Bahrain
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged a second businessman, Bruce Allan Hall, with corruption and money-laundering offences relating to contracts for the supply of aluminium to Bahrain. The SFO said on Wednesday that Hall’s case would be merged with that of Victor Dahdelah, a British and Canadian national alleged to have paid bribes to officials of state-controlled company Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), who was charged in October. Hall, who was extradited from Australia and is now on conditional bail, is alleged to have received bribes during the time he worked at Alba. “These payments (were) received in connection with contracts to supply goods and services to Alba. The period covered by the charges spans 1998 to 2006,” said the SFO in a statement. The pair are due to appear as co-defendants on March 2 at Southwark Crown Court, the SFO added. Dahdaleh’s alleged payment of bribes to Alba were in connection with contracts with U.S. company Alcoa Inc, the SFO said in October. Alba said last year it filed a civil suit seeking damages against Dahdaleh, Alcoa, and a group of other related individual and corporate defendants in the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Source: Reuters
Brazil
The Brazilian Executive Public Ethics Committee will investigate alleged corruption claims involving Development, Industry and Foreign Trade minister Fernando Pimentel. Jose Paulo Sepulveda Pertence said the investigation will focus on media reports that exposed Pimentel activities as business consultant for private companies in 2009 and 2010. Pimental was first mayor of the city of Belo Horizonte, 2002/2009, and after leaving the elected job worked for private companies that later obtained huge contracts with the city. The minister has admitted consultancy services in 2010 when he was also working for the electoral campaign of President Dilma Rousseff, and before those corporations were favoured with public works contracts worth millions of dollars. Last December when he first admitted to his consultancy services he insisted “there was nothing illegal” about his job which he justified as a means of having income during a period when he was out of office.
Source: MercoPress
The editor-in-chief of a newspaper that crusaded against corruption in Brazil’s rough border region with Paraguay was shot dead, police said on Monday, just days after another slain journalist’s body was found in a different state. Paulo Rodrigues, aged 51, was approached by two men on a motorcycle while driving late on Sunday through the town of Ponta Pora in Mato Grosso do Sul state, where his Jornal da Praca newspaper and Mercosulnews.com website are based, police said. The gunmen fired 12 shots, five of which hit Rodrigues. He died in a hospital hours later. Rodrigues’ killing comes after the shooting death last Thursday in the Rio de Janeiro state of Mario Lopes, who wrote against corruption on his website Vassouras na Net. Police said Lopes already survived one attempt on his life last year, when he was hit by five shots while inside his office. He continued writing.
Source: News24
Czech Republic
The Czech anti-corruption police unit is investigating electricity producer CEZ on suspicion of improper dealings with a major supplier, the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday. “The police started an investigation at CEZ last November due to its procurement orders,” said Stepanka Zenklova, a spokeswoman at the Prague city state attorney’s office. She added that police were looking into several procurement deals at the company, but gave no further details. A spokesman from CEZ, central Europe’s biggest listed firm with market capitalisation of $22.9 billion, said police had contacted the company to get information about its deals with power plant equipment supplier Skoda Power. CEZ, 70 percent state-owned, has been at the centre of attention in the Czech Republic since its long-term Chief Executive Martin Roman abruptly stepped down last September after a Czech newspaper accused him of having links to Skoda. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek ordered an internal investigation at CEZ, which is now led by Roman’s long-time ally, Daniel Benes. The internal probe found no irregularities in 39 deals between CEZ and Skoda, not related to the Volkswagen unit Skoda Auto. CEZ has huge influence in the country of 10.5 million people, which has been nick-named CEZko by local media. Daily Mlada fronta Dnes had printed pictures of documents allegedly showing Roman was a beneficiary of a trust that, via offshore companies, owned Skoda Power when it did business with CEZ while he was in charge.
Source: Reuters
Most of the Czech ruling coalition’s vows concerning anti-corruption struggle remain unfulfilled halfway the election period, irrespective of Prime Minister Petr Necas’s praise of his cabinet’s successes on Tuesday, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday, citing experts. Necas, whose four ministers have had to leave the cabinet on suspicion of corruption or lying about their property situation, on Tuesday praised his cabinet for taking a number of anti-corruption steps that people “could only dream about” a mere couple of years ago. However, comparing the government’s steps with its promises after the mid-2010 elections, MfD has found out that most of the latter remain unfulfilled. Of the 15 goals the government promised to fulfil by the end of 2011, only four have been really embedded in the Czech legislation. Others have been subject to political disputes, some are waiting for approval and the rest has been given up by the government, the paper writes. “The total of the measures taken is definitively not satisfactory,” MfD quotes Stanislav Polcak, deputy for the junior ruling TOP 09 and co-author of the government anti-corruption plan, as saying.
Source: Prague Daily Monitor
Hungary
Graft watchdog Transparency International Hungary said on Thursday that the government’s newly published anti-corruption concept was professionally grounded but limited in scope. TI said measures in the draft slated for introduction in 2012-2014 failed to reach beyond government institutions. Noemi Alexa, director of TI Hungary, said the programme failed to provide sufficient guarantees for the transparent and efficient use of public funds. It also failed to acknowledge that corruption permeated Hungarian business and politics on a daily basis, she said. The draft does not adequately strengthen the requirement to publish key figures and avoids acknowledging corruption between the state, local government and business sectors, she added. Alexa said TI welcomed the government’s focus on practicalities and implementation instead of dwelling on simple criminalisation.
