Archive for the ‘Corruption’ Category

Blatter and his stinking mess of FIFA corruption

May 30, 2011
Sepp Blatter

Image via Wikipedia

Sepp Blatter is standing unopposed and the writhing mess of corruption that FIFA has become continues. That World Cups are bought and sold is patently obvious. Apart from masses of money Qatar brings nothing to a World Cup competition and takes away much. The corruption – under Blatter’s watchful and forgiving eye – has of course resulted in stupid decision after stupid decision.

As long as Blatter continues the corruption and stupidity will remain institutionalised and there is no chance of FIFA even beginning to put its house in order.

The BBC

Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke has denied Jack Warner’s claim in an e-mail that Mohamed Bin Hammam “bought” the 2022 World Cup finals for Qatar. 

Suspended Fifa vice-president Warner made public the e-mail which also questioned why Asian football boss Bin Hammam was running for Fifa president. Valcke wrote: “[Hammam] thought you can buy Fifa as they bought the World Cup”.

But in Valcke’s denial he insisted he was not referring to any “purchase of votes or similar unethical behaviour.” ….. And last weekQatar 2022 World Cup officials denied allegations, published in the Sunday Times, that they paid bribes in return for votes.

Meanwhile, independent Australian senator Nick Xenophon has demanded that Fifa refunds the Aus$45.6m (£29.6m) his country spent on their unsuccessful bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Xenophon said: “It appears corrupt and highly questionable behaviour goes to the core of Fifa. Australia spent almost $46m on a bid we were never in the running for. Now we hear that bribes may have been made to fix the result for who will head up Fifa.”

As vice president, China’s Zhang Jilong will take charge of the AFC in the absence of Bin Hammam. However, the decision to suspend Bin Hammam has been met with widespread criticism throughout the Middle East.

AFC vice president Yousuf al-Serkal, from neighbouring United Arab Emirates, said: “I think Bin Hammam has been mistreated. “Bin Hammam is the right person who should have been elected to the presidency of Fifa from the point of view of change.”

The Telegraph

The prospect that Sepp Blatter will tomorrow be returned unopposed as president of Fifa, the game’s governing body, is enough to make any true football fan, of whatever nationality, cringe with embarrassment.

Unopposed? Does that mean people think he is doing a good job? Couldn’t some tramp be brought in from the streets of Zurich to contest the election? Are ballot papers being printed to give this fiasco a veneer of legitimacy? And who is paying for the prerequisite slap-up lunch for the stooges flying thousands of miles to rubber-stamp Blatter’s election?

The sheer absurdity of the process makes Premier League footballers look like paragons of virtue. Unless 75-year-old Blatter does the decent thing and agrees to the deferment of tomorrow’s election – and nothing in his record of ruthless, self-important nest-feathering suggests that he is capable of doing the decent thing – a coronation of look-away-now awfulness, with toadies in blazers applauding the Supreme Leader, is in prospect. 

His 13-year-old presidency of Fifa has been marked by faux pas after faux pas. When he has not been mulishly resisting long-overdue reforms, such as goal-line technology, he has been insulting women, by advising female footballers to wear tight shorts and low-cut tops, and homosexuals, by urging gay fans to practise sexual restraint at the 2022 
World Cup in Qatar.

But it is the sheer incompetence of Fifa under Blatter that has been truly shocking. Never mind the bribery allegations and counter-allegations swirling around the Qatar bid. No sporting body with any pretensions to seriousness would have agreed to award a World Cup, traditionally held in June/July, to a country where temperatures at that time of year top 40C. ….  Half-cocked plans for air-conditioned stadiums, or for the tournament to be held mid-winter, have only underscored the ludicrousness of the bidding process – with the minnows of world football all too easily seduced by large cheques.

The Guttenberg syndrome: Another German politician resigns over plagiarism

May 12, 2011

German politicians under the age of about 50 who have PhD’s would now all seem to be suspect. No doubt every one of their theses is being subjected to intense scrutiny. It suggests a shortage of personal ethics in this group. They are bringing German science and German Universities into disrepute.

