A Very Different Kind of Map. Corruptodrome 2012
by pinkagendist
#NoLesVotes (Don’t Vote for Them) has put together a very interesting map:
All of those colourful squares are the logos of political parties and the locations in which members of said parties have been implicated in corruption in the recent past. It should be noted that those are just the cases that we know about because they’ve made it to the courts. Influence peddling and urban planning crimes seem to be a recurrent theme. Usually planning crimes come in the form of illegal re-zoning that benefits corporations. (We had that problem here in Sotogrande when the local government was trying to re-zone our natural park and turn it into a multi-million euro leisure centre with thousands of new homes). Other times it comes in the more old-fashioned cooking the books method.
In Marbella, only 30 minutes away from where we live there was one such case. Jesús, not of Nazareth but Gil, and his family, were recently convicted and asked to return 105 million euros to the government. That’s 135,291,762.91 US$ dollars. In ancillary cases their cohorts were ordered to return 59,4 million euros, 41,8 million euros, 24,2 million euros, all the way down to 3,3 million euros. That’s just one town hall in Spain in a town with a population of less than 140,000 people. Add up all of the money in the scandals. Then add up all of the money that’s misappropriated that we don’t know about. I’d say we’d be more than half way to ending the Spanish financial crisis.
I hope your park survived that? It’s funny that here in Canada we’ve had a couple of high profile cases of corporations being involved in bribery scandels of foreign government officials. Everyone does an excellent job of acting shocked.
The nature reserve did survive, but it wasn’t easy…
That’s good to hear. I’m not against developemnt, but certainly not at that cost.
The current economic system is corrupt and corrupting. The political and business elites dance together through the ‘revolving door’ mechanism where today’s legislator or regulator is tomorrow’s CEO.
As the old adage reminds us, “He who pays the piper calls the tune…”
Maybe I should put myself up for election
I think I’d make an excellent Emperor.
Emperors aren’t elected, they rule by force. Do you like new clothes?
To be fair though, your face might look good on a coin
So that’s the obverse sorted, but what would you have for the reverse ‘tails’ side?
you?
Sorry, I’m on the high denomination notes…
The ex-presidents of the United States get around $190k a year just for having been president–they can sit on their asses and do jack shit for the rest of their lives and still make 550% of the most I have ever made. We could help some people by cutting the salary for government officials who don’t work.
[...] this, fueled by Hollywood culture, blindly put so much importance on that single, slim chance. [Via The Pink Agendist:] The Corruptódromo, from #NoLesVotes shows a map of Spain, showing those who have been recently [...]