Cynical reaction: well, we all knew someone was doing it, now we've identified a few.
One thing I can't help think here is: this is just another uncomfortable truth re: what a truly global economy looks like (frankly, similar the factory jobs leaving the US for cheaper labor countries, etc.). The bottom line is that in many developing countries, bribery is part of the economy, and if western companies want to engage in the economies of those countries, then it's not surprising that they need to participate wholly. Because of western anti-corruption laws, they of course can't engage directly, so these Unaoil folks found a solid business opportunity to exploit.
What sucks of course is that western companies often have funds to overpay vs. the local bribery market, so they end up reducing local economic competition, slowing internal development, flooding incumbents with cash, keep incumbents in power longer than they would be otherwise, and contribute to their illegitimacy.
They still should stop, I guess my point is that corrupt systems (usually) pre-existed western corp. participation. If I'm being optimistic, stories like this hopefully will motivate the US and other western gov. to recognize this reality, and then actually develop and enforce international laws to handle this effectively - though I wouldn't hold my breath =)
(Of course, the involvement of western governments in colonization and in creating this atmosphere is a whole other discussion, which I won't start here..ha)
I think you've missed one of the big points of the article, which is that Unaoil was the vehicle by which western companies introduced totally new levels of corruption into developing economies. They'd start the bribees (is that a word?) out small with minor stuff, and then they'd move on to full-blown bribery.
In other words, one of the big points of the piece is that the idea that "these countries are just that way and you have to pay to play" is actually not true across the board, and that in cases where the country wasn't that way, Unaoil and their clients made it that way.
ah yes - that is right. I attempted to say something like this when I mentioned western corp's ability to "overpay vs. the local bribery market" and all that, though I admit I didn't flush it very well out. here's a try: this is the natural result of massive western corps having access to economies that rely on bribery wide-scale, and what sucks is that, due to the western companies massive resources relative to the local economy, the bribery gets much further out of hand and continues longer vs. if the local economy had remained isolated.
Corruption is diabolical, and the worst form of tax - one where no benefit from the tax flows to individuals other than the fixers.
But with climate change, I find it hard to get upset about any corruption that causes the price of oil to rise. The current situation of rock bottom oil prices encourages more consumption and reduces the incentives to improve energy efficiency. It makes it harder for renewables to compete.
Bring on more corruption. Let oil prices boil over.
>any corruption that causes the price of oil to rise.
it works the other way. There is no environmental controls and proper taxation on corrupted contracts by corrupted governments. So the price of such oil is cheaper. Just think - who would pay a bribe to obtain something for a higher price than it would be without a bribe?
>The current situation of rock bottom oil prices
and the cheapest oil is from ISIS - one of the reasons for current low prices. It is the most corrupt oil - to get into your car as gas it passed through the most corrupt laundering "pipelines" in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and further to Ukraine and Poland...
I don't get your first point. Typically corruption undermines normal competition, reducing efficiencies. To quote from an OECD report (https://www.oecd.org/cleangovbiz/49693613.pdf):
"On the macro level, corruption distorts market mechanisms, like fair competition...The World Economic Forum estimates that corruption increases the cost of doing business by up to 10% on average. "
As to whether ISIS oil is cheaper, I don't know about that, but if so, perhaps that could be because it was stolen from its rightful owners. I don't think you can use that to draw a conclusion that corruption causes costs to go down.
>Typically corruption undermines normal competition, reducing efficiencies.
...
>corruption increases the cost of doing business
these statements make sense and are true only than normal competition is a real alternative. Which it isn't in those corrupted countries.
Without normal competition as a feasible alternative, the things are the other way around. Corruption way of doing things is cheaper, while doing things "by the book" is much more expensive if at all possible (an attempt to do "by the book" is basically denying government people an income they are "entitled to" and they don't take it lightly and would make sure that it is less profitable for you :)
Are all these companies (Rolls Royce, Samsung etc) going to get in trouble under FCPA / Bribery Act? If I remember from my corporate anti-bribery training [very necessary for a low-level computer programmer!] you can't get away with it just because it was done through a third party.
