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.

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Solyndra

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.