Koch-Mehrin was the German liberal 'face' in Europe

Koch-Mehrin was the German liberal 'face' in Europe: Deutsche Welle

Deutsche Welle reports:

FDP politician Silvana Koch-Mehrin has quit following allegations of plagiarism in her thesis. It comes after ex-defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s university said he deliberately cheated in his thesis.

German Free Democrat Silvana Koch-Mehrin has resigned her post as vice president of the European Parliament and head of the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) in Europe, after allegations surfaced that she plagiarized parts of her doctoral thesis.

“I regret this decision, but I respect the reasons behind it and I’m confident that she will continue to shape European politics,” the foreign minister and outgoing FDP leader, Guido Westerwelle, said on Wednesday in Berlin.

Koch-Mehrin’s decision to step down follows an article in German daily Tagesspiegel, which revealed that the University of Heidelberg is investigating allegations made by activists on the VroniPlag Wiki website.

The website states that its contributors had found that Koch-Mehrin had copied material without attributing it on 56 of the 201 pages of text in her 2001 thesis on the 19th century Latin Monetary Union in Europe. “I hope to make it easier for my party to make a fresh start with a new leadership team,” Koch-Mehrin said in a statement, without admitting to or commenting on the allegations.

Koch-Mehrin’s announcement comes ahead of the FDP’s party convention at the weekend, which will see the election of a new party leader as well as a reshuffling of several cabinet posts. The party has slumped to around four percent in the polls since gaining 14.6 percent of the vote in the 2009 federal election.

Koch-Mehrin’s resignation follows that of former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on March 1. The University of Bayreuth, who stripped him of his title at the end of February, confirmed last week that Guttenberg “deliberately cheated” in his thesis, while he continues to admit only to sloppiness and carelessness, caused by the stress of trying to combine his job as a politician with family life.

Prosecutors in the Bavarian city of Hof are investigating him on charges of infringement of copyright.

As Professor Debora Weber-Wulff puts it:

Germany has been sweeping plagiarism and scientific misconduct under the rug for ages, and it has gotten very lumpy. I think we need to lift the carpet up, give it a good beating to get out the dust, sweep up the garbage that has collected, and get a fresh start. There are so many good scientists in Germany who have to defend themselves against all this bad science.

Related zu Guttenberg posts

Jail time coming for Anil Ambani?

April 23, 2011

As an “anti-corruption” wave sweeps through the normally long-suffering and silent majority in India, Tihar Jail in Delhi is filling up with the rich and the famous now being caught up in the wake of the Satyam scams, the 2G scam and the pig-troughs surrounding the Delhi Commonwealth Games.

And about time too.

If this wave becomes a tsunami Tihar will soon need a new wing.

The 2G scam was based on the underpricing of 2G spectrum by the Telecom Ministry of India, resulting in a loss to the exchequer of some $40 billion and with a corresponding benefit to the companies being allocated the 2G licences. The former Minister and a number of other players are all currently in jail though a trial and convictions are still a long way away.

Back in February Tehelka reported:

THE 2G spectrum scam is getting murkier by the day. A well-known Maharashtra politician and a Delhi- based real estate group have now come under the probe agencies’ scanner for their suspected role in the scam.

This new revelation takes the probe to the doorsteps of political parties other than the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Over the past week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has interrogated at length senior officials of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) and Amit Sarin, the Delhi-based billionaire and real estate tycoon, asking them to explain a string of suspicious transactions, particularly one where Rs. 100 crore was transferred to Mumbai billionaire Shahid Balwa a day after he applied for a telecom licence.

The CBI has unearthed a money trail of Rs. 100 crore that starts from the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, goes through the Delhi-based real estate company Anant Raj Group and Balwa, and finally ends with a company associated with the influential Maharashtra politician.

Now evidence is forthcoming from the banks involved in the jungle of transactions  involving the menagerie of companies controlled by Anil Ambani’s ADAG Group and which confirms that Anil Ambani was central to the games being played:

Anil Ambani and wife Tina were the only two individuals with unlimited powers to transfer money and make payments for the sevenAnil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) companies that are now under CBI investigation for their links to the 2G scam-linked Swan Telecom, according to the testimony of Amit Khot, deputy branch manager of ICICI Bank’s Nariman Point branch, where these seven companies have their accounts. 

