European parliament VP taken into custody | Hacker News Reader

European parliament VP taken into custody

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183 pointsspapas82170 comments

For context, this person was part of PASOK[0], one of the two political parties that created the Greek debt crisis and is rife with corruption scandals [1][2][3][4][5]. She was removed from the party some days ago.

The other political party is in power today. They both plundered the Greek public sector, privatized public owned industries and subsequently cooked the numbers to let Greece in the Eurozone even with the massive debt they had caused.

Vote abstention is around 40-45% in Greece, and higher among the youth.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PASOK

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Papandreou#%22Koskotas...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akis_Tsochatzopoulos#Corruptio...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis#Corruption

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

Probably worth adding that a hefty number of scandals involving corrupt Greek politicians had huge German companies involved (Siemens, HDW, Rheinmetall..)

Plus Germany benefited greatly from the introduction of import based economies in the Eurozone, and the financial crisis.

It is no wonder they like corrupt politicians in power.

Same with Romania and Eastern Europe in general. Western EU countries criticize them immensely for corruption in the public eye, yet their governments, banks and major corporations profit immensely from the business deals corruption there enables them to do, and so they have a vested interest to keep just enough corruption there so they can keep profiteering, while maintaining enough rule of law so that their investments there are safe and ensures the free flow of profits back home.

This is boilerplate conspiratorial nonsense. West European countries would benefit far more from East European countries being free from the economic drag imposed by endemic corruption. The EU internal market overall would be much richer and stronger, and those banks and corporations would have a better quality consumer and labor base. Banks and corporations can make plenty of money in high-trust societies just as in low-trust ones, and they get more regulatory certainty as well.

Most corruption cases benefit the German companies, so no, they would not benefit more, otherwise they would just lobby their local governments for fiscal transfer to the poorer countries. The opposite happens, the German constitutional court can veto foreign budgets if they don't pay the Danegeld (i.e. not wasting all european funds buying goods and services from Germany).

The litmus test is this: can a EU country use european funds to create a new carmaker to compete with central european carmakers? Hell no. But you can spend all european funds buying cars from Germany, that's never wasteful.

The EU has no policy to enrich the entire union, only the central countries. The EU funds are basically a workaround for direct transfers of money from the German government to German companies, via foreign countries.

I'm not from a Eastern European country, but I do live in a poor Eastern European economy, it's the same dynamic.

>This is boilerplate conspiratorial nonsense

It's not though. EU wide corruption scandals prove this.

Western EU companies routinely pay bribes to dump plastics and toxic waste in Romanian landfills under the disguise of "recyclable material". This way those private companies save a few bucks to stay competitive, and their countries keep getting to call themselves "green" by exporting their environmental damage across the border.

IKEA, plus Austrian and German wood companies routinely paid bribes in the Romanian timber industry to be able to perform mass deforestation.

Austrian companies, like STR*BAG, paid bribes to Romanian politicians to get preferential juicy building contracts, sometimes using EU funds, for highways that never get completed due to various technicalities that got intentionally omitted from the contract so that the building company can just bail out from the deal without having built anything while getting paid in full. Basically, the EU taxpayer is paying for a western EU company to make bank in the east, all through EU funds funneled trough Romania, to build roads that never get built.

All this high level corruption benefits major western EU companies, and corrupt eastern EU politicians a lot. Western EU politicians also benefit from this as the major companies in their countries lobby for them to keep this corrupt system going so they can keep making bank.

The EU is a great thing, but it's also ripe with corruption that's costing the taxpayers tens of billions.

You're exactly right. In Croatia everything of any value is owned or being sold to German companies and they pretty much own the place (or at least what worth anyway). All of this is facilitated by the same government for the last 30 years or so. The same government has been completely and obviously corrupted to the core, but never, even much of a peep criticised by the EU.They are all friends there. As long as the public is not openly rioting, EU likes this arrangement.

Yes, in Czechia we have same corrupted politics and business. Since summer 2021 prices goes up around 30% on food, 50% for energy. Most ridiculous is that our power plants make enough energy for entire country and 15% are sold abroad, but... All energy is auctioned on the Leipzig Stock Exchange for 600% higher price than it is actually made (1 kWh cost around 1 CZK to made, it's sold for 6-7 CZK and rising. Now our gonverment need to cap prices from our taxes so state budget has this year recorded deficit since 70’s around 350 bilion CZK.

Trust in gonverment is very low, voter turnout was around 48% in regional elections.

Our politicians blame war in Ukraine, it's ridiculous.

I'm Czech, though somewhat disconnected from local situation/politics.

> Most ridiculous is that our power plants make enough energy for entire country and 15% are sold abroad, but... All energy is auctioned on the Leipzig Stock Exchange for 600% higher price than it is actually made (1 kWh cost around 1 CZK to made, it's sold for 6-7 CZK and rising.

