eu leader trust

[ALASKA]

should they be trusted

[Neko]

Of course not. That is their job.

[infinite chaos]

should they be trusted

With what? And for what?

[Neko]

They can be trusted to run off with lots of money. Perhaps that's what was implied.

[Jayne B]

Yeah, but all leaders do that. I want to know specifically what dodges the EU leaders use, that the rest of the world hasn't figured out yet.

[Neko]

I only know some, mainly French ones, and you probably already know them, but I'll put them in just in case-

Frais de bouche- basically expense account exageration, but on a really big scale. If Chriac had really eaten all the dinners he claimed for he'd have a lucrative career in sumo wresting waiting for him when he retires.

Emplois fictifs- blackmailing companies into pretending that your own employees are working for them so you don't have to pay them yourself (watch out, last I heard Juppé "the number two" was in Canada).

Basic false accounting- there's been a whole saga over a woman called, I think, Marta Andersen who worked at EU central or whatever and who blew the whistle on this and got fired.

"Gifts"- EU lobbying is a big deal these days, and if you want someone to speak up on your company's behalf, well, you can't expect him to do it unless you've proved how good your products are. It isn't really EU, but the Chirac family's speciality in this domain is air travel. The Catholic Church is very into this (the lobbiying, I mean). Apparently salvation is not cheap.

Signing in money- this scam has been used in the House of Lords for years. You get quite a bit of cash just for turning up, even if you don't actually do anything, and then there's travel expenses and so on. The ten new countries are particular fans of this. When they had representatives attending EU parliament sessions and the like they had a rota set up so that only one of them would have to go in each day. He would sign in for all of them.

Organised crime- big rumours of Russian/Baltic/maffia links. Problably a lot has been exagerated, but a lot has not been found out.

Anti-corruption- quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Well, not these guys that's for sure. It's their job to threaten whistleblowers (see accounting). There was a domestic kerfuffle over this in Spain a while ago, but I can't rememeber the details.

The regional developpent fund- developping small-town mayor's bank accounts, that is. Just like aid sent to African famine victims, a surprising amount of this goes into "administration". A variation on this is the "builder's dodge"- where you overestimate the amount of funds needed for a project and then buy all the materials cheap from your cousin's brother-in-law.

National companies- these are the biggies, though you hear very little about them. Elf was the main one in France, but in Europe it's the Franco-German plane company, Airbus, I think. These become nice little feudal fiefs owned by the countries' leaders, and a handy place to put anyone that needs an unspecified reward or a "consultancy"- much like the college of cardinals in the old days. Recently Schröder and Chirac have been cometing to see whose protegé will run Airbus. Chirac won, but not without taking a few hits.


Those are the basics, but if anyone can suggest more I'd be interested.

[Gilles de Rais]

No - i'll try to get more stuff on Neko's point but that's about the point.

They are a bunch of money grabbing useless pricks.

But then isn't everyone ?