Have you ever heard of a bigger corruption scandal?

[Steph]

An African minister of transport (from an undisclosed state) comes to France for an official meeting. He befriends the French ministry of transport, who invite for the week end to his house.
It is a very nice large house in the countryside, almost a manor.
The African ministers says "How could you afford this with your minister salary".
"I'll tell you a secret... follow me to the end of the park.... see the highway far away there? i kept 5% of the building cost for me".

2 years later, return trip: the meeting is this time in Africa (in a still undisclosed state). The French minister is invited by his African friend to his home. This is a palace, with gold and marble every where.
"How could you afford that? You salary is much lower than mine"
"I'll tell you a secret, follow me.... See the highway there?"
"Hmm... no"
"That's the secret"

Feel free to replace "Africa" with "Undisclosed South American state where Portuguese is the official language"

 

[aelf]

Damn, why do the Hispanics love corruption so much? Is it something about Catholicism? Like all those selling of Papal indulgences...

Spoiler :

Warning: May contain sarcasm

 

[Takhisis]

Apparently, Petrobras is officially the least profitable oil company in the world.

 

[BirraImperial]

I just can't believe how some company can come up with "well, we just have to write down $50 billion"...This is the biggest corruption scandal ever, without a shrewd of a doubt...

Well, probably off-topic, but Luiz is gonna love this:

While Venezuela is severely lacking basic supplies such as toilet paper and rice and beans, Mr. Maduro rented the whole Courtyard Marriot San José for himself and his committee for a daily sum of around $80k, for the CELAC summit taking place in Costa Rica.

 

[BirraImperial]

Damn, why do the Hispanics love corruption so much? Is it something about Catholicism? Like all those selling of Papal indulgences...

Spoiler :

Warning: May contain sarcasm

I think it has something to do with the Spaniards and Portuguese...If we were British colonies, it would have definitely gone differently... No offense to Spanish posters in CFC...

 

[gay_Aleks]

That'd be worse. You'd be all Protestants with weird religions. Do you imagine a second USA in South America? One is enough.

 

[Takhisis]

I just can't believe how some company can come up with "well, we just have to write down $50 billion"...This is the biggest corruption scandal ever, without a shrewd of a doubt...

Baring Bros. + Argentina in the 1860s and 70s is a very interesting case, too.

That'd be worse. You'd be all Protestants with weird religions. Do you imagine a second USA in South America? One is enough.

At least there wouldn't be any [wiki=Enron]corruption[/wiki] or [wiki=Florida]electoral fraud[/wiki]…

 

[gay_Aleks]

Bah! Money is just a number on paper. Now, private planes and palaces, now that's something more real.

 

[Arwon]

I read about this earlier but the Economist has 3.7 billion in suspicious payments. Where is the rest of the 20 billion coming from?

WorldCom had about 11bn in accounting fraud, the Maddoff fraud was in the 60 billion range.

 

[Takhisis]

Non-suspicious payments and change going missing can explain a good part of the other U$S 16.300.000.000

 

[gay_Aleks]

"This is for an orphanage. In Monaco. Because think about all those BMW-driving peoples, can you fathom this?"

 

[luiz]

Damn, why do the Hispanics love corruption so much? Is it something about Catholicism? Like all those selling of Papal indulgences...

Spoiler :

Warning: May contain sarcasm

Actually a lot of sociologists do attribute our chronic corruption at least in part to our Iberian / Catholic heritage.

Latin America had a "patrimonialist", as opposed to capitalist, economic system. The separation of the public and private spheres was always very tenuous; it was considered normal for high ranking colonial officials to award themselves trade monopolies and the like. Additionally, the Catholic Church had a negative view of banking and other such activities, which may have contributed to a general backwardness, which in turn kept the old practices alive.

I just can't believe how some company can come up with "well, we just have to write down $50 billion"...This is the biggest corruption scandal ever, without a shrewd of a doubt...

Well, probably off-topic, but Luiz is gonna love this:

While Venezuela is severely lacking basic supplies such as toilet paper and rice and beans, Mr. Maduro rented the whole Courtyard Marriot San José for himself and his committee for a daily sum of around $80k, for the CELAC summit taking place in Costa Rica.

21st Century Socialism in all its egalitarian glory!