> you can't get away with it just because it was done through a third party.
To get away you probably need a third party plus good lawyers. Which your training was successfully in teaching you that lowly programmers can't afford, so they should not take bribes.
The standard for culpability under the FCPA is perception. If there is a hint, then you're probably going to face some action. If I sound paranoid, sorry - that's my basic reading of it - it is paranoid.
It's interesting because I have some exposure to law-firm ethics ( I wrote software for law firms for a while decades ago ) and they're like this. Their admins ( who really run law firms ) are past masters at dealing with it. Since it's lawyers writing that law, we should not be surprised.
You get a (distorted for the purposes of plot-conflict) view of that in "Better Call Saul."
It's one thing to do something, it's another to prove in court that they did it. And you can bet they'll have an army of lawyers trying to get the whole thing dismissed.
I would assume it to be near untraceable if these third parties used shell companies in various offshore jurisdictions to make these payments. Good luck putting that together again, if you try to get data from an unwilling to cooperate jurisdiction.
The American justice system that hasn't punished Wall Street?
But let's assume American justice system works. But still it seems arbitrary and not clear cut.
If Rolls-Royce is banned from operating in US, does that mean Boeing won't install Rolls-Royce engines on airliners they make for their customers?
Samsung is composed of many subsidiaries that do not look out for each other and it may be that just one or few of the Samsung subsidiaries are involved in bribing. Samsung phone division buys chips from qualcomm instead of Samsung chip division because qualcomm is cheaper (or whatever reason). Will US court ban Samsung from US? Then what happens to the billion dollar chip plant in Austin, Dallas that supplies CPU chips for Apple iDevices?
I don't condone bribing but to me I'm not surprised bribe was needed to get anything done in the nations listed. I'm pretty sure anyone and everyone who has any kind of influence in the said nations require bribe before doing anything. A billion + dollar from US went into Iraq that can't be traced. What's a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars? I highly doubt these companies eagerly bribed people, but they to get anything done in those so called nations, they probably had to bribe.
More likely the companies will negotiate a settlement without admitting wrongdoing. The US will count it an enforcement success, the guilty parties will escape any punishment, and the loss will be borne by the shareholders, most of whom are investing via investment funds and had little or no idea where their money was going.
Basically all types of bribery is corruption but that does not mean that all types of lobbying is bribery.
Grassroots movements organize all the time using donations from its members which they then use to send a lobbyist (a member of the org or a professional) to Washington, where they can use their personal contacts and influence to get an audience with a legislator to provide them with information. Most lobbying, I would wager, is of that form: a lobbyist simply informs the legislator about the on the ground perspective of a grassroots movement's members, a corporation, or industry group. It only becomes distasteful when a lobbyist has influence over campaign contributions or the ability to provide "perks" like hiring a politician's friends or family.
You can argue that campaign contributions are a form of bribery but there remains the big difference that in well regulated nations, all of the donations have a maximum and are tracked publicly [1][2]. In the US, all campaign spending is released publicly, both by politicians/political NGOs and campaign finance improprieties destroy political careers quite often. In the US, the FEC has the authority to enact civil penalties and the DOJ has the authority to prosecute any politicians caught willfully misusing campaign finance to better themselves. [3]
In terms of developing countries that are the subject of this story (with no real campaign finance frameworks and/or enforcement, and maybe not even open elections), I think you're right to say there's probably no real difference.
However, in the US and other countries with (relatively) developed election and legislation processes, I think there's some key differences:
Lobbying usually requires a level of policy rationalization (however disingenuous) that bribery does not. Lobbyist can say behind closed doors that they want X for selfish reasons, but in order for it to be politically tenable the legislator usually will require at least some publicly defensible rationalization for the action.
Similarly, lobbying usually involves the legislative process and getting a political actor to make certain political/legislative decisions that would benefit the lobbyist's clients. Bribe's usually involves getting a person in power to make decisions that often don't involve the political process or legislations, like the awarding of a contract by an agency under their control, or withholding an investigation.
