This question is not aimed at reducing in anyway the significance of the financial malfeasance of the goggled one and a whole array of thieves before him and since.
WE have followed innumerable narratives in the foreign media, especially on TEDx talks, about how foreign banks in London, New York and lately Hong Kong have systematically conspired with faceless entities to defraud struggling Third World economies. There seemed to have been a forlorn hope that somehow they could be shamed into changing their behavior. Unfortunately this has not materialized. However when we consider the huge sums pilfered out of Russia through Deutsche Bank and the array of the usual suspects in the west, it all seems so hopeless. Subsequent revelations in the Panama Papers (Part 1 & 2), has not staunched the illicit flow. . And now this. .
The Danish bank DANSKE has been reportedly steeped in illicit transfers to the west to the whopping tune of $150 billion over the past several years, and everybody, including the Danish government, appears hell bent on looking the other way. With this regulatory landscape, more like lack of it, why then do Third World activists and bleeding hearts in the west imagine that somehow salvation lies in the hands of Western authorities with their proven track record of lack of good intentions? This sordid landscape reinforces the need for the developing nations, especially those dependent on an extractive economy, to buckle up to establish home-grown institutions and procedures to save themselves. Neither London nor New York lawyers not to mention the amoral Chinese will do this for Africa.
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