Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

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This feels like a nothingburger:

- Infosys already had a $100m/year contract with BP

- the new contract is 1.5b over 10 years, so a significant increase, but as part of the contract infosys becomes the primary IT partner for BP, therefore not an unimaginable increase

- Infosys's customers include Shell, Aramco, Chevron, and others. They're one of the top IT services company for the energy industry, so this isn't an outlandish customer for them to have

- Infosys's revenue in 2021 was $12b, making this contract ~1% of their annual revenue. The net increase over their previous contract is .4%

In short, this looks like a fairly standard contract from a provider that was already heavily represented in the industry and has an existing substantial investment with the customer - and one that doesn't materially impact the trajectory of the company. Other than the timing of the events, there doesn't seem to be anything to suggest inappropriate actions on anyone's part.

But that's the structural problem with the likes of Sunak being in government: maybe it's all legitimate business, but because of his role it looks bad, and there is no real way to prove it one way or the other.

An honourable person would recuse himself from situations where even the suggestion of impropriety is possible. Sunak should not have been PM to start with.

I'm not from the UK, so I don't have a deep understanding of the dynamics of politics there, but it seems like avoiding all situations where even the suggestion of impropriety is impractical for just about everybody who might be in a position to be PM.

If you're in a position of power, you're going to have relationships where there might be the appearance of impropriety for anything - and you may not even know there would be the suggestion of impropriety until after the fact.

Infosys has 40 clients w/ greater than $100m/year contracts, which they don't enumerate individually, but from skimming the internet, it looks like oil and gas, banking, manufacturing, and tech companies all potentially fit into that bucket - so should he recuse himself from everything that is related to any of those industries?

Before he was married into Infosys, he was a banker and presumably has lots of relationships with these large companies regardless - should he recuse himself from anything that might touch any of those large companies? Not a rhetorical question, I'm trying to understand what the criteria is.

As far as I'm concerned the answer is yes to all those. Which is why he is such a bad candidate for any role of importance in a honest goverment - the fact that he's been Chancellor and PM says a lot about how much his party cares about corruption.

> Sunak should not have been PM to start with

Care you expand more? I thought (granted, without any evidence) he's poised better compared to his predecessors. Better in what way? Well, not a clown; lasted more than 45 days -- neither of which, I admit, is not high praise.

So, I thought he was maybe a decent chap. I'd be interested in any pointers au contraire.

Regardless, I agree on the recusal part: Caesar's wife must be above all suspicion.

This government shouldn't have existed. His predecessors made very clear that the 2019 politic mandate does not exist anymore, and the nominally-majority party is now, reshuffle after purge after reshuffle, bereft of enough competency and political coherence to govern.

The end of Truss should have meant an election, we're all killing time to ensure MPs collect a few more paychecks. The project has been cancelled but the contractors are still here.

You will always have a conflict of interest.

I remember there being a desire to build a concrete plant near my house when I grew up. When the council running the town had to put the meeting in the largest room they had, and people started poking through the whitewashing... it went away.

If I was a member of that zoning panel, I'd still not want it there. But if it is the best spot for the town... I am in conflict of interest.

These type of conflicts happen ALL the time.

People will never be lily white, and have no conflicts. And from what people are saying on the size of the deal, etc.. .it may have been in the works before he became PM. These type of deals don't happen over night.

That's such a false equivalence. A conflict of interest over trivial matters is inconsequential; one where billions of pounds could change money, it very much is.

People will never be squeaky clean, but from the highest office in the land one must expect better than whiffs of dodgy multi-billion deals. If one can't possibly shake that whiff, s/he shouldn't be in that office.

> the likes of Sunak

What does that mean?

Multibillionaires from inherited wealth.

Yes, honourable politicians get their kickbacks through book deals, inflated speaking fees, and brilliantly timed stock deals. Having a business owner with a transparent revenue source is far less preferable to an honourable politician who's family gets legitimately deserved board seats on foreign energy corporations.

