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In the latest Transparency International report on worldwide corruption, it was revealed that inadequate laws expose whistleblowers and hamper the war against corruption.
Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Sudan were the worst offending countries. The least corrupt country was New Zealand, followed by Sweden, Finland, Australia and Canada.
World corruption, with the use and aid of recent technologies, has risen to terrifying levels and threatens global economic recovery.
Corruption, which is the ill-treatment of entrusted power for private gain, takes on many forms, such as bribery, extortion, nepotism, patronage, graft and embezzlement. These activities can involve organized crime in areas such as drug trafficking, piracy, money laundering and trafficking in human beings, as well as dealing in illegal blood diamonds.
Bribery alone on a global scale is estimated to involve approximately 1 trillion US dollars per year.
Following is a short list of widely renowned corruption incidents:
•Osama bin Laden has collected millions of dollars from the sale of illegal blood diamonds mined in Sierra Leone, as has the government of the Zimbabwe.
•In 2008 Israeli prime minister resigned amidst allegations of corruption. A US businessman confessed having paid Ehud Ohmer thousands of dollars.
•In 2007 it was revealed that Chevron made illegal payments to Iraq for oil purchased in 2001/2 under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.
•In 2006 Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian was released from corruption charges only because the law gave him presidential immunity.
•Since independence four decades ago, it is alleged that Nigeria’s rulers stole, or misused$400 billion. This is the equivalent of the total amount of western aid to all of Africa in the last 40 years.
•As far back as 2001, it was understood the late dictator General Sani Abacha had deposited approximately $700m in banks in both Switzerland and London.
•In 2004 the leading faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization began to hunt for millions of dollars in assets hidden by the late leader, Yasser Arafat.
•In 2003 it had been revealed that Arafat had diverted $900m in public funds to a special account which he alone controlled.
•It was reported in 2004 the oil-for-food program is believed to have been subverted by Saddam Hussein’s regime and used to prop up the dictator.
•Saddam ordered his son to withdraw $1billion cash from the Iraqi Central Bank just hours before the first bombs began to fall on Baghdad.
•Foreign exchange reserves were found to be missing $480m from the Bank of China in 2002.
•In 2000 Chinese tycoon, Mou Qizhong, was sentenced to life imprisonment for having illegally obtained state assets worth $75m.
In 2008 you have the largest ponzi scam ever perpetrated, by 71 year old Bernard Madoff, who is now serving a 150 year prison sentence, for his $50billion scam.
In December 2009 a high-flying attorney, Scott Rothstein, was arrested and charged with federal racketeering and fraud charges, involving a $1billion ponzi scheme. Did he learn nothing from Madoff’s experience?
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