Why is that ridiculous? We make something cheap, and sell it abroad for profit. Isn't it a good thing we're exporting? (I'd get it if your argument was against the coal power plants, I don't get why selling abroad for a profit is bad in general.)

When you import it back with that price, I find it immoral. Who decide to sell it back to country wher it came from with 6 time higher price?

It's called "lichva". Germans have cheaper prices and also 3 times more average income.

Also what's the point to make own people suffer and be poor by this business? It's absolutely ridiculous.

I can't follow your comment, apart from seeing that you're outraged about the situation.

It's a global world. If someone else is willing to pay more for the energy than us, we should sell it to them and use the money we earn to buy the things we value more, things we're willing to pay more for.

No, your logic of selling resources to the highest bidder doesn't work for basic necessities like food, water, energy and healthcare, especially not during an energy shortage. That's why @t0bia_s is so pissed about. It works for commodities or non critical resources not in short supply locally like in Australia's mining industry but not for resources your citizens need to survive.

What you're advocating for is economic colonialism where the rich countries can just buy everything they want and the poor ones are forced to sell while starving their people.

"Sorry Ghana, no drinking water for you anymore as Nestle, the US and Switzerland are willing to pay more for it. But you can use the money you get to buy bottled water back from us."

The unified EU energy market has been a disaster for the consumers in energy stable poor countries who saw massive price increases as they were forced to sell energy to higher bidders suffering a shortage, like Germany, with the profits going to the private energy companies instead of the governments. It's basically privatizing the winnings and socializing the losses.

I disagree as your theory doesn't account for the difference between buying power of citizens in different EU countries which varies greatly.

If my country (Croatia) is importing natural gas for cheap (and it is), and then selling it to EU countries, and then importing that same gas back to Croatia, but now with price increase in triple digits, which vast majority of it's citizens cannot afford, then I call this a scheme where government isn't working for it's citizens, it is working for someone else's. And this doesn't even account for extremely high profits some of the companies (and politicians) are making.

I would understand if you sell the extra gas (and there is plenty of that too) to EU market; but keeping your citizens poor and/or without heating so a better paying western european citizen can have plenty of gas is troublesome to say the least.

You may have a point that with that price difference while exporting gas the government has extra money. I'm not so sure if thats a great idea, as governments are just corrupted as hell (at least Croatian one is) and a normal citizen won't see a cent of it. One may argue that corruption and energy prices are two separate things, but I would argue that they are just two faces of the same coin and they go well hand in hand.

If your argument is global world, than why is average salary in Czechia 3 times lower than in our neighbors in Germany?

How can you apply same prices to different countries?

Or maybe you are mixing up cause and effect: Greek politicians demanded hefty bribes to do business in the first place.

Yes, Germany is a real winner in bailing out Greek and all the southern European economies than cannot pay their bills. You are aware that exporting stuff to countries that take a loan and don’t pay it back is like not exactly “beneficial”.

Greek should never have been in the EU in the first place. They lied about their financial situation and deliberately stole money from their European neighbors.

You know that all the money sent to the Greeks were only used to bail out European banks, right ? And that they framed it that way because they had already bailed out said banks ?

Anyway, of course I don't know exactly what's going on. I'm just a rando with no skin in the game

In particular, the money was used to bail out a bunch of German banks, who as far as I can understand it ended up with all that debt because Germany was running a trade surplus with Greece directly enabled by the structure of the Eurozone without any corresponding fiscal transfers that would balance it out, and that in turm directly benefitted Germany as well.

Maybe Greek should have paid taxes after all: https://www.businessinsider.com/corruption-in-greese-hamperi...

But the funny thing is: Greek themselves find their country too corrupt and bloated that they aren’t willing to pay for it with THEIR OWN money…

Much of Greeks debt problem would not have existed had the Greek citizens paid taxes like the rest of Europe.

That whole bit caused me to rethink the fiscal transfers between regions in the US. So California sends a bunch of money to the feds who turn around an give some to Mississippi? Okay fine because that's way better than what the EU did to the schmucks living in Greece. Or if the banks fail in Texas it's the FED that's not on the hook not random Texans.

The underlying thing is in the US states give up being able to use monetary policy to balance trade. In return the Fed's backstop a lot of stuff and transfer money around. Overall that's fair.

In the EU states give up being able to use monetary policy to balance trade. In return no fiscal transfers. And the EU backstop's French and German banks by squeezing poorer states. That's not fair at all.

Germany is the biggest contributor to the EU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/eu-budget-contrib...

Contributing 18x as much as Greece.

As I said before: Greece should be able to balance their trade deficit with their own funny money currency. THEM LYING in the process of joining the Euro sealed their economic doom in a sense.

> Contributing 18x as much as Greece.

2.2x, when adjusted for population.

0.92x when adjusted for GPD. So Greece actually pays more ;)

I suggest you start having alternative sources for news and geopolitical issues my fellow angry German.

