So, to sum up in a single sentence: You have absolutely not a single piece of evidence that there is any sort of corruption in the EU or the EC in a general sense, nor that any EU or EC official has been involved with accepting bribes from the Palestinian Authority, but you are nevertheless concerned that they aren’t doing enough to prevent corruption.
Whyever would anyone think you were just engaging in general Europe-bashing here? I can’t imagine! :rolleyes:
And to sum up pldennison’s post in a single sentence: You have absolutely not a single piece of knowledge about EU audit procedures or the risk of bribery and nothing useful to contribute to this thread, but nevertheless you chose to post this vituperation.
Whyever would anyone think s/he was just engaging in general december-bashing here? I can’t imagine! :rolleyes:
Ha! 
You have no evidence other than a story made up by someone with a reason to spread lies about someone else, and choose to use that as a stick to try to beat your pet hate.
please stop.
You’re right, december – I don’t know anything about the oversight structure of the EU or the EC, aside from what Sparc has written and my own trips to Europe. But I’m not the one making disingenuous implications that the EU is corruptly overfunding the PA to enrich Yassir Arafat and then taking kickbacks.
This lengthy article from Die Zeit makes a case that there’s lots of evidence that Arafat has been misapplying enormous sums from the money given to him by the EU.
What I find striking is that were it not for the lawsuit filed by Stephen Bloomberg, the EU leadership would be able to simply deny the charges, and that would be the end of it. We would have to take their denial on faith.
I remain concerned that the EU lacks sufficient checks and balances.
I would have expected Spard and TwistofFate to be more concerned. It’s their tax money that’s allegedly being misapplied.
Lord Acton summed up the EU’s problem in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.** ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men’. **
And the point of this hit-and-run post was …?
December, if you’ve got nothing new to add, don’t bother posting. Bumping old threads is considered bad form if you’re not actually adding anything useful to them. You’ve already made clear your opinion on the EU, and I don’t think anyone would deny it’s a corruption-free institution. But since you’re not offering anything towards your OP – ideas, suggestions, solutions – why are you continuing this pattern of dead-horse-flogging?
<<And the point of this hit-and-run post was …? >>
This article is additional evidence of the ingrained corruption , even at the top of the EU. It says that the EU protects its corrupt employees and defames those whistle-blowers who dare to tell the truth. It says the power of the EU leadership is so great that the corruption cannot be remedied. This is a lot more than the minimized paraphrase, that it’s not corruption-free.
The article’s conclusion has a number of corollaries. Since Crusoe has raised the question, I will spell them out:[ol][li]Citizens of EU countries are getting ripped off. []For those who want the EU to succeed (and I’m one of them), corruption threatens the EU’s very survival. []EU decisions regarding trade are suspect because of the corruption.EU positions regarding various external issues are suspect, because the endemic corruption goes right to the top. E.g., the middle east conflict, the new international court, the Kyoto Accords, overthrowing Saddam Hussein.[/ol]Crusoe, I live in the notably corrupt state of New Jersey, not far from the fictional home of The Sopranos. There’s not much I can do about the corruption, but at least I can express my displeasure. Government is supposed to work for the publci good. It pisses me off to pay high taxes, while the poor may not get the services they need. My state government has been (partially) hijacked by a certain group, who use the power of government to make themselves comfortable.[/li]
Why do you (and** London_Calling** and Sparc) not get equally angry? Why do you avoid focusing on the problems at the EU by attacking the messenger of bad news?
We’re different people, December. We express our displeasure with our political organisations differently. Why do you not post constantly about your own local government’s failings? You’ve seen enough in this thread to be convinced that European residents are aware of the weaknesses in the EU; why do you need to constantly remind those who are well aware?
We ‘attack’ the messenger because we’ve already heard the message. Again and again. Since nothing constructive is to be gained here, what’s the point of broadcasting the message yet again?
And, on a final note, I’m not sure how you can logically draw the conclusion that evidence of corruption within the EU necessarily invalidates any EU foreign policy decisions any more than corruption within the New Jersey local government invalidates any decision it makes.
The issue here is not whether there is a problem of corruption and accountability within the EU institutions; there plainly is. Everyone who has posted is in agreement on this point. December posting links to more newspaper articles stating that such a problem exists therefore adds nothing to the discussion.
Nor is the issue whether Yasser Arafat is corrupt. Everyone who has posted seems happy to accept that he is, or may be.
The issue is whether, as stated in December’s OP, the only possible source of Arafat’s wealth is donations made by the EU and the UN intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and whether these donations (and therefore the opportunity to steal them) have been secured by bribery from Arafat or his associates to EU officials.
The evidence posted by December himself suggests that this is not the case. The newspaper articles to which he linked earlier mentioned a number of different sources of his wealth, and suggested that he had amassed his substantial fortune before any signficant payments were made by the EU. And the more recent Telegraph article deals with the case of Mr van Buitenen, whose complaint is that the activities of the EU are beyond the control of the Parliament. The irony here is that the grants to the PA is one of the areas which is under the control of the Parliament, as Kimstu’s post made clear.