Seen this way, lobbying can be and has been characterized as interest groups subsidizing the legislative process by providing competing research and proposals to an understaffed legislature. Whether that's a good or bad of making law is another discussion, but I think it's fair to say that bribery could not be considered that way, and therefore serves no acceptable public purpose other than the enrichment of the briber and bribee.
Lobbying is just telling a representative your views, which is how democracy works. What I assume you mean is giving campaign contributions in exchange for influence, which is bribery and is illegal if you can prove quid pro quo.
Corporate lobbying is questionable for other reasons, but it's not bribery. It's on elected officials to not let businesses influence them too much, no matter how many lobbyists they hire.
By the way, is it illegal if the bribes are called campaign contributions or are sent to places the target wants money to go, like a charity that helps their political ambitions?
The issue isn't how the payment is characterized. The issue is how the quid pro quo is characterized. Not to mention the simple fact that access is proportional to influence, and money is proportional to access. But since those proportional relationships don't come with a money-back guarantee, or a tax-deductible receipt, they don't really look like the narrow definition of payment that the courts would be interested in.
Lobbyists: 1) get issues on politicians' radars; 2) provide them with data, arguments, and sample legislation to advocate for a position; and 3) convince politicians that particular measures will be favored by relevant constituencies.
It's almost never going to be the case that a lobbyist will convince a politician to support a measure they wouldn't otherwise support. Politicians all have agendas and preconceived notions. The most important thing lobbyists do is help politicians filter through he universe of proposals and convince them that particular ones fit within their preconceived worldview and platform.
I think many people have a hard time even conceiving that politicians could support big companies without getting some sort of kickback or campaign contribution for doing so. But a politician's first, second, and third top priorities are jobs. Big companies control the jobs, and for better or worse what's bad for big companies is often, at least in the short term, bad for jobs.
I upvoted because it's an interesting perspective, but I'd like to know where you get this information from. Is it a first-hand account? It makes sense that jobs are a priority and that politicians prioritize helping companies. And I'm sure that "a lobbyist will convince a politician to support a measure they wouldn't otherwise support" happens at least some of the time, but I don't have a sense of how frequent that is vs. legalized bribery and regulatory capture.
And besides, if a politician passed a bad law thinking he did a great thing for society because corporate marketing was very convincing, does that make a difference?
My wife was a lobbyist. I wish I had quantitative evidence, but my impression is that lobbying is mostly just reinforcing favorable narratives. I think phrases like "legalized bribery" and "regulatory capture" are thrown around casually without much supporting evidence.
As to your last point: what is a "bad law?" Does anybody really have any idea what works and what doesn't? Did the repeal of Glass-Steagall cause the 2008 crash? We really have no idea. Did NAFTA leave consumers better off? Who knows? Do minimum wages increase unemployment? Experts disagree. It's effectively impossible to determine what impact laws really have, especially on the economy. Laws and policies aren't judged as "good" or "bad" except in history books. They're judged based on whether they fit into ideological frameworks and prevailing narratives. And voters are part of that. They want politicians who will vote for laws that fit their preferred narrative.
In the same way that an automobile company advertisement on broadcast television may increase the number of potential customers visiting dealerships to buy a new car.
The advertisement makes you want that car, or at least makes you aware that it exists, which influences your behavior in the future, when you are actually able to buy.
The lobbyist never knows if the investment of time and effort is successful until after the vote is cast, and has no recourse whatsoever if is cast the "wrong" way. The car company can't demand a refund for its advertising if not enough extra people want to buy their cars. Watching the ad does not obligate anyone to buy. Lobbying does not obligate anyone to vote in a particular way.
Of course, as the lobbying game is played in multiple iterations, it is certainly a winning strategy to "stay bought". If a lobbyist invests a lot of effort into getting you to change your mind, they will likely continue to do so if you voluntarily act to make that investment pay off every time. There doesn't need to be a legally recognizable quid pro quo. The implicit deal is that consistent cooperation will be rewarded consistently.