> Yes, honourable politicians get their kickbacks through book deals, inflated speaking fees, and brilliantly timed stock deals.

False dilemma.

Those are not the exclusive range of options, so presenting it that way is a bad argument.

So you're effectively arguing that quid pro quo isn't quid pro quo if you can't prove the counterfactual (that this contract would have happened without drilling rights)?

Doesn't that seem ... stupid? To put the onus on the people who have no access to any communications or details about what looks like corruption? It's my opinion that without forcing them to do everything in the open and prove to us that there is no quid pro quo, you're going to end up with Soviet USSR style government real fast.

I'm sure this is "business as usual" but ... maybe it shouldn't be?

It’s literally in the definition of “quid pro quo”: “a favor or advantage granted in return for something.”

By your line of logic, if Elizabeth Warren votes for something that benefits Harvard, that’s improper without any evidence that Harvard is giving her something in return.

The article’s opening paragraph makes it sound like Sunak’s father in law was acting on non-public information to get a piece of the new oil and gas leases that were being offered:

> A firm founded by Rishi Sunak’s father-in-law signed a billion-dollar deal with BP two months before the prime minister opened hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

That angle doesn’t make sense if you realize that the firm is an IT company, not a company that is involved in oil and gas extraction.

Would they have signed the same deal if North Sea operations were being shut down?

It is still a conflict of interest. In most non-corrupt countries, the politician would have to disclose and recuse themselves of any decision impacting the interested party.

> It is still a conflict of interest.

His wife isn't in government, and AFAIK Sunak owns no part of Infosys.

This isn't how conflicts work. In any sort of high profile role --let alone high office-- the interests of your spouse and family are treated as your own.

For the purposes of public office or even a CEO at a publicly traded company, the appearance of a conflict is no difference than a material conflict.

It is pretty clear that Sunak is toast and that the people around him simply don't care anymore.

If his wife owns part of Infosys, he essentially owns it too. Married couples tend to share their assets. Furthermore, his wife is a citizen of India, infosys is domiciled in india and indian courts tend to split marital assets in the middle in the case of a divorce.

Married couples, in the UK, don't "tend to share assets" - by law, all assets belong to the marriage, end of story. Private agreements to the contrary can be (and often are) disregarded by the courts.

What she makes is as his as hers.

In fact, according to her tax disclosures she doesn’t even expect to stay in the UK…

This is still problematic though because revenue from these new licenses will effectively flow to the PM through this _new_, significantly larger, contract. This is why divestment is important for politicians.

How is he going to divest? Divorce his wife?

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

That's a possibility ... if it's your own money.

I'm pretty sure lotsofpulp's underlying question is, how would that - or any divestment - work when it's the PM's father-in-law which has the shares and is chairman emeritus?

Are all relatives within distance X supposed to divest? And if not, you can't become PM? Hopefully they all like you enough!

The point is he is invested in Infosys because his father in law is invested in Infosys. Nothing can change that, other than him no longer being related or caring about his father in law, and hence his wife.

I would not use the word "nothingburger" to describe a powerful politician being in a position where they have a conflict of interest, especially in a situation that could have an impact on climate change.

Doesn't matter if it only impacts a relatively small portion of his family's immense wealth. The level of tolerance for that should be zero.

Every one of your points is irrelevant because Infosys's revenue and partners have no bearing whatsoever on how much Sunak's family, or the person who signed the deal, benefited from the agreement.

You might as well argue steal whatever I like because it's a tiny percentage of GDP.

If people in positions of power fail to avoid the appearance of impropriety, they erode faith in the system. That leads to very real corruption, even if the original acts were ethical.

And from a practical standpoint, any honest politician should want to avoid it, if nothing else to avoid arguing about bullshit from a defensive stance. So there is very much an argument that smoke needs careful fire investigation.

The next step down the this road, of course, is arguing that people are above reproach precisely because of their position. "When the President does it, it's not illegal", etc. Corrupting a government is a process, if you look at other corrupt countries, comparisons are an easy way to sort of spot, "you are here."

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