The dead weight of corruption is seen not just in the embezzled funds that we happen to know about. Corruption contaminates and degrades everything it touches. The media, which it abducts to its ends. The political atmosphere, which becomes a farce of competing, corrupt self-interests masked behind ideologies that grow ever more extreme as quality of life deteriorates. We enter into a twilight of democracy, where nobody is clean, crime has no meaning, laws serve no good purpose, and no improvement seems possible.
When the powers that be embezzle 49 billion dollars and are voted out, it's a miracle of democracy. It is the one saving grace, the only alternative to continuing decline. The people who orchestrated this are none other than a teetering legal system and voters who were sliding toward the abyss.