Crime And Corruption Part 1

Crime and Corruption.

by Sam Vaknin.

Slush Funds

According to David McClintick ("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related a.s.set seizures.

The idea was to infiltrate global crime networks but a lot of the money in "Operation Swordfish" may have ended up in the wrong pockets. Government agents and sheriffs got mysteriously and filthily rich and the whole sorry affair was wound down. The GAO reported more than $3.6 billion missing. This bit of history gave rise to at least one blockbuster with Oscar-winner Halle Berry.

Alas, slush funds are much less glamorous in reality. They usually involve grubby politicians, pawky bankers, and philistine businessmen - rather than glamorous hackers and James Bondean secret agents.

The Kazakh prime minister, Imanghaliy Tasmaghambetov, freely admitted on April 4 to his country's rubber-stamp parliament the existence of a $1 billion slush fund. The money was apparently skimmed off the proceeds of the opaque sale of the Tengiz oilfield.

Remitting it to Kazakhstan - he expostulated with a poker face - would have fostered inflation. So, the country's president, Nazarbaev, kept the funds abroad "for use in the event of either an economic crisis or a threat to Kazakhstan's security".

The money was used to pay off pension arrears in 1997 and to offset the pernicious effects of the 1998 devaluation of the Russian ruble.

What was left was duly transferred to the $1.5 billion National Fund, the PM insisted. Alas, the original money in the Fund came entirely from another sale of oil a.s.sets to Chevron, thus casting in doubt the official version.

The National Fund was, indeed, augmented by a transfer or two from the slush fund - but at least one of these transfers occurred only 11 days after the d.a.m.ning revelations. Moreover, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the unfazed premier denied that his president possesses multi-million dollar bank accounts abroad.

He later rescinded this last bit of disinformation. The president, he said, has no bank accounts abroad but will promptly return all the money in these non-existent accounts to Kazakhstan. These vehemently denied accounts, he speculated, were set up by the president's adversaries "for the purpose of compromising his name".

On April 15, even the docile opposition had enough of this fuzzy logic. They established a People Oil's Fund to monitor, henceforth, the regime's financial shenanigans. By their calculations less than 7 percent of the income from the sale of hydrocarbon fuels (c. $4-5 billion annually) make it to the national budget.

Slush funds infect every corner of the globe, not only the more obscure and venal ones. Every secret service - from the Mossad to the CIA - operates outside the stated state budget. Slush funds are used to launder money, shower cronies with patronage, and bribe decision makers. In some countries, setting them up is a criminal offense, as per the 1990 Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure, and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime. Other jurisdictions are more forgiving.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands issued a press release November last in which it welcomed the government's plans to abolish slush funds. They described the poisonous effect of this practice:

"With a few notable exceptions, the practice of directing funds through politicians to district projects has been disastrous. It has created an atmosphere in which corruption is thought to have flourished. It has reduced the responsibility of public servants, without reducing their numbers or costs. It has been used to confuse people into believing public funds are the "property" of individual members rather than the property of the people, honestly and fairly administered by the servants of the people.

The concept of 'slush-funds' has resulted in well-doc.u.mented inefficiencies and failures. There were even accusations made that funds were withheld from certain members as a way of forcing them into submission. It seems that the era of the 'slush funds' has been a shameful period."

But even is the most orderly and lawful administration, funds are liable to be mislaid. "The Economist" reported recently about a $10 billion cla.s.s-action suit filed by native-Americans against the US government. The funds, supposed to be managed in trust since 1880 on behalf of half a million beneficiaries, were "either lost or stolen"

according to officials.

Rob Gordon, the Director of the National Wilderness Inst.i.tute accused "The US Interior Department (of) looting the special funds that were established to pay for wildlife conservation and squandering the money instead on questionable administrative expenses, slush funds and employee moving expenses".

Charles Griffin, the Deputy Director of the Heritage Foundation's Government Integrity Project, charges:

"The federal budget provides numerous slush funds that can be used to subsidize the lobbying and political activities of special- interest groups."

On his list of "Top Ten Federal Programs That Actively Subsidize Politics and Lobbying" are: AmeriCorps, Senior Community Service Employment Program, Legal Services Corporation, t.i.tle X Family Planning, National Endowment for the Humanities, Market Promotion Program, Senior Environmental Employment Program, Superfund Worker Training, HHS Discretionary Aging Projects, Telecomm. & Info.

Infrastructure a.s.sistance. These federal funds alone total $1.8 billion.