By providing data and arguments? The idea of a lobbyist is that you hire someone to go to Washington and suggest the politicians do what you think is the right thing.
> is it illegal if the bribes are called campaign contributions
no. and yes.
there are donation limits. So what they do, is to create super-PACs and such. which means, lots of little people and companies donate the maximum to the candidate, but all those people and companies all get their money from the same source. So in practice, a single source is brib---donating way more than allowed by law, but legally.
I think of it as advertising tailored and targeted at a small set of specific individuals. The advertiser has to compete for the scarce resource that is the attention of the target, then make an impression sufficiently memorable that it will change future behavior.
As such, the lobbying will take a different form for different targets, based on their individual preferences and personalities. For some, lobbying will actually take the form of accosting a senator in the lobby of their office building to discuss a possibly overlooked consequence of a bill up for consideration. For others, it may take the form of anonymously mailing some blackmail photos. For others, it may be cash in an unmarked envelope.
My impression of lobbying is that it involves anything and everything likely to produce the desired result within the allocated budget. Some lobbyists are better positioned to influence specific issues than others. If you are not allowed to lobby by offering a bribe directly to the person who must be swayed, it is always possible to work your way down the chain of social connections to someone or several someones that can be bribed to carry your case to that person on your behalf.
If you can't bribe the senator, hire their spouse to change their mind. If you can't hire the spouse, hire their best friend. If you can't hire the spouse's best friend, hire the extramarital romantic interest. If you can't hire that person, hire a photographer.
As long as getting the attention of a government office holder is worth more than what it costs to obtain, there will be lobbyists available to purchase it wholesale and resell it in manageable parcels.
I don't think you can avoid lobbying, though. I do not consider all lobbying everywhere to be anything like unethical nor immoral.
If you think that this must be adversarial, and that The People must get completely impartial ... justice in dealing with all economic entities, then you must expect to match those entities blow for blow. But there are information and resource asymmetries in play that are profound. This ignores that some people simply view activities differently, which will greatly increase the cost.
The world is extremely corrupt. Widespread corruption is yet another issue hanging over our civilization which we've never had to deal with before in our history.
People in the western world usually don't realize just how deep the rabbit holes go everywhere around the world and it's very sad.
I've lived in many countries and I speak 6 languages, including Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, which gives me access to local press in many parts of the world.
From Brazil to Turkey, to former Soviet Union to India to China to Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East - the press is teeming with corruption scandals and political unrest triggered by corruption everywhere.
All this fantastic economic growth that we've experienced in the last 20 years - all those titanic infrastructure projects, olympic stadiums, high speed trains, highways, new factories, gold mines, oil fields.... had the effect of producing a kleptocratic global "elite", which currently sits on piles of offshore bank accounts and "own" the power in most of the world, including military.
The western companies have gained a lot from this status quo, having shown positive growth year after year, much of it from expansion into foreign markets, which made investors and regulators happy, yet all that growth helped feed and grow the corruption monster to an incredible size.
Russia is so corrupt that people have stopped perceiving it as something wrong, rather they internalized it as something unavoidable and "part of the culture" - they've long lost hope of fixing it, given that the political elite owns the legal system, police, armed forces and any dissent or attempt of uncovering the scale of corruption, is quickly eliminated, as was the case of Boris Nemtsov last year.
In Moldova, corrupt politicians allowed a group of criminals to extract $1 billion or 1/8th of the country's GDP into offshore companies and that money was never recovered. It was both sad and comic to see the people on the streets shouting "we want our billion back". Yeah, right.
A former Romanian minister was sentenced to prison in the Microsoft licensing corruption scandal just two days ago. More than $50 million have been paid in bribes in that scandal. Note that we're talking about a small country and just one company.
Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Ukraine, in fact most of the former USSR (except maybe the Baltic states) are corrupt beyond imagination.
People in Brazil are rioting on the streets right now because the current president gave immunity to the former president, accused of huge corruption and money laundering allegations.