From Tehelka again:

Swan, Tiger, Parrot, Zebra, Penguin, Giraffe: A corporate menagerie
The CBI believes that the conspiracy behind the Swan Telecom was hatched in early 2006 when ADAG created a web of newly formed companies named after animals.

The following six companies were incorporated between March and July 2006:
1. Swan Infonet (later renamed Parrot Contelesultants); incorporated on 17 March 2006
2. Penguin International Ventures Pvt Ltd (later renamed Reliance Utility Engineers) on 26 June 2006 
3. Swan Advisory Services Pvt Ltd (later renamed Zebra Consultants Pvt Ltd) on 21 March 2006
4. Giraffe Consultancy Pvt Ltd (later renamed Sidhartha Consultancy) on 27 June 2006 
5. Tiger Traders on 20 March 2006, and
6. Swan Capital Pvt Ltd (later renamed as Swan Telecom) on 13 July 2006

All these companies were incorporated with an initial share capital of 1 lakh each. Even these few lakhs allegedly came from the bank accounts of top ADAG officials. Besides, either an ADAG company or directors of ADAG owned equity in these companies. The addresses provided in the incorporation documents were those of the registered office of ADAG.

The ADAG Menagerie: Tehelka

Tina and Anil Ambani with friend

It would seem to be just a matter of time before Anil Ambani is taken in for questioning about the 2G scam but whether he spends any jail time remains to be seen. (Commentary removed – October 2014)

Gaddafi & family activate Plan B to save themselves

March 25, 2011

That Gaddafi and family are not the kind to die heroically fighting to the last breath for some matter of principle is fairly clear. That their private aircraft were flitting around the world a few weeks ago secretly shifting and hiding their assets is an educated presumption. It seems increasingly likely that a “Plan B” for survival anda re-grouping is being put into effect as the “no-fly zone” and sanctions and the world-wide freezing of Libyan assets takes effect.

Belarus – not Venezuela – maybe Gaddafi’s bolt-hole

Map indicating location of Belarus and Libya

Belarus and Libya: image Wikipedia

My reading is that the family have already prepared their bolt hole most probably in Belarus and that Venezuela and Cuba are not viable. Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are remotely possible. I would not be surprised if the sudden flight of his nurse Galyna Kolotnytska back to Ukraine at the end of February was executed as part of Plan B. But the problem for Gaddafi and his family is now to arrange a “safe passage” to wherever the bolt-hole has been prepared.

Reuters reports:

Members of Muammar Gaddafi’s entourage are putting out feelers to seek a ceasefire or safe passage from Libya.

Roger Tamraz, a Middle Eastern businessman with long experience conducting deals with the Libyan regime said Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Muammar’s eldest son, and Abdullah Senoussi, the Libyan leader’s brother-in-law, were the most prominent Gaddafi entourage members involved in seeking ways to end the fighting. A U.S. national security official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that U.S. government agencies were aware that Saif al-Islam and Senoussi had been involved in making peace overtures.

“It’s clear that some of Gaddafi’s family members always have a plan B up their sleeve. That doesn’t mean they’ll leave and certain Gaddafis are probably going to stick with their crazy dad no matter what happens,” the U.S. official said.

In an interview on Tuesday with a U.S. television network, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was aware that people close to Gaddafi had been trying to make contact.

“I’m not aware that he personally has reached out, but I do know that people allegedly on his behalf have been reaching out,” Clinton told ABC America’s Diane Sawyer.

“This is what we hear from so many sources…Today, yesterday, the day before. Some of it…is theater, some of it is kind of, shall we say, game-playing…But some of it, we think, is exploring, ‘what are my options, where could I go, what could I do.’ And we would encourage that,” Clinton said.

The U.S. national security official added: “It’s not at all surprising that members of the Gaddafi regime might be looking for ways out of this mess.” …..

Tamraz told Reuters that some of the most aggressive efforts by members of Gaddafi’s entourage to start dialogue were being channeled through Austria. A European government financial investigator said that Libya was believed to have extensive wealth and investments in Austria.