"Next" and "China Times" - later joined by "The Was.h.i.+ngton Post" - accused the former Taiwanese president, Lee Teng-hui, of forming a $100 million overseas slush fund intended to finance the gathering of information, influence-peddling, and propaganda operations.

Taiwan footed the bills trips by Congressional aides and funded academic research and think tank conferences.

High ranking j.a.panese officials, among others, may have received payments through this stealthy venue. Lee is alleged to have drawn $100,000 from the secret account in February 1999. The money was used to pay for the studies of a former j.a.panese Vice-Defense Minister Masahiro Akiyama's at Harvard.

Ryutaro Has.h.i.+moto, the former j.a.panese prime minister, was implicated as a beneficiary of the fund. So were the prestigious lobbying firm, Ca.s.sidy and a.s.sociates and a.s.sorted a.s.sistant secretaries in the Bush administration.

Carl Ford, Jr., currently a.s.sistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, worked for Ca.s.sidy during the relevant period and often visited Taiwan. James Kelly, a.s.sistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs enjoyed the Taiwanese largesse as well. Both are in charge of crafting America's policy on Taiwan.

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, admitted, during his confirmation hearings, to having received $30,000 to cover the costs of writing 3 research papers.

The Taiwanese government has yet to deny the news stories.

A j.a.panese foreign ministry official used slush fund money to finance the extra-marital activities of himself and many of his colleagues - often in posh hotel suites. But this was no exception.

According to Asahi s.h.i.+mbun, more than half of the 60 divisions of the ministry maintained similar funds. The police and the ministry are investigating. One arrest has been made. The ministry's accounting division has discovered these corrupt practices twenty years ago but kept mum.

Even low-level prefectural bureaucrats and teachers in j.a.pan build up slush funds by faking business trips or padding invoices and receipts. j.a.panese citizens' groups conservatively estimated that $20 million in travel and entertainment expenses in the prefectures in 1994 were faked, a practice known as "kara shutcho" (i.e., empty business trip).

Officials of the Hokkaido Board of Education admitted to the existence of a 100 million yen secret fund. In a resulting probe, 200 out of 286 schools were found to maintain their own slush funds.

Some of the money was used to support friendly politicians.

But slush funds are not a sovereign prerogative. Multinationals, banks, corporation, religious organizations, political parties, and even NGO's salt away some of their revenues and profits in undisclosed accounts, usually in off-sh.o.r.e havens.

Secret election campaign slush funds are a fixture in American politics. A 2-year old bill requires disclosure of donors to such funds but the House is busy loosening its provisions. "The Economist" listed lately the tsunami of scandals that engulfs Germany, both its major political parties, many of the Lander and numerous highly placed and mid-level bureaucrats. Secret, mainly party, funds seem to be involved in the majority of these lurid affairs.

Italian firms made donations to political parties through slush funds, though corporate donations - providing they are transparent - are perfectly legal in Italy. Both the right and, to a lesser extent, the left in France are said to have managed enormous political slush funds.

President Chirac is accused of having abused for his personal pleasure, one such munic.i.p.al fund in Paris, when he was its mayor.

But the funds were mostly used to provide party activists with mock jobs. Corporations paid kickbacks to obtain public works or local building permits. Ostensibly, they were paying for sham "consultancy services".

The epidemic hasn't skipped even staid Ottawa. Its Chief Electoral Officer told Sun Media last September that he is "concerned" about millions stashed away by Liberal candidates. Sundry ministers who coveted the prime minister's job, have raised funds covertly and probably illegally.

On April 11, UPI reported that Spain's second-largest bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), held nearly $200 million hidden in secret offsh.o.r.e accounts, "which were allegedly used to manipulate politicians, pay off the 'revolutionary tax' to ETA - the Basque terrorist organization - and open the door for business deals, according to news reports."

The money may have gone to luminaries such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Peru's Alberto Fujomori and Vladimiro Montesinos. The bank's board members received fat, tax-free, "pensions" from the illegal accounts opened in 1987 - a total of more than $20 million.

Latin American drug money launderers - from Puerto Rico to Colombia - may have worked through these funds and the bank's clandestine ent.i.ties in the Cayman Islands and Jersey. The current Spanish Secretary of State for the Treasury has been the bank's tax advisor between 1992-7.

The "Financial Times" reported in June 2000 that, in antic.i.p.ation of new international measures to curb corruption, "leading European arms manufacturers" resorted to the creation of off-sh.o.r.e slush funds. The money is intended to bribe foreign officials to win tenders and contracts.