Date: 2025-05-01 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00013160
How do Heads of State become billionaires?
Burgess Notes
Peter Burgess ... How do Heads of State become billionaires? ... some notes from the 1990s!
Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
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How do Heads of State become billionaires?
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How do Heads of State become billionaires?
There is something very wrong with a socio-enviro-economic system where Heads of State in countries that are resource rich become money billionaires while the population of their countries remain in a chronic condition of poverty. This reflects decision making metrics that are money profit weighted with little or no attention to social values … or indeed basic moral values! When I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, there was talk about the Sultan of Brunei being the richest person in the world. Brunei had a very poor population, but the ruler of the country was incredibly rich by any standards. How could this be? The answer, of course was that Royal Dutch Shell was extracting crude oil from Brunei and the royalties that were being paid were going straight into the coffers of the Sultan. (One has to wonder at the origin of the word 'royalty' ... it could be simply that paying the ruler entitled you to do something!) Years later I worked in many different developing countries, many of which were resource rich but the people in the country were desparately poor. In the mid-1970s I started to do work in Nigeria which had become very wealthy as a country following the OPEC induced crude oil price increases. While there were huge inflows of money into the country, very little of this money accrued to the benefit of the general population of the country. Some of the money was diverted in a variety of ways to leave the country and accrue to the benefit of banking centers in Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Though much of these money flows were deeply corrupt, the banking center institutions were welcoming to these funds an actively looked the other way. Myself and a well respected Nigerian reporter learned of a multi-million dollar transfer of funds from a high level politician in Nigeria to a branch of Citibank in New York, money that had been purloined from State coffers. When we visited the branch of Citibank and tried to alert the branch manager who we thought had a responsibility to 'Know the Customer' we were told to leave the bank. When we objected the manager called sucurity to have us removed! So much for 'Know the Customer'. After this experience I came to realize that Know the Customer actually worked very well for the bank ... as long as you had rich corrupt people as your customers, there would be little push-back from the customer and the bank would be able to charge high fees for the services thatw ere being provided. |