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Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

independent.co.uk

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Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#111

Post by [deleted] »

sonthonax wrote: post #97
rorykoehler wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore seems pretty low corruption. MPs get paid a ton here too.

Singapore is a oligarchic dictatorship and so corruption is somewhat irrelevant there. You have the most important institutions controlled by the Lee family, who's cult of personality remains unquestioned by those in outside Singapore, I mean did Lee Hsien Loong really deserve to be senior wrangler at Cambridge or is that just PR? Yes, public sector competence is very high but that's not exactly difficult in an autho…

[deleted]

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#112

Post by branchless »

mavdi wrote: post #27
marvel_boy wrote: post #16

Spain, not UK, is by far the most corrupt country in Europe. High rank spanish politicians are involved in the Panama Papers.

Hah, Spanish are the rookiest of them all, that's why you think they are the most corrupt. They simply get caught too often. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" Also looking at you Switzerland.

Exactly, to understand the UK you have to understand that you can't be handing brown envelopes stuff. That's so old hat.

You change the laws and you have tacit agreements over several years for payback. That's how "gentlemen" do it.

USA etc think they have it down. These boys have been running this sort of thing for a long time.

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#113

Post by anexprogrammer »

touristtam wrote: post #37
vintermann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hold a position of trust (elected politician, policeman, bureaucrat, CEO, board member, employee representative, union boss), and you use the powers of that position to further some private interest rather than the interests of those you are set to serve, then you're corrupt. That's more or less Transparency International's definition, and I agree with it. But banks' trustees aren't the public. It's their depo…

> Compared to other nations, Britain's public trustees probably aren't so bad at serving the interests of the public. Dave & Co have probably been the worst offenders in recent recent years for selling public assets and companies they have nationalized to buddies of theirs at massively discounted prices, beginning with the RBS.

I don't think Dave has yet surpassed Bliar and Brown. Especially once you include public private partnerships and the lifetime of debt landed on the schools and hopsitals as a result.

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#114

Post by to3m »

axtheter wrote: post #89

From George Bernard Shaw's "The Man Of Destiny": No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows…

They should set this to music. Fuck Jerusalem.

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#115

Post by semi-extrinsic »

tomcam wrote: post #104
josephcooney wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the U.S. is considered to have a well-enough developed system of on-shore tax havens to not require going to Panama.

Please name just one. I pay a lot in taxes.

* Persons, actual or legal, with annual income/EBIDTA below $300k and/or net worth below $3MM, will not be deemed eligible for the IRS Section 708(c) conforming tax evasion schemes under the Trickle Down Economies Support Act.

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#116

Post by mfukar »

njloof wrote: post #96

Why do we not have the tools for tracing money the way we do for phone calls or data packets? We can argue about how governments should choose to use this data to prosecute crimes, but it seems mad that banks do not have to know where money comes from.

I don't know, njloof. Why don't banks track cash deposits? Should we track cash deposits? Why do we track phone calls and IP traffic? Should we track phone calls and IP traffic?

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#117

Post by simonh »

restalis wrote: post #95
simonh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a trafficker uses a mule to carry opium across the mountains, then sells the drugs and then sells the mule, is the new owner of the mule responsible for drug trafficking? Abramovich is Russian and the responsibility of the people running Russia. Likewise if the Maffia recycles money into legitimate assets in Italy then trades those assets in London, it's pretty rich for an Italian to try to pin that on London. The…

"Britain's responsibility to protect the independence of these territories" Would this mean that the independence of "these territories" is dependent on Britain somehow? Quite an independence, heh? And now, Britain, the ultimate power that backs up the laws of the said territories can at the same claim to be absolved of whatever is happening under its protected domains? Astonishing, isn't it?

> Astonishing, isn't it?

Er, no. Everyone needs their independence to be protected. Just ask Tibetans, or Kuwaitis, or most of Europe. The fact is these offshore havens being nominally under British protection doesn't make one iota of difference to their tax laws or whether or not the businesses registered there do business with Britain. In fact Britain loses tax revenue just as much as anyone else, and has been working hard for decades to get these havens to tighten up their rules. But unfortunately annoying things like facts don't match the narrative this article is trying to spin

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#118

Post by barry-cotter »

sonthonax wrote: post #97
rorykoehler wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore seems pretty low corruption. MPs get paid a ton here too.

Singapore is a oligarchic dictatorship and so corruption is somewhat irrelevant there. You have the most important institutions controlled by the Lee family, who's cult of personality remains unquestioned by those in outside Singapore, I mean did Lee Hsien Loong really deserve to be senior wrangler at Cambridge or is that just PR? Yes, public sector competence is very high but that's not exactly difficult in an autho…

I'm sure there's a lot wrong with Singapore but the closest countries with comparable quality of government are Australia and Taiwan or Japan.

If the Lee family have a cult of personality it's invisible to tourists too. And Cambridge didn't even put the thumb on the scales to let in the current generation of the royal family, you really think they care about the Lees?

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#119

Post by simonh »

hartpuff wrote: post #107
simonh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a trafficker uses a mule to carry opium across the mountains, then sells the drugs and then sells the mule, is the new owner of the mule responsible for drug trafficking? Abramovich is Russian and the responsibility of the people running Russia. Likewise if the Maffia recycles money into legitimate assets in Italy then trades those assets in London, it's pretty rich for an Italian to try to pin that on London. The…

> if the Maffia recycles money into legitimate assets in Italy then trades those assets in London, it's pretty rich for an Italian to try to pin that on London It's not rich to criticise London if London is aware of or suspects that it's the Mafia they are dealing with and that the "legitimate" assets are simply laundered. I also don't see why it's rich for an Italian to do the criticising. Perhaps you can explain th…

If a bank has any reason to suspect that funds they are handling involve laundering they have very clear responsibilities to report them, and have strong incentives to do so as the watchdogs have real teeth.

It's rich because the police and banks in the UK can and do co-operate with the Italian authorities on criminal activities occurring in Italy, but at the end of the day the crime happened in Italy. Only someone with an axe to grind and predisposition against London would blame that on London.

Re: Britain is the most corrupt country in the world?

#120

Post by mk89 »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #99
sievebrain wrote: post #8

The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue. By similar logic, I could…

The "Mafia Expert" (sic) is an investigative journalist and writer, fairly famous in Italy, which for his work has received enough death threats that he will probably have to live under police protection the rest of his life... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Saviano

I would like to shed some light on this "mafia expert".

Saviano is officially known in Italy to be a writer, way more than a journalist - actually he was completely unknown before his first book "Gomorra", which made him famous, and he admitted not to be "a journalist, (nor a reporter), ... but a writer" (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/24/mafia-autho...). I would add that in Italy he is pretty known to be a good show-man, even more than a writer.

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