Venezuela is currently a failed state mainly because of the corruption on all levels.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria are failed states with terminal corruption, which inevitably leads to war.
Africa .. I can just guess.
I don't know many details about Asia, but I wouldn't wonder if the picture is similar as in the rest of the 'developing' world.
Corruption is injust, it leads to cynisism and criminal political interest groups, it strengthens the criminal organizations and people loose hope. Eventually it reaches a boiling point, which results in rioting and war, the radical method of reshuffling the power structure.
Sorry for the long comment, but I feel like this issue is on par with climate change - and actually a cause of the latter, so there, I've said it.
> Widespread corruption is yet another issue hanging over our civilization which we've never had to deal with before in our history.
I do disagree with that. It may be true for somebody living at the US and a few more countries that used to be more honest, but in general, corruption was always about as widespread as it is now.
You are seeing a lot of it recently because it is getting uncovered. It is even hard to find a corruption scandal that is new (but I don't speech as many languages), and has not been going on since forever. And corruption getting uncovered is a good thing - it is how it ends.
I see points on both sides. Corruption has existed as long as lying - since forever.
But the scale of corruption is greater than ever before possible, as globalization allows moneyed, corrupt, and powerful players to pull up the ladder for entire countries. The Internet and modern transportation means you could move you in a day and your and entire stash in a moment - to whatever end of the earth you choose. It's a big planet. Not so easy for the fleeing nobles of the French Revolution.
And here in the States - and my home state of New York in particular - the line between corruption and expected business is very blurry. For example, lawmakers in Albany are allowed to make money on outside income, but what if that outside income relies on your legislation? Obviously that is corrupt (and has seen two prominent assemblymen convicted of felonies recently), but what if a lawmaker the next office over - a respected geologist - consults for fracking firms looking to drill in NY while working with other senators to get Governor Cuomo's fracking ban overturned? I'm sure many people would say yes, but what if instead that same lawmaker consulted environmental groups (for pay) about the risks and dangers of fracking while staunchly siding with Cuomo's moratorium? Is that also corrupt, even if we like that course of action more than the other?
Unfortunately, the more these things get brought to light, the more people call for transparency, and the powers that be work ever harder to obfuscate their actions. Even Barack Obama is guilty of this: he came into office promising the most transparent administration in US history, and has since set the record for classifications and federal charges under the Espionage Act (of 1917! As in, more than anyone else during the whole Cold War!).
Sorry to end on a bummer. I don't really know how to fix such a system from top to bottom.
Good point. Hard to imagine much corruption in a hunter-gatherer society. In fact, I think status in those societies was often gained by sharing (e.g. sharing the meat from a kill).
Yes, take a look at their politics. There's a reason they are that rich, and it is not because half a dozen people benefit from international corruption.
But if you know of an even better example, great, share it.
>Yes, take a look at their politics. There's a reason they are that rich, and it is not because half a dozen people benefit from international corruption.
Well duh, everyone knows that.
Switzerland is rich because a hell of a lot of people benefit from international corruption.
>But if you know of an even better example, great, share it.
The world is extremely corrupt. Widespread corruption is yet another issue hanging over our civilization which we've never had to deal with before in our history. People in the western world usually don't realize just how deep the rabbit holes go everywhere around the world and it's very sad.
This seems to be a rather whitewashed view of "our civilization". For instance, I'm sure you've heard of Stanford? Not the university, but the guy who founded it: Leland Stanford. The famous philanthropist with an exceptional business and political background:
Stanford’s business career rose in tandem with his political career. He participated in the founding of California’s Republican Party and was elected Governor in 1861. That same year, he became one of the four principal investors in the Central Pacific Railroad, which Congress authorized in 1862 to build the eastbound section of the first transcontinental railroad.
In 1885, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Political maneuvering made Stanford a very rich man. He participated in the worst practices of the Gilded Age: stock watering, kickbacks, rebates, bribes, collusion, monopoly. There is no acquitting Stanford on this front; his participation in such schemes is amply recorded in his letters. One historian of the transcontinental railroads argues that the principals of the era made clear their unsavory activities in correspondence in part “because the dimmer lights among them, such as Leland Stanford, had to have so much explained to them.”