Yes, and Greek are also the hardest working… We all know that.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/05/30/stereoty...

You couldn't have found a worst article than that. You've actually disproved your own point.

> Greece does actually work the longest hours in Europe, as this graphic of OECD data shows.

I pay my taxes. My taxes were used to pay for excessive irresponsible spend if a foreign country (Greek government) that lied about its finances to its partners.

Grow up a little. Your racism stems from your governments vile propaganda against the Greek people themselves IN ORDER TO GET PEOPLES CONSENSUS ON THE EXTREME AUSTERITY THEY IMPOSED ON GREEKS. αντε μαλακα

I think you should just take a more American view of the situation.

Greece is like the poor US southern states. The richer states fund them (no loans, just give them money, never get it back), because "we're all Americans". You could call it stealing, or you could call it the way things are.

It's a good thing for Europe to have Greece within the EU (and probably even within the eurozone). Asking them to be financially self-sufficient might be as silly as asking the same thing of Alabama or Mississippi ...

They can be in the EU. They can screw up their budgets. But there is no need for them to be bound to the Euro. Plenty of countries that are part of the EU but don’t have the Euro. I’m happy to do business with them and I’m happy to let them have their way. But I won’t tie the stability of my savings and my currency to their falsified financial statements and unsustainable economic model… :-)

Never understood why we wanted them in the Euro. They should have their own Greek currency they can devalue every couple of years by 50% or so to stay competitive

Which is exactly what they used to do regularly pre-Euro. You seem to believe the German banks were hoodwinked into lending to the Greek government but that’s just not supported by the well known economic history of the country. The real reason they were willing to lend, ignoring the history (since independence, Greece had failed to repay international debts and debased its currency numerous times), is that the banks knew that the Euro governments would cover the losses on the basis that they couldn’t afford for the EU to fail.

And they were right.

They lied about their finances when asking for money. I know that “American banks” are also often viewed as evil for selling crap (knowingly) mortgage backed securities to German banks and we often tend to just go easy by stating “banks are evil” and that’s where the story end. However: it was American households that lived beyond their means for decades and lived in houses they could not afford and lied on (unverified) loan applications; the US government mandated more homeowners, banks provided the means and took a cut. So, more differentiated and in those “evil bank discussions” we tend to forget it was often a significant number of “poor ordinary citizens” living well beyond their means (e.g., not paying adequate taxes in Greek, having fatter pensions than others in Europe etc.)

You’re expecting ordinary citizens to be aware of their actions on the broader economy when their own governments are lying to them. Leaving aside the fact that most people have neither the knowledge nor the power to live other than as their system allows them to, why then doesn’t your logic apply to Germans? Why shouldn’t we blame them for continually voting in governments that kept bailing out irresponsible German banks? Stop looking for scapegoats. It takes two to tango.

I think it is a cultural thing to be honest. Germans are obsessed with their tax filings, they love to do them to the euro etc. Walk into a German restaurant or any shop and observe tax receipts.

Then look around in Greek or Italy.

Germans fundamentally believe taxes are due and should be paid and the government can “mostly be trusted”.

Greek seem to be more hesitant about that…

Greek voted their government into place. Hence they are responsible for the actions.

I’m not looking for a scapegoat. Just stating what it is: if you aren’t trustworthy, stay out of a currency and system requiring trustworthy partners.

The Greeks are hesitant about taxes because they know from experience that their governments (of any flavour) have invariably been historically corrupt. The Germans experience (post-war at least) was not that. I doubt very much if the Germans of the Weimar republic were too fussed with their taxes.

To your last point, if I'm not trustworthy, don't let me in. Are you familiar with the story of the scorpion and the frog?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

… so the Greek government is made up of non-Greek !? Or the Greek politicians suddenly transform into unethical beings? Governments reflect societies.

Dude, you said it’s the banks faults to trust the Greek; when I counter that I don’t trust them and wouldn’t have because they are untrustworthy you throw around fables!?

> Greek politicians demanded hefty bribes

How come that it was usually a German company willing to pay the "hefty" bribe? Maybe because "until 1999 in Germany, bribes were a tax-deductible business expense, and there were no penalties for bribing foreign officials"? [1]

Cause and effect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#2005_and_continuing:_w...

So Greek became corrupt and went bankrupt because bribes were tax-deductible in Germany until the 90s?

How far back should we turn the wheels of time? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals

And what does that have to do with the Greek government falsifying their statements to join the EU and take on debt? https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/world/europe/greece-admit...

Probably zeeee Germans bribed zeee Greek to force them join zeee EU.

Greek f**d up, lied, covered it up, lied more, covered up more and then had to face the consequences.

You and I are neighbours. I ask to borrow your chainsaw. You lend it. Next month you come knocking wanting it back. I point to the corner where it lays broken and shrug.

