Large Scale Corruption in the Developed World

Most call attention to the petty corruption ofstate-owned enterprises to private owners the
low-paid civil servants, not to the grand corruptiongovernment has accumulated enormous amounts
of wealthy multinationals. Most focus onof money at the expense of the poor. The
symptoms such as missing resources, not causesbenefits of this privatization were overestimated
such as deregulation of state enterprises. Mostand the costs were underestimated. A lot of
talk about bribe-takers, not bribegivers".times the World Bank and the IMF are
~ Sue Hawleycontributing to the corruption because regulations
In his above statement regarding corruption,are not set up to control the privatization.
Hawley's main point is that when people generallyBecause of the lack of regulations corruption is
think of corruption they think of it on a smallallowed to flourish without anybody doing anything
scale. For example, things like corrupt policeabout it.
officers in Mexico and Russia that take bridesOther examples of the corruption by the West
from people come to mind for most people whenare liberalization that is not carefully managed,
they think of corruption. They never think of theprivate banking and offshore banks that hideaway
wealthy corporation in power as to be corrupt. IThird World assets and decentralization that does
was guilty of this myself. As an immigrant fromnot "provide adequate resources and training to
the former Soviet Union I have seen a lot of thelocal governments". It is easy to see from these
"petty corruption of low-paid civil servants" thatexamples that the major corruption in the world is
Hawley is referring to. It is widespread in Russiagoing on in the North. The 80 billion dollars per
and is common knowledge to everyone that ityear that Western businesses pay in bribes is a
exists. Until taking this poverty class and readinglot worse than what the average police officer
the paper "Exporting Corruption" I was not awareaccepts in Russia or another country that is
of the "grand corruption of wealthy multinationals".stereotyped as corrupt. Hugh Baykey called
I was under the illusion that the developingbribery "a direct transfer of money from the
countries are the only ones experiencingpoor to the rich". Regular people in the developing
corruption and thought that no corruption exists incountries that take part in corruption sometimes
the North. Hawley brought up a lot of goodhave to do that in order to survive. Their country
examples that have convinced me otherwise.is impoverished to the point that their salaries are
The first example of the type of corruption thatnot sufficient enough for them to live on. One of
goes on in the "North" is bribery to gain contractsthe causes of this poverty is the corruption in the
or concessions and sometimes to get aroundWest.
environmental regulations. Western businessesAfter these examples given by Hawley, I see
disguise these bribes as into forms as semi-legalthat the excuse of the North for not forgiving the
fees or commissions which sometimes makesdebt of the poor countries because of corruption
them hard to detect. They also do not participatedoes not hold up. The corruption that is happening
in it directly but use local agents to get the jobin their own country is on a much larger scale
down. This way they are keeping their handsthan the corruption in the developing countries.
clean and everything is done under secrecy.The biggest problem is that people do not
Another form of the grand corruption of wealthyunderstand how true corruption looks like that it is
multinationals is privatization. It could take form ofwhy they are vulnerable to the illusion that I was
"large public sector contracts and concessionsunder just before reading this paper.
issued to private companies". By selling