I read about this earlier but the Economist has 3.7 billion in suspicious payments. Where is the rest of the 20 billion coming from?

WorldCom had about 11bn in accounting fraud, the Maddoff fraud was in the 60 billion range.

The payments are not all the losses - in fact the payments themselves are not even part of the losses.

For instance, a contractor may pay $500 millions in bribes to inflate the cost of a refinery by $5 billion. In this case, the "suspicious payment" is just $0.5 billion, but the losses for the company (and thus the country since its state-owned) are $5 billion.

 

[Arwon]

That's gonna make it pretty difficult to compare to other scandals then isn't it? I mean the Halliburton contracts were much bigger than $20b and some corruptly awarded, but I don't think we call that a trillion dollar scandal for the entire value of all contracts? (Maybe we do I dunno)

 

[Takhisis]

'When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal' -Nixon.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Your master and owner Robo-Nixon demands it!

 

[luiz]

That's gonna make it pretty difficult to compare to other scandals then isn't it? I mean the Halliburton contracts were much bigger than $20b and some corruptly awarded, but I don't think we call that a trillion dollar scandal for the entire value of all contracts? (Maybe we do I dunno)

But $20 - $50 billion isn't the whole value of contracts either, just the estimated excessive cost due to corruption, that is, how much the company paid in excess to what it should have due to its executives and political directors being bribed. The whole contracts are worth trillions of dollars, and were probably all corruptly awarded, but this is not where the number is coming from. The number is an actual loss to the company and therefore the country.

Petrobras is much bigger than Halliburton. Again, this number is not the total value of the contracts under suspicion, as those amount to several trillion dollars. This $20-$50 billion number are actual losses due to the corruption of the Workers' Party and its allies.

 

[Josu]

20 billion?
The biggest ammount I have ever heard until now is the 3,000,000,000 € that the spanish goverment forget to receive from the electric companies in 2010....

 

[luiz]

20 billion?
The biggest ammount I have ever heard until now is the 3,000,000,000 € that the spanish goverment forget to receive from the electric companies in 2010....

Well as Takhisis mentioned we Brazilians are obsessed with records.

Clearly we won the Corruption World Cup

 

[Azale]

luiz, why aren't you leaving Brazil (if you haven't already)? I'm curious, corruption on this scale seems to plague all parts of Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico.) Why aren't people in the streets demanding the resignations/heads of Kirchner, Maduro, and Rousseff?

I know this post is old(ish), but they have been You should see the protests against Pena Nieto too. I can't recall a more despised world leader.

Anyway, have I ever heard of a bigger corruption scandal? Maybe. Guess it doesnt count since it isn't the "public sector."

Who cares about scale after a certain point though, corruption no es bueno. Small scale corruption is overrated as a development phenomenon, but not on its effects vis-v-a-vis representative government. Christina Kirchner is surely just playing some high level politician game, like most of these elites and the idiots in Caracas, but there has to be a reckoning. Glad luiz agrees.

 

[luiz]

Who cares about scale after a certain point though, corruption no es bueno. Small scale corruption is overrated as a development phenomenon, but not on its effects vis-v-a-vis representative government. Christina Kirchner is surely just playing some high level politician game, like most of these elites and the idiots in Caracas, but there has to be a reckoning. Glad luiz agrees.

Not sure what I'm agreeing with

I do agree that corruption no es bueno, and that it damages representative government. On the scale in which it is practiced in the likes of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela it also damages economic development without a shadow of doubt.

And I would like to congratulate myself on being right about the true nature of the Workers' Party all along, and warning everybody who cared to listen since 2002 that they're a dangerous gang of thieves, thugs and vermin, who view the Brazilian State as their personal property and playground. That this whole farce would end up in tragedy. But honestly being right all along about this brings me no joy, and after a while being right all the time about everything gets a bit tiresome

Does being wrong all the time about everything ever get old? I mean, where are all of CFC's Chávez-apologists now? Who will say a kind word about 21st Century Socialism, about the Bolivarian Revolution? Who will praise Kirchner's "heterodox" economic policy, their brilliant conduction of the Argentine economy? Or Lula, that great statesman, who certainly only became filthy rich during his rule due to a great coincidence? How do Lula's economic policies look now, with Brazil unable to escape stagnation and inflation, undeperforming all the developing world with the notable exceptions of Argentina and Venezuela?