Tamraz said that he believed Saif al-Islam, Senoussi and other members of the Gaddafi entourage were proposing a ceasefire between government forces, rebels and the anti-Gaddafi Western alliance, or plans which would enable members of the Libyan leader’s entourage to go into exile peacefully.


The Prince and the paedophile and Berlusconi and his pimps

March 7, 2011

Does every civilisation go through a period of decadence and excess and crassness and vulgarity or is it just the normal behaviour of the famous and the wealthy?

I find it inexplicable that in spite of such behaviour Prince Andrew and bunga bunga Berlusconi still maintain their followings.

The Duke of York is facing new pressure to resign over his association with a convicted paedophile (Jeffrey Epstein), after ministers admitted that there would be “conversations” about his future role.

Andy at a Scotch tasting in Wasington photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The Daily Telegraph disclosed this morning that the Government had decided to downgrade his position as Britain’s trade ambassador. Vince Cable appeared to confirm that the Duke’s role and responsibilities were under review as he declined to give the royal his firm backing in a radio interview today. …

Chris Bryant, the Labour former Foreign Office minister, repeated his calls for the Duke to be relieved of his duties, telling the BBC: “I think we should be dispensing with his services. I think the charge list now against him is so long that he is a bit of an embarrassment.”

In the meantime Berlusconi is facing 4 trials simultaneously:

Berlusconi's pimps

Berlusconi’s pimps Lele and Fido: Photo: REX FEATURES

The aging ‘pimps’ at the heart of the Berlusconi scandal. Emilio Fede, 79, and ‘Lele’ Mora, 55, are accused of playing a key role in organising Mr Berlusconi’s ‘bunga bunga’ parties.

While attention has focused on the parade of glamourous young women
who allegedly prostituted themselves with the prime minister, the men alleged to have masterminded what was in effect a vast pimping network are anything but youthful.

79-year-old Emilio Fede, a television anchorman, finds himself at the epicentre of the extraordinary prostitution scandal engulfing the Italian prime minister. Mr Fede (“Fido”)  is accused along with Dario ‘Lele’ Mora, 55, a celebrity agent, of procuring escort girls to attend “bunga bunga” sex parties with the 74-year-old prime minister, who is due to face trial himself next month accused of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute. Prosecutors are expected within days to present a dossier of evidence to a judge in Milan in which they will request that Mr Mora and Mr Fede face court on related charges, along with Nicole Minetti, 25, an Anglo-Italian former television showgirl.

Cheating epidemic at UK universities

March 6, 2011

The entrepreneurial spirit is strong and growing at British universities. A survey of 84 universities has revealed a depressing picture of the extent to which plagiarism, impersonation and bribery has entered the mainstream of university life. The Telegraph reports:

image:soniceclectic.com

A cheating epidemic is sweeping universities with thousands of students caught plagiarising, trying to bribe lecturers and buying essays from the internet.

A survey of more than 80 universities has revealed that academic misconduct is soaring at institutions across the country.

More than 17,000 incidents of cheating were recorded by universities in the 2009-10 academic year – up at least 50 per cent in four years. But the true figure will be far higher because many were only able to provide details of the most serious cases and let lecturers deal with less serious offences. Only a handful of students were expelled for their misdemeanours among those universities which disclosed how cheats were punished.

Most of the incidents were plagiarism in essays and other coursework, but others examples include:

  • Three cases categorised as “impersonation” by Derby University and three at Coventry, along with 10 “uses of unauthorised technology”
  • Kent University reported at least one case where a student attempted to “influence a teacher or examiner improperly”.
  • At the University of East Anglia students submitted pieces of work which contained identical errors, while others completed reports which were “almost identical to that of another student”, a spokesman said, while one was caught copying sections from the Wikipedia website.
  • A student sitting an exam at the University of the West of Scotland was caught with notes stored in an MP3 player.
  • * A Bradford University undergraduate completed work at home, smuggled it into an examination then claimed it had been written during the test.
  • The University of Central Lancashire, at Preston, reported students had been caught using a “listening and/or communications device” during examinations.
  • Keele undergraduates sitting exams were found to have concealed notes in the lavatory, stored on a mobile telephone and written on tissues while two students were found guilty of “falsifying a mentor’s signature on practice assessment documents to gain academic benefit”. …

…. The survey exposed for the first time a huge leap in the number of incidents compared with just four years earlier, with a 53 per cent jump from 9,100 to 14,200 among the 70 institutions able to provide comparable data.