Source: Politics.hu
India
A perception of increased corruption in India has hurt investment and contributed to a 15 percent slide in its stock market since early 2008, according to a report from the Bank of Singapore Ltd. “Corruption perceptions have worsened in recent years, and this has led to a decline in the investment-to-gross domestic product ratio,” Richard Jerram, chief economist at Bank of Singapore, said in an e-mailed report, citing Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. “This has been a major factor behind infrastructure bottlenecks that have led to persistently high inflation and a slowing trend growth rate.” India’s rupee slumped 16 percent last year, the worst performer in Asia, as growth slowed and corruption scandals that sparked protests hampered the government’s ability to push forward policies aimed at spurring investment. That contrasts with Indonesia, where declining perceptions of corruption have been accompanied by a rise in the investment-to-GDP ratio, Jerram said.
Source: Bloomberg Business Week
Nigeria
Nigeria’s acting inspector general Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar admits that Nigerian police have committed extrajudicial killings and run criminal rackets. That will change, he says. police are an exceedingly rotten lot, according to their own boss, Nigeria’s Acting Inspector-General of Police Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar. In a meeting with senior police officials, Mr. Abubakar – placed in his job last month by President Goodluck Jonathan last month – warned commanders that they would be held personally responsible for any corruption or indiscipline that occurs by their subordinates from here onward. “Justice has been perverted, people’s rights denied, innocent souls committed to prison, torture and extra-judicial killings perpetrated,” said Abubakar, in a speech distributed to reporters in Abuja, the nation’s capital. Abubakar’s crackdown – if it is real – comes at a crucial time for Nigeria. Two separate armed insurgencies, a radical Islamist terror group called Boko Haram in the north, and a collection of Niger Delta militant groups in the southeast threaten the government’s ability to rule. Growing citizen discontent, underlined by December’s fuel-price strikes in Lagos and other cities, show that patience with a dysfunctional and corrupt government is running thin.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Pakistan
Pakistan’s Supreme Court charged Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani with contempt of court, a charge that could lead to his dismissal and a six-month jail term if he is convicted. Mr. Gilani pleaded not guilty and will contest the decision to charge him for refusing to comply with a judicial order to reopen corruption investigations into the Pakistani president, said the prime minister’s spokesman, Akram Shaeedi. The court set Feb. 27 for final arguments in the case and could make a ruling on that date or soon after. The Supreme Court is unlikely to be able to unseat the government, which controls a governing coalition in Parliament, said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, an independent political analyst based in Lahore. The removal of Mr. Gilani would be an embarrassment for the government but wouldn’t lead to a change in administration, he said. But political instability is distracting Pakistan from dealing with other issues, including economic problems and a Taliban insurgency. In recent months, Mr. Gilani’s government has been locked in a three-way power struggle with the courts and the military. The Supreme Court two years ago ordered the government to investigate President Asif Ali Zardari on allegations of corruption. Lawyers for Mr. Gilani say he can’t do so because Pakistan’s constitution grants the president immunity from criminal prosecution.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Romania
Two former Romanian agriculture ministers were convicted on Tuesday of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison. Last month, Romania’s highest court sentenced former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to two years in prison after convicting him of illegally raising funds for a failed presidential campaign. The two cases are one reason that Transparency International, a non-governmental organization based in Berlin, has ranked Romania as one of the most corrupt countries in the European Union. On Tuesday, a court in Bucharest ruled that former agriculture ministers Decebal Traian Remes and Ioan Muresan took bribes and engaged in influence-peddling. Remes resigned his Cabinet post in 2007 after prosecutors accused him of taking a bribe of $21,000 (€15,800) and the promise of homemade sausages and plum brandy from Muresan, a former agriculture minister who allegedly was acting on behalf of businessman Gheorghe Ciorba. Prosecutors said the payment was meant to secure favor for Ciorba’s company at a public auction. However, Ciorba reported the bribe to authorities before the auction took place, leading to the prosecution of the two ministers. Given his role in the case, Ciorba was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence.
Source: The Washington Post
Russia
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s state firms to clean up their act, but without fundamental reforms he may only scratch the surface of endemic graft and conflicts of interest that tar the country’s bloated national champions. Such reforms would require Putin to dismantle an entrenched system of corruption, patronage and cronyism, in which many of his own allies are enmeshed through their ties with the state-owned giants that are the focus of the crackdown. “The problem is that all these state companies are very well-connected, and not well controlled,” said Elena Panfilova, the head of the Moscow office of anti-corruption body Transparency International. The prime minister has his eyes on a triumphant return to the presidency in a March 4 election. As well as rhetorical swipes at unpopular oligarchs, Putin has taken aim at the state giants that dominate energy, infrastructure and banking.
Source: Broadcast.my
Turkey
The Ankara Prosecutor’s Office, which is conducting an investigation into claims of corruption involving the Public Procurement Authority (KİK), whose offices Ankara police raided on Monday and detained 22 people on charges of tender rigging, has found that corruption took place in the Ankara-Konya highway construction tender, which Fermak A.Ş. won in 2009. While the interrogation of the 22 suspects continues, the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office has determined corrupt practices in 70 tenders while investigating KİK, the Taraf daily reported on Wednesday. Upon finding out that Fermak A.Ş., which is run by Ferit Rızvanoğlu, the deputy chairman of the Kasımpaşaspor football club, allegedly bribed several KİK officials to manipulate the Ankara-Konya highway construction tender in favor of the company in 2009, the prosecutor’s office also found out that Fermak A.Ş. allegedly bribed the officials in order to win the tender of another public project, the İstanbul Pendik-Tuzla highway construction project, the daily also reported. Although a warrant was issued for Rızvanoğlu’s arrest, the police have been unable to find him. The police suspect Rızvanoğlu may have fled abroad after getting word of the warrant issued against him. Customs has been informed to take measures to prevent Rızvanoğlu’s escape abroad, the police say.
Source: Sunday’s Zaman