The Minnesota Attorney General has filed suit against one of the big private arbitration companies, the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), alleging their arbitration process is rigged in favor of big businesses who pay it big bucks.
Minnesota-based NAF is the largest consumer credit private arbitration company which recently came under fire for its extensive "back room" relationships with the very companies that hire it to get favorable judgments against consumers. The AG alleges that NAF "secretly worked alongside creditors, and against consumer interests, in seeking to have mandatory, predispute arbitration clauses inserted in credit agreements signed by consumers" and appears to have good proof of it.
NAF has long claimed it was "independent and neutral" but it turns out that a group of New York hedge funds invested in the arbitration company and also acquired a majority stake in a debt collection agency which acquired the collection operations of the law firm Mann Bracken. So, it appears that the whole operation is run, from front to back, by debt collectors who, quite obviously, have a vested interest in getting money out of consumers and not in finding out whether or not consumers actually owe the money.
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