Sunday, March 27, 2005

IHT: wave of corruption in china

March 27th

some small comfort: the chinese are even more corrupt than indians.
talk of ugly capitalism! off-the-wall thought: if indians can come up
with some cold cash, it will be possible to bribe the chinese to do
things that are against their national interest.

interestingly, the american investment bank goldman sachs (or was it
morgan stanley? can't remember) recently paid a *legal* bribe of $100
million to the chinese government to be able to start an office in
china! this of course is ok as far as the ultra-puritan americans are
considered.

------

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/22/business/web.0322corrupt.html

Wave of Corruption Tarnishes China's Extraordinary Growth

By David Barboza The New York Times

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

SHANGHAI China has been shaken by a series of large-scale bank
robberies in recent years, but they are not the Bonnie-and-Clyde type.

These are inside jobs: top executives, branch managers, loan officers
and thousands of everyday employees have been running off with
billions of dollars of customers' money.

Consider what has happened in just the first two months of 2005.
First, a branch manager at the Bank of China disappeared with more
than $100 million in cash. A few weeks later, dozens of employees of
another commercial bank were arrested and charged with conspiring to
steal nearly $1 billion in funds. And then midlevel officials of China
Construction Bank apparently fled the country with about $8 million in
cash.

There is no word yet on whether any of the money has been recovered.
But the chain of events underlines an ugly byproduct of China's
aggressive embrace of a get-rich-quick form of capitalism: a
long-running wave of corporate and government corruption scandals....

No comments: