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Thieving Thieves
There was another chapter in the China Kleotocracy story the past week. Western press reported on a fellow by the name of Wang Guoqiang. Wang fled China with $30Mn in his pocket back in April. The problem is that the loot was stolen from the treasury of the city of Fencheng (Pop. 580,000).
The BBC and the Neue Zurcher Zeitung had the story. (I did not see it in the US press.):
Some quotes:
More than a million public servants have sent large sums abroad.
A million public servants? That's a lot of crooks.
That officials create huge amounts abroad and then flee with their families is so common that the Chinese language has its own term: "Luo guan" literally "bare squad".
It is the practice that corrupt officials get their families out of the country first, hence the term "bare." I think this means that the Chinese are broadly aware that their political leaders are leaving the country with stolen money. It must be hard to govern when even slang language reflects what is happening.
In 2011, the Central Bank reported that corrupt officials had transferred more than 120 billion U.S. dollars abroad.
$120Bn? Where is this money going?
Popular flight destinations for fleeing officials are the USA, Australia and Canada.
The USA, Australia and Canada? The numbers reported above are huge! let's say 70% of the crooks went to America. This creates an estimate of 700,000 crooks (and their families) that have fled China with $80Bn in stolen money, and are now in the USA. How can so many people with so much money hide in the US without somebody making a a stink?
Think of it differently. If the Treasurer for the city of Las Vegas (Pop. 580,000) stole $30Mn of tax payer money and fled to Canada or Australia, the US FBI would have the Aussies and Canucks hunt them down and have them extradited back home. Why aren't the Chinese doing the same thing?
The authorities enacted a ban immediately to report on the case, and blocked Wang's name in search engines. However, in blogs, the news spread faster than censors could delete it.
Kleptocracy is a very open secret in China. The Chinese leaders must hate the internet, and the fact that secrets can't be kept secret any longer. There has been another story circulating in the Chinese internet the past few days that may be connected to the kleptocracy story.
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On 9/29, China Airline flight 981 from Beijing to NYC was ordered returned to Beijing airport. The "official" reason was, "they had received a threatening message." There is some curious information about this:
-The plane was 7 hours into the NYC flight before it turned around. If there was a "threat" on board (bomb?), why didn't the plane make a landing before going all the way back to Beijing? The passengers were not told about the U-turn.
One passenger said he suspected the plane might be flying back because of the route information on the screen in front of him but a flight attendant told him there was "something wrong with the screen."
Shortly before landing, there was an announcement that the plane was encountering some turbulence and attendants asked passengers to close all the window shades.
"But when we opened the sunshades again, we saw the ground of Beijing," another passenger said.
-The initial "official information" was that the report of the threat came from a reliable source; the USA. But that was incorrect. (link)
"It could have been forged and released from inside the country", a Beijing airport police spokesman told China Daily on condition of anonymity.
Other sources including the country’s civil aviation authority and airport police, declined on Thursday to reveal specifics of the threat.
The plane and passengers were searched, nothing was found. The flight took off again an hour later. Of potential interest:
Some passengers opted to abandon their trip
Abandon trips? Or get arrested?
I have no idea what actually happened with flight 981. I do know that the internet speculation in China is that the plane was ordered back because another kleptocrat was on board and trying to escape.
A spokesman denied rampant speculation on social-media sites that the flight returned because a wanted corrupt official who was trying to flee the country was on board.
Something is brewing in China with the kleptocrats.The Bo Xilai and the murderess Gu Kailai scandal appears to have been a tipping point. Another tipping point for China is the leadership changes that will take place in October.
I wonder if the exodus of the kleptos (and the Chinese internet traffic on this story) can go unchecked for much longer. The question of "when" might be answered after a new government is installed. I also wonder which banks the Kleptos are keeping their loot with. We might get an answer to these question in the not-too-distant future.
Note:
My interest in the kleptocracy story was peaked when I read John Hempton's article on this topic. (Link).