Some time later I ask to borrow your lawn mower. You give it. When you ask for it back I regretfully explain that I had to hock it to pay off my bookie.

Later still, I ask to borrow your Mercedes. You look at my front yard where a beat up old Toyota is sitting on blocks. I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll look after your car and treat it just like my own. You then hand over the keys.

There is (or should be) a moral hazard attached to lending irresponsibly. It was an open secret back then that the books were cooked to let Greece in. Certainly nothing in the history of the modern Greek state gave any confidence it would be different. Yet you would have us believe that Deutche Bank [0] were utterly naive and blind to history. That they were poor, unsuspecting, honest fools who didn’t have a clue what they were getting into.

[0]. https://www.dw.com/en/deutsche-banks-5-biggest-scandals/a-46...

Greeks lied about their finances and took loans they couldn’t pay back. I don’t see how they are the victim in this discussion. Deutsche Bank or anybody else giving money to Greek is stupid imho. Lacking “street smart” for sure. Still I paid for this bullshit w/ my taxes and could t do anything about it.

Do I dig this entire “oh poor Greek got screwed by Germany and Greek is the victim” nonsense? No.

Greek lies and screws over their neighbors and then threatens to tank the entire EU / Euro over their bankruptcy: not a victim. Not to be trusted.

Thats what you imply with your post: don’t trust the Greek, they lied in the past, they will lie in the future. No sympathy from my end.

Friend, firstly please don’t conflate Greeks with Greek governments. Secondly, yes Greek governments lied with some great help from Goldman Sachs. I promise you the Greek people found that all prices rose when the Euro was introduced. Finally, if German banks did the wrong thing, then perhaps your beef should be with them and with the German government that chose to bail them out and not let them fail. Because the “Greek bailouts” were indeed bailouts of the (mostly) German banks. As I said in another post, DB gambled, confident they would be bailed out - there was no moral hazard attached to their actions. They were right.

In a democracy, 60 years of electing corrupt politicians mean Greeks or the Greek society or whatever you want to put it are guilty too along with all their corrupt governments. It runs deep in the society. I am Greek.

Ok. But that works both ways. The Germans then are culpable for their government’s actions as are the Americans for theirs.

I still bear the consequences of the German government’s action three generations ago - as the Greek keep reminding my country on a regular basis…

Next time an invading force in your country, murders all civilians, starves the rest to death, maybe you'll have different opinion. Greece has the highest death toll on WW2 in normalized to the total population.

If you really want to turn the wheels of time, Siemens has been consistently involved in corruption in Greece since the 1920s. Governments and political alignments change. The constant factor is the bribing company.

Also, FYI, the 2004 admission by finance minister Alogoskoufis was a total joke. Sadly for Greece, world politics is not the right place for this kind of jokes.

The newly elected at the time ND government wanted an excuse to get a carte blanche to apply their financial agenda, so they invented one: Alogoskoufis ordered a retrospective "audit" where they switched from the standard Eurostat practice of budgeting defense contracts at the time of delivery to budgeting them at the time of signing [1].

This essentially shifted future expenses (many of them payable during his mandate) to the past, in order to make the previous PASOK administration appear disingenuous. Alogoskoufis essentially brought the country to world disrepute, so they could score a few cheap political points internally. And he was naive (stupid?) enough to believe that this would somehow only affect his political opponents and not the whole country [2].

[1] https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/84157/1/Greece%20%20a%20crisis%20i... [2] https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/27649/alogoskoufis-expe...

Seems it's in principle tax deductible in the US as well:

https://www.justia.com/tax/corporate-tax/business-tax-deduct...

And without penalty at least until 1977.

Switzerland ended tax deductions for bribes in 2022. https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/europe/278815/switzerl...

In Greece, btw, they were deductible until 2006.

I meant: should not have been part of Euro. EU membership makes total sense.

EU membership requires adoption of the Euro, at least theoretically - some countries officially state they will adopt it but somehow never get around to it, and excepting states that were grandfathered in as special exceptions.

I do not believe a shared currency for countries with such vastly different economical situations and dynamics makes sense. A joint economic union - absolutely. But a shared currency is probably an ideologically motivated step; not a rational or smart step…

I suggest you take a lot here with a grain of salt because either of personal opinions or half-reporting data, eg:

- She was removed from the party just yesterday afternoon after the publication of the topic

- Vote abstention is around 40-45% out of ~9,98m registered to vote (on 2019 elections) on a country of 10,4m people (census 2021) !!!!!! Never understood how this is even possible

- The specific person entered politics after a lot of the listed topics took place and her background was not a political one anyhow

EDIT: format

The vote abstention should be right, I searched on the greek voting system and I don't see any requirement besides[1]:

* having the greek citizenship

* being older than 17

* Not being dissalowed by the court to vote

All citizens get automatically added to the "registered vote" after they turn 17.

