This isn't a parody, right? I mean, surely no-one would (seriously) say this in public in real life?
Right?
Right?
Not that I'd shed any tear for Tate or the other guy though, both deserve all they get and more.
> I like living in countries where corruption is accessible for everybody.
The emphasis here was on everybody because this followed a rant about how Western societies are corrupt where the rich gets to ignore the laws and he wanted to do the same. He said this in 2022 so whether he really did move in 2017 for this reason is impossible to say.
* 2000: Bulgaria 3.5/10, Romania 2.9/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2000
* 2007: Bulgaria 4.1/10, Romania 3.7/10 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2007
* 2013: Bulgaria 41/100, Romania 43/100 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2013
* 2022: Bulgaria 43/100, Romania 46/100, Western Europe and EU average: 66 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
"2022 Corruption Perceptions Index Reveals Undue Influence And Fragmented Anti-Corruption Efforts Threaten Progress In Western Europe & EU": https://www.transparency.org/en/press/2022-corruption-percep...
I'll never forget during the presidential elections of early 2010s (or around that time) (we joined EU in 2007) when a member of the loosing party (which would then become our prime minister), Victor Ponta, stated frankly, in an interview, that they lost because his party stole fewer votes (bribing the poor with meager amounts of household products to vote for them, which is a favorite campaign activity around here).
However to combat this prolific corruption (in part because of EU mandate), around the same time, our winning president instated the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA in Romanian) which is a "taskforce" of judges and lawyers investigating these highly profilic cases.
It became moderately successful (there's always room for improvement). The EU took note, and brought in members of the directorate to instate a similar structure centrally as an EU institution (for cross border corruption cases), and afaik the process has been set in motion to instate the same directorare in Bulgaria (under the guide of a certain prosecution attorney that lead this directorare in Romania, Laura Codruta Kovesi).
Just FYI.
If Von der Leyen wasn’t corrupt, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any problem handing over her texts.
This is the same non-reason as is being brought up with cameras filming you 24/7 etc. 'You dont have to worry if you have nothing to hide' ... It's an invasion of privacy, and it is worth fighting against that.
Government has ZERO right to privacy; government agents in their capacity have ZERO right to privacy.
If a government agent uses a private account to do government business, then a) they should be fired/ removed and charged for trying to hide that business and b) those accounts should be turned over to the government, redacted of anything not related to the government business, and everything else made public.
A private individual has a right to privacy. Government, including anyone acting as its agent, do not.
We’re talking about texts between the EU President and Pfizer’s CEO, not some randos.
https://www.politico.eu/article/new-york-times-sue-european-...
VdL should have a private phone and a work phone, just like everyone else.
If these work messages are from her work phone, she should hand them over. If they are work messages on her private phone, she should also hand them over. She simply cannot claim to have been having non-work conversations with anyone at Pfizer.
Haven’t found much on this. Frankly there is no need to allege corruption against this particular EU politician when there are better examples like those involved with the Qatar scandal.
Are you talking about Pfizer related text messages or earlier German MoD/McKinsey text messages?
This is a person who, by their own statement, had out of context IRC logs used by the government to convict him of a different crime.
Up until recently they basically had free/stolem electricity and they used it to mine bitcoin for free.
Corruption is an equal opportunity weapon.
I still remember handing over my passport to a guy on a sports bike in Singapore to get an extended stamp for Indonesia, and only a few years later did it occur to me how sketchy the whole situation was.
Yeah, maybe you can buy yourself out of trouble. But I suspect in many such cases the people involved prefer to be bought quietly.
Make things too uncomfortably public or too embarrassing and the same people might well throw the book at you.
The latter has a system that doesn’t “include” foreigners, whereas someplace like Romania is a lot more Westernized and offering a bribe carries a lot more risk.