; his fall cost Netflix $39 million and a rewrite
Netflix fired its biggest star mid-franchise after misconduct allegations: a $39M write-down, a truncated final season, and a $31M arbitration award.
Read the caseRenovo bet everything on a scar drug — one failed trial killed the company
A UK biotech spent a decade on a scar drug — Juvista. When Phase III failed in 2011, all 110 staff were laid off and the company renamed to survive.
Read the caseBelluna's fashion mall RyuRyumall ran six years on losing economics
The catalog giant opened fashion mall RyuRyumall in June 2019, pivoted it to office wear in 2022, and closed it on 31 March 2025: ad costs outran commissions.
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