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Leaked Emails Reveal Widespread Corruption in Global Oil Industry (theage.com.au)
Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Michael Bachelard, and Daniel Quinlan report on a widespread corruption in the global oil industry for The Huffington Post: In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings. A massive leak of confidential documents has for the first time exposed the true extent of corruption within the oil industry, implicating dozens of leading companies, bureaucrats and politicians in a sophisticated global web of bribery and graft. After a six-month investigation across two continents, Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post can reveal that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as the direct result of bribes paid on behalf of firms including British icon Rolls-Royce, US giant Halliburton, Australia's Leighton Holdings and Korean heavyweights Samsung and Hyundai.
Bribes in some countries are required "business expenses". They are required, because to not include them prevents deals. The fact that the US outlaws this practice doesn't stop those countries from expecting it. It is how you get it soccer in Qatar (Thanks FIFA!) Pay enough tot he right people, and shit gets done.
Which is pretty much the opposite of the US, where you pay government huge amounts of money to have shit stopped up and prevented, we call them Campaign Contributions, or donations to ExPresidents (and presidential candidate) "Foundation" and they are perfectly legal .
Why do we act shocked? Because we're simply ignorant of how the real world actually works.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who at the time referenced in the leaked documents was CEO of Halliburton. Oh, he is also a war criminal.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
What if everybody had the attitude of "well, this is a screwed-up world we live in, what can you do, (nothing), let's turn to the sports" about everything?
"King George wants us to suffer taxation without representation, surprise, surprise, well, duh." - there'd be no America.
"Big deal, this stuff happens, no need for major efforts to change" was the attitude of all those Bishops and Cardinals to kids getting buggered.
We SHOULD react with shock and disgust to lying and fraud in the financial industry, to corruption in oil, to military vendors promoting war; we should tell our politicians they're unemployed unless they act and can have all the money they need to sic 10,000 FBI agents on them.
The S&L crisis in the 80's prompted the assignment of 1000 FBI agents to the case. They brought in about one conviction each: 1000 convictions, a 90% success rate, after winnowing down 30,000 referrals to 1100-odd trials. It brought about real results.
By contrast, the 2008 crisis prompted no such effort despite being 70X as large a set of frauds.
We can tackle these large problems; you just put out the same effort you'd put into a new highway interchange or skyscraper: $100M budget per year and a few thousand people working on it. The US Justice System has nearly one million employees; only 2300 on white-collar crime.