441–450 of 456 posts
Just like in my country, Ukraine. However during the last years Ukraine is getting rid of corruption at an escape velocity and hopefully at that speed we will be able to be done with it within ten years or so.
I'm pretty sure corruption in societies is a cultural thing. It'll take at least a generation, maybe more, to truly go away. Ten years is wildly optimistic.
This is why the speed of reforms in Ukraine is mind-boggling. Absolutely nothing short of amazing.
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50% what? And Private Eye has also covered the NAO report, which found no evidence of this, and the GLP court case which attempted to prove the price paid was excessive and failed to do so. No, the priority list wasn't. To approve a vendor through the normal process would have taken years, the fast track process was created to get PPE quicker than normal. I believe all but one person was unrelated to the Tories, the…
Seriously? The high court found that the operation of the priority list was unlawful [1]. You can reasonably argue that they needed to move quickly, but that doesn't explain why some companies were getting special treatment. And the 50% is profit. Obviously. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037
The reason they got special treatment was because of the speed. That was what the priority list was for - "establishes that presence on the high priority lane did not confer any advantage at the decision-making stage of the process", what you have linked me is exactly what I was just told you. The award wasn't unlawful, the govt did not report on the detail of the contracts within the time period required...that was unlawful, but a function of the process (again, the contracts were awarded outside the usual process so all the information wasn't gathered...the NAO conducted a full audit of the contracts, iirc, before the contract details were reported in the public database).
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When I visited a Cisco office in India, I noticed there was a prominent notice of business application and listed the Indian owner of the company. I thought that was interesting and went digging into India law about ownership. When I came out of that rabbit hole I immediately had zero interest in starting up in India. Simply because of the bureaucracy and would be way more wink-wink-$$$-nudge-nudge than what I'm even…
Well, I expected this article to be about bribes, because I assume it happens a lot. However, there were no bribes. Does anyone have actual experience with bribes in India (not traffic police)? Edit: sorry, one person openly asked for a bribe, the Panchayat. I would like to understand more about this. Do they just ask for an amount?
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Seriously? The high court found that the operation of the priority list was unlawful [1]. You can reasonably argue that they needed to move quickly, but that doesn't explain why some companies were getting special treatment. And the 50% is profit. Obviously. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037
Obviously...profit margin, return on equity, return on capital, return on assets, return on investment, operating margin, gross margin, net margin...to be so ignorant that it is obvious. The reason they got special treatment was because of the speed. That was what the priority list was for - "establishes that presence on the high priority lane did not confer any advantage at the decision-making stage of the process",…
And the fact that companies were treated the same when they were assessed doesn't alter the fact that being assessed sooner rather than later is a massive advantage.
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Seriously? The high court found that the operation of the priority list was unlawful [1]. You can reasonably argue that they needed to move quickly, but that doesn't explain why some companies were getting special treatment. And the 50% is profit. Obviously. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037
Obviously...profit margin, return on equity, return on capital, return on assets, return on investment, operating margin, gross margin, net margin...to be so ignorant that it is obvious. The reason they got special treatment was because of the speed. That was what the priority list was for - "establishes that presence on the high priority lane did not confer any advantage at the decision-making stage of the process",…
There are companies that made no upfront investment, ordering equipment from China without any understanding of what they are ordering, any relevant experience, and huge quantities fo PPE had to be destroyed because it was not fit for purpose and did not meet regulatory requirements. Most of the companies contracted had no experiece of dealing with medical equipment ever before. I personally know people who have experience in the industry and government passed them up for contracts in favour of the shitsters that were chosen.
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> I would go as far as to say... In the UK, it wasn't corruption. These people were paid money for products, they delivered those products, the price paid wasn't excessive. The UK has an independent auditor that found no evidence of corruption, and that (where product was delivered incorrectly) it was due to problems with contract specs. Afaik, there is only one case where a person was directly involved in politics a…
I think your argument boils down to don't assign to corruption what could more easily be assigned to incompetence. Which I think is a fair point but does raise some questions about the competency of the civil servants and politicians we trust with a fairly large chunk of our income.
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There’s a distinction to be made between a small customary bribe to an seriously underpaid state employee, and a larcenous bribe to a high official.
Not according to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The FCPA basically says that as a representative of a US corporation (in my case, anyone at a Staff Engineer level or above), it's illegal to bribe an official of a foreign government. It does try to make a distinction (sort of) between the kinds of bribe you're talking about but in my FCPA training, that "distinction" boils down to "go ask your lawyer." The…
It just adds yet another layer.
Just as an FYI it’s very hard to be convicted of under FCPA if you’re just operating in a personal capacity. So don’t worry about bribing policemen in foreign counties.
~5 years ago, I hired three Indian developers. They asked me if we could set up an Indian legal entity, so that they could just get regular salaries in India with tax payments, deductions etc taken care of. I agreed and we got it done. One of the worst business-decisions of my life. The amount of red tape, stupid rules, corruption, signatures, stamps, showing up physically in a certain office etc etc... Mindblowing.…
In the meantime companies like remote.com and similar have sprung up, providing "employer of record" services. Basically they let you outsource the act of having a company in a given country and employing people through it, much like how Stripe lets you outsource the whole merchant account thing for payments. It seems that whenever there's red tape, there's a business opportunity in paving over it and providing a san…
They're hiring freelancers as employees, and take care of all the invoicing and tax stuff for them. The freelancers can focus on their craft as if they were employees, with no loss in autonomy.
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I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
Ahem. We're talking about a country where a chancellor that pushed for building a gas pipeline from a foreign country went straight to the board of the foreign company running that pipeline after ending his term as chancellor. Corruption is everywhere, it's just on different levels. Usually in more "developed" (I don't like that word) countries you see corruption on the highest levels, and people actually get away wi…
It hardly supports the thesis above. Germany is not rotten to the core by corruption. It's not a constant hindrance to someone trying to get things done.
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I wouldn't consider Germany and Switzerland that corrupt.
I have dealt with bureaucracy in Italy and in Switzerland and if you think Switzerland has bad bureaucracy, you have no idea what you're talking about .
If you follow the law to the letter, and you don't get what you want, the mere threat of hiring a lawyer will get it sorted.
The only issue is the speed. I see people lose their job offer before they even start, because the immigration office is too slow.