E.g. A greek citizen is always a registered voter even if he doesn't go and vote.

If we take the 2019 numbers we have:

9961718 registered voters

4192215 voters who didn't fill out the forms (I assume non voters are counted this way)

(4192215×100)÷9961718 ~=42% Are non voters

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Greece

[2]https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlamentswahl_in_Griechenland...

Edit: formatting, add a note about what the 42% means

Your math is fine starting from the 9,9m number but you didn't take into account what I wrote, which is that the total population of greece is 10,4 millions. Registered voters are those >=17 years old so only 500k are <17 which of course is not valid

EDIT: adding more data, official numbers state ~1,5m of age 0-14. Let's say 200k more in the 15-16 range, that is ~1,7m 10,4-1,7 = 8,7m >=17 years old. Population of Greece dropped by about 400k between the previous and current census (2011-2021) while the registered voters number from 2009 elections hasn't changed. I'm afraid that 1,7m gap is not justified at all, we locals have long heard of how bad the registered voters records are, still including a lot of dead people etc.

To not lose track, this thread is just to justify why the numbers in the OP are to be taken with a grain of salt

Maybe this is explained by many Greeks living abroad but still being eligible and registered voters?

As the son of Greeks living abroad it’s exactly this.

I'm Greek but I'm living abroad. Never bothered changing my status back in Greece. They would count me as absent from every public voting.

>her background was not a political one anyhow

I don’t understand what you’re trying to articulate.

What makes one’s background “political”? Are you saying politics should be hereditary?

Or jus for folks privileged to attend certain schools, work certain places?

The OP presents a rotten political environment through which by definition anyone part of that environment, comes out also rotten, essentially attributing her actions to that political environment. I just say that this specific person was not 100% part of the environment, at least during the time periods presented in the OP's comment.

Maybe if folks voted it would get better. I have seen how the shock treatment of hordes of zoomers insisting on voting for candidates represent their interests with the fervor of a boomer on their way off this planet knocked multiple local party officials office out in the primaries.

I have seen the sausage made -- voting works, that's why, at least in America, they try to obstruct it so badly.

The problem becomes when you allow folks to vote on things that are inalienable, the basic human rights. Those types will never be happy, and should have been shot when they ran up on the capitol. They are traitors who will forever be scorned by those of us born at the fall of the USSR into a world free of nuclear terror and instilled with zero tolerance for totalitarians who so much as hint at going back to those days -- we will forever harass them.

Or at least I will - but I'm just one guy, a troll, a nobody -- I don't even have a PhD

:-)

I really dislike the whole cynical "all politicians are thieves" vibe going on in here. Yes, this politician was probably for sale, she took money from dubious sources, AND SHE WAS ARRESTED. I think that's fantastic, because it shows that even the powerful can be held to account. This is most certainly not the case everywhere.

Now I agree with you, but what about all the arrests of politicians in China ... some are revenge by other corrupts, some are truly about justice... There are places were all is corrupt, and it can happen to your country too :)

Separation of powers, strong institutions and an independent judiciary is very important.

We’ve seen that in the US where judges appointed by a politician will/can rule against them in court cases.

Separation of powers sounds like a joke when all modern liberal democracies are run by parties, not individual persons. It’s, for example, common for senators to become presidents in the US. Yeah, a judge can rule against a politician that appointed them, but (1) did they rule against their party? (2) is it such a high bar that shows an expected level of separation of powers?

> It’s, for example, common for senators to become presidents in the US.

Yes, it helps to know the system and the people in it. You’ll find that businesses, charities, and pretty much any other organization pick CEOs in a similar fashion.

>We’ve seen that in the US where judges appointed by a politician will/can rule against them in court cases.

Yes. The cases where they have more to gain for their career and status by not aligning with the politician, or where the politician is seen as dead weight they cannot benefit from anymore...

I don’t see any evidence of that.

Plenty of judges rule unpopular rulings without any consequences based on the law (as it should be).

Popular to the masses and popular to their particular target demographics and/or patrons are a totally different matter altogether...

How is being arrested sufficient to say she is held to account? She needs to be sentenced to a fair punishment first. And then she needs to serve the complete sentence and return all ill-gotten gains.

First she needs to be found guilty in a court of law, then the needs to be sentenced.

Or is that innocent until proven guilty not a thing any more?

arrested and jailed/convicted are two very different things

let me guess this will end up with lengthy process and in the end she won't serve any time

plus just because other politicians let her get arrested doesn't mean they are not corrupted too, it can just mean they wanted to get rid off competition (see Xi Jin Ping corruption fight theatre play)

I get your point, and I sympathize.

But it is absolutely not cynical to assume that for each criminal person (forget politicians) who gets caught and charged, there are almost certainly more who didn't get caught or didn't get charged.

It is not cynical to assume that law enforcement has a less than perfect ability to prosecute criminals; it's just realistic.