Stanford is best remembered today, however, not for corruption but for a tribute to his only child.
Great write up, I never knew about the billion dollar robbery in Moldova and had to watch a video to understand how it was done https://youtu.be/KxsylnDO15w , seemed straight out of a mission impossible movie.
"Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria are failed states with terminal corruption, which inevitably leads to war."
I think you might have the cause/effect backwards. War is by far the mightiest and most profitable expression of corruption (My experience/knowledge is mostly limited to Afghanistan, but I have a feeling it applies equally to the other states as well).
It works both ways. The US has long officially recognized the geopolitical risks posed by corrupt governments because they tend to destabilize over the long term. The Arab Spring was sparked in Tunisia by a small business owner who lit himself on fire after corrupt officials harassed him and confiscated his wares.
The chaos caused by war also breeds corruption because when you're at war, acquisition, infrastructure, and other support are literally life and death. Since there's very little price elasticity and competition (you're at war so you usually try to buy from the most trusted sources which a huge barrier to entry), suppliers can jack up all the prices and not do the work since oversight in a warzone is much harder.
> Widespread corruption is yet another issue hanging over our civilization which we've never had to deal with before in our history.
Nope. For example the reason Catholic priests cant marry/have children is because the church felt this would stop priest filtering money from the church to their families.
Otherwise a great rant to read. I've very much with you in believing corruption is the cancer of society. And no country will excel while they allow it to to be a significant part of a nations economy.
> People in Brazil are rioting on the streets right now because the current president gave immunity to the former president, accused of huge corruption and money laundering allegations.
you don't have that right.
Current government was the first to allow the federal police to go after corrupt politicians, even the ones in office.
that triggered a chain reaction that scared a lot of people (since you pointed out, almost everyone in government is corrupt to some level). Those more corrupt powers (e.g. the candidate that lost to the current president was a drug trafficker) started a bogus impeachment protest that hardly represent what is on the streets. You have manifestations pro-impeachment with 500 people, and against impeachment with 20,000 people, then the press only report about the pro-impeachment one.
What is more interesting? all that seems to be funded by US money. And remember that former and current presidents where the first to forbid american companies to explore Oil in Brazil. It all comes full circle with the article subject.
> Current government was the first to allow the federal police to go after corrupt politicians, even the ones in office.
Even the dictatorship went after corrupt politicians, look at the story of Moises Lupion.
> the candidate that lost to the current president was a drug trafficker
That is a lie, part of the mudfight propaganda from last election.
> a bogus impeachment protest that hardly represent what is on the streets
The pro-impeachment protests are the biggest in Brazil's history, far greater than the pro-government protests. Check DataFolha numbers, the most respected Brazilian stats agency on these issues.
also not sure what you are comparing from that fellow on your first vague argument. He was a Governor of a lowly state. what's the comparison to president or the dictators?
but well, i think you at least gain some points for not being on the dictatorship-denial group like the other pro-impeachment people...
Which creates an environment that extremist groups use to successfully radicalize large groups of people frustrated by the rampant & immoral corruption. (At least that was my biggest takeaway)
I have a heuristic principle that corruption is endemic to resource extraction industries (oil, gas, timber, mining). Getting something for nothing (and externalizing the costs) is somewhat the premise of the whole enterprise.
Not for big extraction corporations that have a lot of surface area to fire at. The downside risk is just too great.
This being said, the combination of an African-style failed state (or outright kleptocracy) and rich natural resources creates a special case of the Resource Curse.
When it comes to a stable legal system and low corruption, Americans were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
Some say the company was causing corruption rather than merely bowing to it:
> The Unaoil emails don’t show corrupt third-world kleptocracies shaking down helpless Western corporations. They show the opposite: Unaoil, working for Western companies, is seen slowly corrupting foreign officials, starting off with small gifts and shopping sprees and eventually hooking them on major graft.