Cheating was reported widely among undergraduates but there were also significant numbers reported among postgraduates. For example, Loughborough reported 151 incidents last year of which 43 were committed by postgraduates. …


LSE head quits over suspect ties to Gaddafi & son

March 4, 2011
Sir Howard Davies, British businessman and eco...

Sir Howard Davies: Image via Wikipedia

Not only did the UK government provide Gaddafi with absolution for all his sins for the sake of weapons deals and oil contracts, they also orchestrated the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

And the LSE was part of the process of providing legitimacy to a bunch of thugs and murderers  – of course in return for a suitable remuneration. The LSE Director has now resigned.

BBC:

The director of the London School of Economics has resigned over its links to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi. Sir Howard Davies said he recognised the university’s reputation had “suffered” and he had to quit. He said the decision to accept £300,000 for research from a foundation run by Col Gaddafi’s son, Saif, “backfired”.

The LSE council has commissioned an independent inquiry into the university’s relationship with Libya and Saif Gaddafi. It will seek to clarify the extent of the LSE’s links with Libya and establish guidelines for future donations.

Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and former chairman of the Council of University College London, has been appointed to carry it out. Sir Howard said he regretted visiting Libya to advise its regime about financial reforms, calling it a “personal error of judgement”. …..

The LSE has already announced it is investigating claims that Saif Gaddafi plagiarised his PhD thesis, which was awarded in 2008. The Libyan leader’s son had studied at the LSE, gaining both an MSc and PhD.

The Guardian:

A leaked US diplomatic cable indicates that the British government was also party to the deal to bring 400 Libyans to Britain for leadership training. The cable, published by WikiLeaks, suggests that other UK universities were involved in similar schemes, though there is no independent confirmation of this.

The university’s reputation has taken a battering over links with the Libyan regime, which include a donation of £1.5m from a charitable foundation run by Saif, who studied at the LSE. On Tuesday, the LSE agreed to put £300,000, equivalent to the cash it has received from the foundation, into a scholarship for north African students. …..

Ashok Kumar, the education officer of the LSE students’ union said : “The recent revelations have shone a light on one part of the relationship between the upper echelons of the LSE and the Gaddafi family, which is deeper and more perverse than we would have ever imagined.

“This issue is damaging the reputation of the school – it should be a place of learning – not at the centre of unscrupulous dealings with Libyan regime.”

Cheating UK MP’s now claim expenses to stop being MP’s!

March 3, 2011
The House of Commons in Wilberforce's day by A...

Image via Wikipedia

UK MP’s have been, for a long time, using expense claims to pad their incomes and many of these expenses are for generating income for family members as part of their staff. The Telegraph took the lead in exposing the culture of greed among these “servants of society”. Some rules have changed but it is not a culture that will be changed easily.

Now the Telegraph reports that even those MP’s already found to have been cheating on expenses and who had decided not to stand again have now claimed – and received – substantial sums for closing down their operations:

More than 200 MPs claimed the payments of up to £42,732, which they were entitled to use for staff salaries and office costs if they were leaving Parliament, receiving a total of £6.8 million. A large number of employees who would have received the payments were MPs’ relatives hired to run their offices, meaning that the cash would have gone straight into their household income.