Rather, it is naive to assume otherwise: What process, in any domain, has a 100% success rate?

Note: I'm not taking the "all politicians are corrupt" position, just "it is almost certainly true that corrupt politicians are often able to get away with their corruption". So, maybe we're not actually talking about the same thing.

Corrupt politicians, it seems, are like cockroaches: if you've confirmed the existence of one, then there are certainly several whose presence is as yet unconfirmed.

Yes, but the trick is not not looking. This is a lot better than the corruption being widely known and nothing being done against it (can you guess which country I'm thinking of?).

This sends the signal that in Europe, corruption can come back to hurt you.

> This sends the signal that in Europe, corruption can come back to hurt you.

Nah, it just creates an in-group ("we know that corrupt politicians can get away with it"), and an out-group ("let's avoid corruption, since we'll get caught").

> the trick is not not looking

Unintentional double negative there, I think.

Seems intentional. "The trick is not [ignoring the bad thing]".

I considered that, but it doesn't cohere with "This is a lot better than the corruption being widely known". That is, the poster I was replying to seemed to be advocating "don't investigate, or else corruption will be widely known, even though nothing is done against it".

Anyway, regardless of their intended meaning, my point about in- and out-groups stands.

Consider: "and nothing being done against it" :-)

You interpreted it pretty differently from what I mean: Investigation-less corruption is often unofficially known/suspected, but can't be acted on. Investiation enables acting on it.

Of course the laws need to he tight on corruption in the first place. The kinds of corruption seen in the US are typically perfectly legal (we also have loopholes that should be closed, which makes me wonder why people often choose the illegal forms of corruption).

It's also probably selective about what you are corrupt for. Being corrupt for Qatar was probably safe, until it wasn't for extremely stupid reasons.

tip of the iceberg...

Snowy peak :)

Tell me you don’t live in a corrupted country without telling me you don’t live in a corrupted country.

Let me guess Scandinavian?

You argument is similar to the US argument, not all police is bad.

Technically it’s true, but when the percentage of politicians that are corrupted is high enough, for all practical purposes you can consider them all corrupted when looking for a solution to the problem.

Am I the only one who, whenever I read stories about politicians being arrested, I just assume that their backing coalition wants them replaced with someone who can enrich the coalition more boldly, and are just calling in the kompromat lever that qualified the politician to be put in the fronting position in the first place?

Nobody would ever give authority or levers of power to someone they couldn't control, and the job of someone in power is to keep the rewards coming to the people who keep them there. Corruption is a scourge, but in most places it's the cultural norm and not a deviation.

The pitch for leadership is, "I can return this much to you for this long, and here is the kompromat that will force me to resign, as collateral." Political leadership isn't the power, it's the symbolic meaning of becoming the name in history you believe is meaningful. Power is invisible and only felt. Acquiring that is a very different path, and its job is to keep the front of the house sustained and managed. The debate and and policies other than spending are just a cheap spectacle.

So on this MEP being busted, I'm "Shocked, shocked!" to find out there was corruption going on in there.

How fun. The MEP who loudly announces how great Qatar's labor rights are is found with hundreds of thousands of euros in cash, allegedly from "a gulf country".

Presuming the allegations are true, all I can think is how basic the whole affair is. TV has made me come to expect something more complicated and devious.

Anything more devious doesn't make the news. Had she had a partner start a startup and fill in all the propriate tax forms after recieving millions of Euros you'd at most have heard about "possible conflicts of interests", not blatant corruption like here.

sounds like a great way to spark riots

Qatar is the second largest exporter of LNG. They can do what they want and it seems like a stupid mistake if they were indeed bribing EU politicians in cash...

That being said, earlier this year there was a story here in the UK about King Charles once receiving 1 million in cash (in a shopping bag!) from the Gulf as 'charity donation'... so perhaps EU politicians should setup more charities.

Edit: in fairness, the cash donation to Charles' charity was correctly booked and reported in the charity's accounts and so nothing much happened when the story broke. But bags of cash do tend to raise eyebrows and the conclusion was that it'd be best not to accept them in the future...

But bags of cash do tend to raise eyebrows and the conclusion was that it'd be best not to accept them in the future...

You can raise your eyebrows all you wish, I'll stick with the bag of cash, thank you.

Other media already report that it indeed might be Qatar: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/kaili-festnahme-kor... (German)

I think its important to know that there are 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament in total. One of them was taken into custody.

> there are 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament in total

Of course. First rule in government spending: why have one vice-president when you can have 14 at fourteen times the price?

It’s easy to paint it this way, but consider the fact that concentrations of power in few people almost always leads to gross corruption in manners that are uncorrectable (except with revolution).

This is why some people do not want small government. Not because they argue that large government is efficient or cheap: it’s that there are more checks and balances on power.

I think CGP Greys video on “rules for rulers” illustrates the point quite clearly. https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

We see this across the Atlanic in Canada where each government starts off with few cabinet minister. After a few elections new departments are setup, everyone in the government party ends up as a minister or assistant. The bigger the government usually the more corruption until they change parties and repeat again.

So we multiplied the price of the ticket to corrupt the whole parliament. But you know what, actually this parliament is made in such a way that there is no need to bribe the majority of the parties. It is enough to have a small blocking or active percentage.

On the other hand, at the European commission, where the real power is, we don't have 14 presidents and there have been corruptions, serious corruptions.

The truth is that there is 14 positions because it was necessary to give empty chairs to all the political parties of the member countries. In Europe, no politician, no matter how many times he or she has been defeated or scandalized, has difficulty finding a job.

Each one being paid €22,122.10 monthly, apparently

As one of the highest political posts in Europe and being paid less than most FAANG engineers.

Somehow I doubt "most" FAANG engineers pull in 280,000 USD per year. I'll give you that many are, but "most"?

I have no idea if the data is any good, but this puts the median at $220k-250k (and much more for Netflix):

https://medium.com/@mikldd/data-salaries-at-faang-companies-...

Thank you for some data on the topic. Seems it doesn't include non-US salaries, so fair to say the conclusion is that most FAANG engineers don't earn 280k USD/year.

Which FAANG pays €22k _Monthly?!_

In SF, not in Europe

depends if we're talking before/post tax, right?

But with more power to being imn bags of cash for policies voted. Not paying people in power can be more costly. There is a reason why faangs pay so high, it reduces corruption

That seems a bit high, are you sure you're not confusing it with the President/Vice president of the commission?

Upvoted simply for the _Contact_ paraphrase/reference. :-)

EP needs diversity in leadership to be legitimate to the european peoples, since they are from many different countries.

The article is from 2014 but shouldn't have changed much: https://transparency.eu/how-much-does-an-mep-make/

The difference between an MEP and a VP seems to be 800€ / month, not a whole lot and it's a way for each party to be represented in the administrative body of the parliament

800 gross a month is probably a life changing amount to at least half of all European citizens.

And that's not even counting the remaining >21.000 EUR / month that they earn.

And we're talking about a European salary! Which they don't even pay income taxes on (only a small EU tax). So that's practically after-tax money we're talking about.

The argument is that saving the 800€ / month for the 14 VPs won’t make much of a difference for the European citizens.

We are not paying 800 EUR / month for these 14 VPs, we are paying more than 22.000 EUR / month, each, which is somewhere between 3.7 and 4.6 million EUR / year in total, for the 14 VPs.

That can definitely make a difference in many European citizens' lives (although, not all Europeans at the same time, of course).

The argument was about whether there should be 14 VPs: “why have one vice-president when you can have 14 at fourteen times the price?” If they weren’t VPs, they would still be regular MPs, so only a 800 € difference.

> If they weren’t VPs, they would still be regular MPs, so only a 800 € difference.

But if those 14 VPs were MPs then there wouldn't be the need for 14 other MPs.

Which means that the difference per VP would be the price of an MP + 800 EUR (of difference between VP and MP), which is exactly the price of a VP.

In other words, no, the difference would still be ~3.7 - 4.6 million / year in total.

Being a VP is just a role you can assume as an MEP. Reducing the number of VPs won’t reduce the number of MEPs. Reducing the number of MEPs is orthogonal to reducing the number of VPs.

> The monthly gross MEP salary, under the single statute, is €9,386.29 (from 01/01/2022). It is paid out of the Parliament's budget. All MEPs pay EU tax and insurance contributions, after which the salary is €7,316.63.

First result on Google for MEP salary. Where did you get the 22000 from?

Your source doesn't mention:

1. Daily subsistence allowance (~5000 EUR/month)

2. General expenditure allowance (~4300 EUR/month)

3. Travel allowances (up to ~2400 EUR/month)

4. Vice-president allowance (~800 EUR/month)

These are numbers for 2014, when the base salary was ~8000 EUR/month.

Since the base salary is now ~9400 EUR/month, you can probably add another 20% on top of the numbers I just mentioned.

That is, of course, assuming they didn't come up with more allowances since then...

Plus they get another 70% of everything they earned as a pension.

They also pay a small EU tax instead of a regular income tax like the peasants.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the base monthly salary was payed 14 or 15 times per year rather than the 12 that many people usually assume. At least, that's what happens in the European countries I've lived in.

Definitely not many. How many people do you think there are in Europe? 4.6 million EUR would allow you to give 1€ to 1% of the entire EU population.

On the other hand you can say that these VPs are in part responsible for the 2 trillion EUR covid recovery plan, which would allow 100% of the EU population to receive around 4500€.

Primarily the purpose is to make sure that the different political views as well as different EU memeber states and regions are represented. Together they have to be able to represent the whole spread views and cultures, for being respected inside parliament as well as by the public.

