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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.
Institutions that are the major state-run industry of the most authoritarian and least free countries in the world? Corrupt? You don't say!
(And before you go making snarky comparisons to the US, Europe, etc. We get it. Ha ha ha. Way to go internet edgelord with that stinging social commentary. We aren't perfect but we're whole worlds away from the institutionalized corruption that is the system of government in said places)
There really isn't a line between business and criminal enterprise in these places.. And the companies that do business with them play the game. Including the western ones.
Of course, it's no coincidence that this is coming out now. In the US we've decided that our interest no longer lie in looking the other way.. And that the low price of oil quite conveniently serves our interests by harming our political and economic enemies.
Same reason certain people call one source "Faux News".
When people get reporting they don't like, they tend to dismiss the source.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
More like this. And, yeah, it is true — if Politifact would not flat-out deny it, you can be certain, it is true.
But the point was not to blame a particular industry — only to remind, that any case of government bureaucrats either spending taxpayers' money or being in a position to allow or disallow something is fertile ground for corruption. Which, of course, leads to the immediate conclusion, that the fewer there are of such situations, the better.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Unfortunately to reflect the true reality of the nature of the corrupt individuals involved you statement should have read "I'll bet you a dozen 14 year old hookers, male or female", they really are that sick and that is exactly how the ensure the control of the politicians they buy. This with the backing of the corrupted espionage/military industrial complex, the core of which now appears to reside in NATO over which the US government had largely lost control, they were doing pretty much what ever they felt like be purposefully feeding false information up the line and striving to create chaos and conflict. Once the scandal truly breaks, oh my, will the current line up of the rich and famous shrink.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen