I grew up in a small village in Switzerland (Chancy, near Geneva) which also had a bad construction scandal in the (early) 70s: the village had outgrown it's "let's run the elementary school from the church in two rooms" stage, but vastly overbuilt a large school to pad some builder's pockets.

Sounds bad but the outcome is more or less as follows, if my rather vague memory (I was in said school when it opened ;), and finding summaries of local events from the 70s on the internet is not straightforward) is accurate:

* some combination of the village's mayor and/or builder went to jail

* the village residents had to pay extra taxes to cover the overbuilt school's costs

* growing up, I had a really nice school (nice play yard, lots of classroom space, dedicated gym, swimming pool with adjustable depth so regular swimming lessons, etc)

* eventually, the population of the village increased enough that the school was actually a useful size (it's more than quadrupled, from the mid 300s to ~1600, since the 70s)

It feels like somehow the failures modes of "bad government" are less bad than they could be ("at least we got something for our corruption!").