How Two Irish Businessmen Almost Took Nigeria for $11B
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Calling a series of rapaciously corrupt administrations which often engage in electoral fraud[1] 'representative of the people' seems laughably charitable. I'm also unsure of why anyone would engage in business with a state if the latter were permitted to do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, without regard to its own commitments, simply by invoking its 'representation'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_Nigeria
High risk, high reward.
Also the state isn't permitted to do whatever it wants if it wishes to remain a part of the global financial system.
International arbitration is supposed to enforce this, and is exactly what the quote is against.
Interestingly, the article also paints this fact in a fairly cynical light.
> A country that doesn’t pay its arbitration bills can wind up blackballed by foreign investors. “Rather than hopelessly resist,” Born told me, “the overwhelming majority of parties voluntarily comply.”
Those damned foreign investors, not wanting to do business with corrupt governments that screw them.
Which usually means no trade because for many transactions, the required sufficiently high reward would outweigh the intended gains. So you get deadweight loss. Think of a lemon market for used cars. Yes, there will still be some transactions for cars which look like a sufficiently astounding bargain, but overall, both buyers and sellers are much worse off.
Corruption works thanks to information asymmetry. In other cases, this is (sadly) just standard operating procedure.
Unless the state in question is USA. USA can do whatever it wants.
I can't imagine for a second the state of mind of someone who thinks that's OK as long as they can make money.
That these Quinn and Cahill and the ones in London who arbitrated in their favour can be free, and very likely richer than most good people are, makes me loose all faith in our stupid civilisation.
Devil's advocate, but they can rationalize it because the education and public health budget is anyhow going to be embezzled by some Minister (eg. the current Education Minister of Nigeria [0]) or local politician.
The amount of rot and corruption in LDCs is insane, as governance and institutions are inherently rotten.
The only solution in such an environment is to be corrupt like everyone else, and hope there are enough suckers motivated by ideals like "patriotism" or "responsibility" in order to continue managing development.
This is why you see a brain drain from a number of LDCs - a lot of smart people don't want to live in that kind of an environment. It's very soul crushing.
Edit: Devil's Advocate means I'm arguing for a position I am morally opposed to. This doesn't mean I support this kind of corruption.
[0] - https://eng.fatshimetrie.org/2024/01/07/corruption-scandal-n...
Yeah, the bullshit self-justification that "someone will steal it, it might as well be me" is definitely what any functioning society is ostensibly designed to handle (either to formalize it for autocracies or prevent it from disrupting for republics).
That's how I know you grew up in an Upper Middle Class American household.
Newsflash - humans suck.
America used to be this corrupt 50-60 years ago as well, but it required generational bipartisan reforms to change.
You can't expect a county that's still in the economic equivalent of the 1910s-20s to speedrun generational legislative changes.
Take a look at European countries like Poland, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, etc. They might be "developed" in the sense that there are shiny buildings and people aren't starving to death anymore, but wheeling and dealing, cronyism, and judicial+legislative tampering still occur.
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Also, view corruption as a feature, not a bug.
In developing countries, you don't rule by ideology, you rule by pure unadulterated power.
Before the internet, you could shoot someone in a ditch and it won't trend on Twitter or IG.
Now it will, so the best solution to maintain compliance is to use corruption as a way to keep everyone in line - all politicians in these countries partake in it, but if they don't listen to leadership, they will be prosecuted for it.
And that twist in the end....
>The hedge fund that bankrolled P.&I.D.’s defense in London, VR Capital, stood to make a profit if the verdict had gone its way. After the bribery allegations came out, the fund took action to hedge its investment: It filed an arbitration case against Brendan Cahill and Lismore Capital, Seamus Andrew’s litigation-funding company. According to VR, Cahill and Andrew took its $45 million but misled them about how P.&I.D. had won the contract to begin with.
Seamus Andrew acts for Calvin Ayre, the best known financier behind the notorious Satoshi imposter Craig Wright, and used to act for Wright directly too...
Ahh, one of those firms where the interview process is that you have to unironically recite Al Pacino's monologue from The Devil's Advocate. It takes a lot to make the government of Nigeria look like the innocent party.
Also, I wonder if the recent crash that killed a Nigerian Bank CEO and his family is related to this?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/nigerian-bank-executiv...
It is a soft paywall not hard one, you can bypass easily using an archival site.