(It's not 'exclusive to Africa'...)
Three Labour MPs and a Tory Peer face charges of false accounting and dishonesty under the Theft Act, in the fallout from the expenses scandal.
Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer announced prosecutions were being brought against former Environment and Fisheries minister Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield.
The charges follow the damning report on MPs' expenses by Commons auditor Sir Thomas Legg, who condemned the system of support for MPs requiring a second home in London which he protested was flawed by lack of audit, self certification by "sovereign" MPs and Commons Fees Office officials who frequently felt it was their job to help MPs rather than police the system.
Files on the six were passed first to the police and then to the Crown Prosecution Service and were excluded from the scope of Legg's enquiries.
He revealed the defendants' lawyers had raised issues of parliamentary privilege which he said should be determined by the courts.
All three MPs are barred by Labour for standing for re-election representing the party.
Tory leader David Cameron has ordered the suspension of Hanningfield from his party in the Lords, where he has resigned as Opposition business spokesman.
The peer said he was "extremely disappointed" to have been charged and claimed he had acted in good faith.
A statement issued by the three MPs said they "totally refute" the charges.
[More here]
(... What seems to be exclusive to Africa, though, is the widespread lack of accountability and corresponding punishment - what some call "zero tolerance" - both at party and government levels, for all sorts of thieves of public funds!)
Friday, 5 February 2010
Theft By False Accounting
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4 comments:
I would guess that they had the power to easily change the rules or create some legal exceptions. I wonder why they didn't!
In the States we have the lobby companies that somehow are very capable of making some private agendas the priority of legislators. It's widely known that through these companies funds for political campaigns are raised, politicians receive material gifts, trips etc, that morally could be summed up to bribes but all is legal!
Well, my dear, I guess they didn't because rules here (although said to "be made to be bended"...) cannot just be changed at any individual or group of MPs whims and personal interests.
What they did (at least 'allegedly' at this stage) was to violate the law and the prevailing accounting rules and procedures to dodge the system and claim more money than they were entitled to and that is illegal and morally reprehensible by all accounts!
Now, what you are talking about in the US (and I know that this is precisely your area of expertise, so please correct me if I am wrong) also happens here - with some limits and provided that what otherwise could be "summed up to bribes", as you rightly say, is officially declared and made public.
In any case, campaign funding and related political fundraising through private channels is also tightly regulated and subject to the same system of checks and balances applicable to public funds.
But, anyway, the case is still open and let's see how it ends.
And... thanks for the comment!
:-)
It is always a great pleasure to visit Koluki.
The fact is that lobbying firms and political action committees, etc. in the States donate to both parties almost equally, so, neither side has the moral ground to police the other!
In deed "It's not exclusive of Africa" in my view what we see here is just a form of "legalized" corruption. A couple of current examples of afflicting American politics:
1) The major contributors (in terms of industry) for the senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd who is leading the financial industry regulatory reform are in deed the banks and financial institutions. In my humble opinion a blatant conflict of interest.
The previous treasury secretary Henry Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman Sach's and he was also instrumental with the push for the banks bail out, that end up being executed in a very controversial faction. You can easily guess which from all financial institutions ended up benefiting the most from it.
Tim Geithner's - the current treasury secretary; during his confirmation hearings it became public that he had failed to pay self-employment taxes for years. Apparently, because he did not realize that he was not an employee of the IMF, somehow he also managed to confuse the costs of camping trip for his children as child care deductions. The fact of the matter is that now he is in charge of the IRS.
And this is within President Obama's team considered way more ethical than the former President Bush... corruption is widely spread and disguised with different names.
The main difference in my view between the African's and the "Westerners" is that on this side the economies so far have produced enough to keep the a vast majority of the population relatively satisfied and in turn they tolerate the politicians misdeeds.
Thanks for the details about what goes on in the US. But my main point here is not if or where it happens - be it in the UK, Africa or the US, or under Obama or Bush - but how and when it is dealt with.
This goes to say that I would like to believe that the (still) new Obama administration once faced with such allegations will, as a matter of principle and policy, deal with them accordingly. Then, if I am to be proven wrong, I will be the first to 'give notice' of it here.
But, again, it is important to stress that what this post is about is public, not private funds - taxpayers everywhere in the world, including in Africa, are rightly much more sensitive about the former than the latter.
Kiss.
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