  1. Labour’s Jim Devine, who was convicted last month of false accounting on his expenses, was paid £19,832.
  2. David Chaytor, who was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for cheating on his Commons allowances, received £10,089.
  3. Jacqui Smith, quit as home secretary after putting her husband’s pornographic films on her expenses. He worked as her office manager and would have been entitled to some of the £37,868 she claimed.
  4. Mark Oaten, the disgraced ex-Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester, claimed £41,518 to wind up his office – four years after announcing he would not stand again after his affair with a male prostitute emerged.
  5. Several MPs who have now become peers also claimed the winding-up allowance, despite now being entitled to set up new offices just yards away from their former rooms in the House of Commons. Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, and Lord Boswell, Tory MP for Daventry until May, received £26,590 and £42,708 respectively to wind up their offices having both announced that would not stand again in 2006.
  6. Lord Reid, the former Labour home secretary was paid £37,157 after announcing that he would not contest his Airdrie & Shotts seat at the election in 2007.

As well as a winding up allowance, departing MPs are also entitled to a “resettlement grant” of up to £64,766, a year’s salary, to allow help them make the “transition” to normal life. The former MPs received a total of £10.3million in “golden parachute” payments.

For parliamentarians, and not just in the UK, serving a party line has long ago replaced the notion of serving constituents’ interests and the allure of becoming a parliamentarian remains the many different ways of generating income that it affords.

Guttenberg is toast – a tribute to the power of the internet

March 1, 2011

The power of the internet and we should not forget that of the shoes!!

zu Googleberg has bowed to the inevitable and has resigned.

Burnt Toast

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has announced his resignation after weeks of criticism over plagiarizing parts of his Ph.D. thesis. ….The University of Bayreuth had already stripped Guttenberg of his law doctorate last week. Guttenberg apologized to the German parliament, and said he had made “grave errors” in his thesis, but insisted he did not intentionally copy it.

Pressure mounted on him to resign, after at least 17,000 academics signed an open letter to the German chancellor on Monday (over 20,000 according to the Updated ticker of Germans signing the open letter here), in which they said the plagiarism scandal made a “mockery” of the academic profession.

In recent days Education Minister Annette Schavan had called Guttenberg’s actions shameful, and parliamentary speaker Norbert Lammert said they were “a nail in the coffin for confidence in democracy.”

Berlusconi the stallion – bunga bunga girls terrified of catching AIDS

February 28, 2011

The Telegraph provides further smutty details about Berlusconi and his bunga bunga parties.

And one wonders how the glories of Italian civilisation ended up with this uncouth lout. But he follows in the footsteps of Mussolini.

The women who attended parties hosted by Silvio Berlusconi were terrified of contracting Aids and other sexually-transmitted diseases from him, according to evidence gathered by Milan prosecutors.

The claims, based on text messages sent between the women, cast further doubt on the Italian prime minister’s insistence that the “bunga bunga” parties at his villas in Milan and Sardinia were nothing more than light-hearted dinners filled with jokes and songs.

According to evidence submitted by prosecutors, several women last year exchanged text messages in which they expressed their relief after medical tests cleared them of any sexually transmitted diseases.

“Have you done it? Is everything okay?” asked one unidentified woman in a message sent on Jan 8 2010. “All ok. White blood cells ok, there is no AIDS.” “Did you have any doubts?” the first woman then asked. “Well you know when someone goes to bed with 80 women, you never know in life,” the second woman responded.

Model Barbara Guerra complained to a friend about the car she received from the prime minister. “I am furious because yesterday that girl arrived with a Mini Cooper he gave her in July and he gave me a Smart car in June. Now I swear I am going to ask him for another car.”

In wiretaps recorded between October and December last year, there were also complaints about the prime minister’s stamina. “He is up all night till 4am. He doesn’t sleep so he can stay up all night with one after the other”.

“There are 20-year-old girls there who are destroyed, they are dead, and me too. Also because I am much older, and I am 45 years younger than him.”………

I cannot resist this picture of another prize winning Berlusconi – the stallion. At least this Danish Berlusconi is not lacking in class or elegance.

Danish bred and Oldenburg branded and licensed stallion Berlusconi (by Belissimo M x Florestan x Donnerhall) Photo Ridehesten.com

The Danish bred and Oldenburg branded and licensed stallion Berlusconi stood out in the 35-day Stallion Performance Test, which completed at Stable BM in Lemvig, Denmark, on 10 February 2011. The chestnut Belissimo M x Florestan x Donnerhall offspring scored the highest total of 861,5 points.