Whether 14 vice plus one president is the sweet spot one can argue, but this is two vice presidents per political group in Parlament.

Different views across all the EU member states are represented through the MEPs.

14 VPs is just a small part of the EU gravy train.

For policy making, yes, MEPs are the ones voting. For administrative tasks, deciding on parliament agenda, etc. you need a smaller group for being practical in decision making. Starting each session with a debate on the day's agenda (while in some situations it is a relevant police decision which has to be taken by parliament) and adminsitrative routine tasks is quite inefficient.

Now the parliament has 7 different political groups (fractions) and a bunch of independent members. Having two VPs per fraction is somewhat a compromise between true representative (which would need more people) or ignoring more (they are already ignoring independents)

And yes, of course, you could also force less fractions, but fractions covering too broad of a spectrum are quite problematic too (see spread in the two parties in the US system ...)

And in cost or whatever it is a small part of what parliament costs anyways and quite neglectible.

This is why there are nearly 700 general officers in USA military...

Also important to note that there are 705 deputees in the European Parliament. One of them was taken into custody, which is 0.15%

So, we can easily say that there is a good chance that at least 7% of the vice presidency of Europe is corrupt...

Jesus killing journalists to propagating anti semitic content through Al Jazeera to funding terrorist, is there any level to which Qatar won't stoop?

[ As per European Parliament According to reliable intelligence sources, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the main funders of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Governments of Germany and the USA have also accused the two countries of financing and supporting ISIS.](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-8-2014-00744...)

It has been even brought before the US Congress as well how Qatar is an active sponsor of terrorism ( something which Al Jazeera won't highlight)

[According to official US Committee on Foreign Affairs, Qatar has been known to be a permissive environment for terror financing, reportedly funding U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, Al qaeda and ISIS, as well as several extremist groups operating in Syria. At least one high-ranking Qatari official provided support to the mastermind of the 9/11. Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, also made Doha his headquarters for years while the Qatari's--with the Qatari's Government support and even the Muslim Brotherhood has received significant support from Qatar. Of course, not all of this is supported by the government in Doha. Many individuals and charities in Qatar have been known to raise large sums of money for al-Qaeda, the Nusra front, Hamas, and even ISIS.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115hhrg26427/html/C...)

Just to give it some context, there are 14 VPs to the European parliament. Only the president and the 1st VP play a significant role. She was neither.

Sees article

"Please let it not be a Greek please let it not be a Greek"

clicks

sigh

The majority of our politicians (from all political parties) are corrupt and are exploiting the loopholes of the system. Isn’t this what the majority of the people are also doing? There is a small percentage who are honest/decent/just but not enough critical mass to trigger a change.

Coming back to topic, she was/is involved with blockchain/cryptos EU legislation as well, and there were some “talks” about how she benefited from her participation.

Eva Kaili, the MEP that got taken into custody, has several times talked about the transformative role of Blockchain, AI and FinTech.

As a person that is a bit cynical with overpromises around such technologies I can't help wonder how much of her support on such tech was sincere.

She is one of the people behind the Cyber Resilience Act, recently discussed here: https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/open-source-software-vs-the-cyber-....

To me, it would be fair that she get the punishment that she would get if she did commit such a crime in the Qatar. I guess something like death penalty for betraying the kingdom dictators. Should be ok with her as she was supporting the fact that human rights are ok there...

Is there a percentage ranking of the possibility of a -or- most politicians being corrupt? Odds are? Asking for a friend that is thinking of going into politics.

The only way to detain someone with parliamentary immunity is if they are caught in the act, so they must have caught her with the 600k.

Having 600K isn't in itself an "act". And they must have some reason for mentioning a "Gulf state". I wonder if they've had her and the others under surveillance, and nabbed her while brown envelopes were passing back and forth.

She had the money hidden in her house. Her father was caught with a suitcase full of money.

I am not sure she had parliamentary immunity.

It seems like that only applies during sessions of the EP, which isn't in session right now.

She would probably be able to claim immunity to attend the session next week, but as the first thing will probably be to lift her immunity I doubt she'll bother

Parliamentary immunity for MEPs does not extend to their privates lives. MEPs are only immune from prosecution for public statements they make (like, for example, "Qatar has a great human rights track record. It's the best, the greatest"), not for anything else they do.

It depends on the definition of "parliamentary immunity" in their home country, though. In some EU countries, it is indeed practically immune unless "caught in the act" (e.g. inviolability in France).

Well in poland immunity also prevents politicians from getting speeding tickets as long as they are doing something work related (at least officially)

no news about this in Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/search/Eva%20Kaili

Omg

did you listen to what that member of the EU parliament says in the interview in the video? - "there is a very large majority of parliamentarians who do not that dirty game" -

a "large majority" do not? ... so a minority does?

Damn it, those South Europeans again!

I was hoping so much this would be about Ursula von der Leyen

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