I think the underlying problem here is actually to be found in the very first line of the very first post: “I tend to assume that hard-to-explain government actions are due to payoffs.” December thinks that EU grants to the PA are “hard to explain”, unless they have been secured by bribery. He doesn’t go into detail on this, but from the rest of the post (and the rest of the thread) his thesis may be that the PA is inherently (or at least systematically) corrupt, and is not a body to which the EU could plausibly choose to give money, other than for corrupt reasons.
If that is his thesis, I don’t think many people will buy it. Lots of aid donors give aid in spite of well-founded fears about corruption or inefficiency, because they regard this as better than the alternative of not giving aid at all. You don’t have to accept that the EU would be correct in making this assessment of the question of aid to the PA in order to refute the thesis, just that it’s an assessment which could be made.
Having worked in bureaucracies for many years, I know the unwritten rule: Avoid embarassment! When a person or a group make a mistake, the first reaction is to look for a way to cover it up, or, at least, to not let the correction be noticed. Public companies have internal and external auditors, who seek out errors and make them public. When the auditors fail in their job, we get an Enron.
The EU thumbs their nose at auditors. Their top people do get away with denying their mistakes. When their chief accountant goes public with complaints, they can just blame her, instead of facing their problems.
I believe a similar principle applies to money given to Arafat, some of which has probably been stolen and some of which has probably been used to support terrorism. Faced with these accusations, the EU can simply deny them. If the audit represents, Menken’s “pistol at his head,” one might say that the EU needs higher calibre audits.
I agree that the EU needs better audit and control. I also agree that the PA needs better audit and control. Both of these statements could be put in considerably stronger terms, and I would still agree with them.
I don’t accept, however, that it is solely or primarily the job of the EU to audit and control the PA. There is a limit to what the EU (or any other external donor) can acheive in this regard. The EU doesn’t actually control or direct the PA. It’s only sanction is to withhold funds, and this is something of a “nuclear option”; it will hurt primarily those whom the EU is seeking to protect, The EU can cajole or persuade; it can thump the table; it can threaten to reduce or cut off funding. But the PA knows that this is a threat which cannot be lightly carried out; the PA can agree to one thing and do another; it can conceal what is going on; it can lie. And it can (quite reasonably) suggest that the EU should not take press reports of briefings by IDF intelligence officers as necessarily conclusive evidence of the truth of what they allege.
Much of the underdeveloped world is governed by undemocratic institutions which are more or less corrupt, and many government institutions engage in activities of which we disapprove and which we might label terrorist if we wished. This is a dilemma faced by most aid donors, and there is no neat solution.
Could the EU do more to track and control what happens to its grant money after it has been paid to the PA? Possibly. I don’t know what they do in this regard at present (and neither, I suspect, does December).
Does this mean that the EU aid money must have been corruptly obtained? No.
december: *The EU thumbs their nose at auditors. Their top people do get away with denying their mistakes. When their chief accountant goes public with complaints, they can just blame her, instead of facing their problems.
I believe a similar principle applies to money given to Arafat, some of which has probably been stolen and some of which has probably been used to support terrorism. Faced with these accusations, the EU can simply deny them. *
But it didn’t: it investigated them. As I have been pointing out in this thread till I’m blue in the fingertips, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, with the assistance of the Israeli government, the IDF, and the PA, conducted an investigation into allegations of PA misuse of EU aid, and found them to be unsupported by the evidence. In light of these findings, the European Parliament’s Committees on Foreign Affairs and Budgets voted to continue EU aid to the PA.
As the Die Zeit article you linked to points out, the dispute over the results of this investigation has now come down to an EU/Israel headbutting:
But nobody, AFAIK, has suggested that this investigation is linked in any way with the incidents of fraud and corruption elsewhere in EC activities that you keep harping on. So unless you can present some actual evidence that there is a connection, I wish you would drop this red herring of “Yikes folks, there’s corruption in the EU government!” :eek: and stick to your original question of whether EU officials are being bribed to cover up PA diversion of EU aid to terrorist funding.
So far, you have not presented a shred of actual evidence to support this hypothesis. If you can’t do so, then all your speculations and protestations of “hey, it seems plausible to me, after all there are undisputed incidents of fraud and corruption in the EU, and hey, we have corruption in New Jersey too!” are simply an irrelevant waste of everybody’s time. Put up or shut up, december.
<<Could the EU do more to track and control what happens to its grant money after it has been paid to the PA? Possibly. I don’t know what they do in this regard at present (and neither, I suspect, does December).>>
My background and UDS’s do not determine the correctness of our POVs. However, as a financial institution executive, I have been audited many times by internal auditors, CPA’s, and government regulators.