Seems to be the same way that other countries get people to turn on their own in espionage. First ask for something small and insignificant, then increase the scale and scope of the item bit by bit until "giving away top secret information" is not really seen as a large step.
The worst part is that most people probably figure stuff like this is already happening, so we become cynical, when we find out its true our outrage is used up, then we see our powerlessness and realize that our leaders are probably in on the game already.
We're not powerless, but trying to create a Perfect System out of such crooked timber as Man may be utterly futile. To think you can design such a system looks like Hubris to me.
That's probably more Stoic than Cynical.
"They can take my silver or take my lead" said Pablo Escobar ( paraphrased ). It's like that.
Yeah we're operating at a level never before seen in sociology. It's inevitable we'll have some hiccups and bumps along the way before we reach a system that uniformly benefits everyone. And even then, the ability for such a system to exist is debated.
I think this kind of thing makes a strong case for paying bureaucrats higher salaries. People who are in charge of huge decisions are usually paid pathetically and everyone complains that integrity should rule, but it never happens. The amount of revenue lost to the government due to corruption is quite large and governments would save a lot of money by paying bureaucrats in charge of these major decisions well.
Singapore, which pays its bureaucrats multi-million dollar salaries, has one of the least corrupt governments in the world according to Transparency International.
Does transparency international include the appointment of those bureaucrats in its measurement of corruption? (I honestly don't know).
The cynic/economist in me says that this would be a classic case of "waterbed" economics. That is to say, any pressure pushing down in one part of the system results in a subsequent rise somewhere else. If you define corruption as a particular localised phenomenon, then pushing down in one area and measuring that area looks like things have gone down.
But there are many undesirable things in our societies (network effects, self censorship, rich ruling families, artificial barriers and rent seeking,etc). I know I've had many conversations with my wife where I've said "if this happened in any other society/market, we'd call it corruption, but here it's just "the way things are/our governance system".
So to bring it back to Singapore and economic theory, I would posit that the appointment to those highly paid positions would become the point of corruption as the wages/power/connections increase, though we'd probably start to call it something else (having the right connections, belonging to the right families, going to the right schools).
I know, incidentally, very little about Singapore...I'm just making general theoretical predictions here...
Singapore might not be corrupt at the ground level (police, low-level bureaucrats, etc) but any country where the Prime Minister's wife is in charge of the main government investment company should not be considered clean.
The former Prime Minister (Lee Kuan Yew) was in power for 31 years. His son is in power now. People don't hold on to power for that long by playing fair.
Singapore is also known as the Switzerland of the East, not least for the fact that their banks are among the favourite destinations in the region for the proceeds of corruption.
The link from the bottom of the page is down.
https://fraudsec.com/reports/add/NickMcKenzieFairfaxMedia
I wonder why? I wonder if fairfax know what they're doing setting up anonymous dropboxes or if they're encouraging sources into taking unnecessary risks.
One thing I can't help think here is: this is just another uncomfortable truth re: what a truly global economy looks like (frankly, similar the factory jobs leaving the US for cheaper labor countries, etc.). The bottom line is that in many developing countries, bribery is part of the economy, and if western companies want to engage in the economies of those countries, then it's not surprising that they need to participate wholly. Because of western anti-corruption laws, they of course can't engage directly, so these Unaoil folks found a solid business opportunity to exploit.
What sucks of course is that western companies often have funds to overpay vs. the local bribery market, so they end up reducing local economic competition, slowing internal development, flooding incumbents with cash, keep incumbents in power longer than they would be otherwise, and contribute to their illegitimacy.
They still should stop, I guess my point is that corrupt systems (usually) pre-existed western corp. participation. If I'm being optimistic, stories like this hopefully will motivate the US and other western gov. to recognize this reality, and then actually develop and enforce international laws to handle this effectively - though I wouldn't hold my breath =)
(Of course, the involvement of western governments in colonization and in creating this atmosphere is a whole other discussion, which I won't start here..ha)