The EU recently imposed stricter audit standards on the PA:
I would have been more impressed with this move, but for the comments from Mr van Buitenen cited above. If the EU is corrupt right up to the top, one cannot trust that any reform will be effective. Unfortunately, based on the EU’s record, if this reform doesn’t work, we won’t find out that it failed.
Kimstu, I think you and I agree that the EU and Israel disagree as to whether the evidence shows that EU money goes to terrorism. Top people from within the EU say that it’s unfixibly corrupt. They say that the EU has blatently lied when accused of corruption by their former CFO. So, the EU deserves less credence than Israel.
You seem to be arguing that just because the EU is grossly dishonest in ten areas doesn’t mean that they’re apt to dishonest in the eleventh area. I disagree. Corrupt people are dishonest.
I’m glad to return to the original question, but it’s a bit broader than what you wrote. There would be little need to bribe EU officials to cover up Arafat’s diversion of EU money. They would want to cover it up for their own benefit. Arafat’s embezzlement is as embarassing to the EU as it is to Arafat.
I meant to raise the posibility that some in the EU may receive kickbacks from Arafat to maintain and increase the payments. I consider this theory to be a serious concern, because of a combination of points, each of which has been demonstrated in this thread. [ol][li]Arafat steals huge amounts of EU aid money – up to millions of dollars per month.[]The EU is corrupt, right up to the top.[]It’s impossible to get control of the EU corruption. []If kickbacks were being paid, we would be unable to find out, because top EU officials can prevent any real investigation.[]It’s of questionable benefit to the EU for them to donate to Arafat, rather than participate via the UN.[/ol]These points don’t prove that kickbacks are being paid, but it’s a significant worry. If corrupt EU officials aren’t getting money from Arafat, why aren’t they? He’d surely give them a cut if they just asked. :p[/li]
Seriously, speaking as a financial executive, this setup just begs for trouble. I will grant Kimstu that the kickback theory is speculative, but it’s more plausible than many other speculative threads we’ve seen.
december: *I meant to raise the posibility that some in the EU may receive kickbacks from Arafat to maintain and increase the payments. I consider this theory to be a serious concern, because of a combination of points, each of which has been demonstrated in this thread. *
Sorry, but your points have not been “demonstrated” to anybody’s satisfaction but yours; you are assuming your conclusion. Point by point:
1.Arafat steals huge amounts of EU aid money – up to millions of dollars per month.
As you yourself just admitted above, this is strongly disputed. If you want to assert it as a fact, prove it.
2.The EU is corrupt, right up to the top.
There is corruption “right up to the top” in a whole lot of organizations, including the Israeli government. For example:
Article on corruption in the Israeli High Court (nb: in Hebrew)
Israeli police recommendation “to try former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges” (Israel attorney general: “insufficient evidence for criminal trial” but “consensus by everyone who dealt with this that this was not a proper way to run government”.)
Aryeh Deri, “symbol of Israeli corruption in the '90s”
If the existence of high-level corruption in an organization makes everything it says or does untrustworthy, we’d better stop taking Israel’s word for anything, hadn’t we?
*3.It’s impossible to get control of the EU corruption. *
Says one official, Mr. van Buitenen, cited in the article you quoted above. While I believe he’s raising valid points—and while control of corruption is certainly a difficult task—it’s mere hyperbole to say that it’s “impossible” to do anything about it. As I (and others) have already shown, there have been investigations of EC corruption, there have been exposures and removals of corrupt officials. Just because it’s still a serious problem—even a fundamental problem which requires some major structural reform—doesn’t mean that reform is “impossible”.
4.If kickbacks were being paid, we would be unable to find out, because top EU officials can prevent any real investigation.
Sheer conspiracy-theoretical evasion. If you’re simply going to reply to all objections about lack of evidence of a particular instance of corruption with tinfoil-hat stuff like “Ah, but of course there’s no evidence, because of the massive cover-up!”, then your mind is already made up and there’s no point in debating with you.
5.It’s of questionable benefit to the EU for them to donate to Arafat, rather than participate via the UN.
Why? Are you suggesting that all independent international aid should instead be funnelled through UN mechanisms?
december: I will grant Kimstu that the kickback theory is speculative, but it’s more plausible than many other speculative threads we’ve seen.
Well, considering that “speculative” threads around here have included the occurrence of the Rapture, the rejection of evolution and quantum mechanics, and the victory of the Axis in WWII, I can’t really disagree with that. However, every speculative theory eventually has to be evaluated on the basis of actual evidence, and we have seen absolutely zero evidence so far that the EU Parliament’s granting aid to the PA is dependent in any way on PA bribes or kickbacks to EU officials.
Raising a speculative question without any initial evidence to support it is not objectionable, if the question is interesting and fairly stated. Continuing to offer mere speculation after you’ve been repeatedly asked for actual supporting evidence is an abuse of the concept of debate, and an imposition on fellow debaters.