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Stealing cash and absconding? Such an obvious modus operandi. Thieving thieves? Pfft. Amateurs. Not sophisticated like the Fed which has continually stolen money from everyone on the USD plantation since 1913.
The biggest thieves in the US dont flee- they make press releases about how their actions benefit society, and what heroes they are - because they are authority figures, and they are on TV - people believe it.
Absolutely! "the biggest thieves in the US..." they say "We are providing liquidity...." and "We are doing God's work!", and "it is a hedge...", and best of all..." I don't know where the money went."
AMAGNONX
You left out book signings and college lectures.
why not-you think the MSM is gonna rock the boat? they don't shit where they eat
Excellent article, Bruce. I'm glad someone is writing about this. I read somewhere that the Vancouver and Hong Kong real estate markets are propped up by the hundreds of millions of illegal money flooding in from China.
I guess as long as those Kleptocrats can hide/transfer/move their illegitimate money out of the country (and be welcome in Canada and HK) this situation will continue.
Trust me, their dirty money is not welcome in Hong Kong. It is driving property prices through the roof. Most people suffer under this influx. But it suits the tycoons. By curious coincidence property transactions are not subject to money laundering regulation.
Bingo. Consider the role that the ultra-connected National Association of Realtors plays in this country. Thanks to years of lobbying and generous political contributions, American real estate has become the favored means of laundering gangster fortunes from abroad.
If I deposit $10,000 cash with my local bank, where I have had an account for years, they will file an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report), just to avoid potential regulatory problems. But if a Russian thug buys an $80 million apartment in Manhattan for his daughter, hey, welcome to the land of the free, comrade, here's your green card.
let em file an SAR- I've been taking big chunks out for months.
I love answering the occupation question when making deposits. I've been Superman, None of Your Fucking Business, Porn Star Fluffer, Backwards Bankrobber, Master of Creative Disturbances, Imitation Congressman, and a bunch of others. The bank has to put down exactly what you tell them...even if you've been there countless times.
I've done this for years, with no one showing up to check on me, until the bank got disgusted enough to put me on some sort of exempt list.
I'm comforted by the thought that their might be billions of Chinese no better than we are.
Imagine if they were somehow of a higher morality? We might have a problem.
This way , they can't point the bony finger at us.
I know one of these guys from when I lived and worked in China. He now lives on an estate outside of Cleveland Oh. He probably stole $100 million from a Chinese SOE before bailing out. He just disappeared over night from China. I did business with the company and when I asked where he was nobody knew anything. He always told me his family had moved to the US a couple of years earlier. I'm not at all surprised there are a million of them, probably more. And China is not alone. Check out all the million dollar+ places in Miami that are owned by south american politicians.
Think Chinese, laddie. (no, I don't mean 'take a dump by the side of the road.') You know where he used to work...you know he stole from that outfit....you know where he is now. Sell him! You think his former employers/company/*government* wouldn't pay big $$ for that info? These are the folks who have bootleg DVD's on the streets of Shanghai before the movie has even been released. Who view intellectual property rights as a joke - who steal with impunity. Who put antifreeze into toothpaste & cat food to save a few cents. Who make the bolts & washers of all their 'assemble-it-yourself' garbage out of the thinnest, cheapest possible shit metals, to save a few *hundredths of a cent* per unit. Etc etc ad infinitum. Fuck him. Hold an auction.
I always thought they were just really good business men, you know.
Maybe we can play a game of tit for tat and ship our corrupt officials over to China.
We don't want to incur another large trade deficit with our Chinese trading partners, do we?
So who do we ship over first? Corzine?, Berstank?, or our Grand Imperator Obama?
The Chinese come to America because they miss communism.
Hey Barry, I found your irony.
Some more Irony
Chinese media: 'Many Chinese people dislike Hillary'
Good. He's going to need that nein irony on the back nein.
China in RevoltHow China's Leaders Steer a Massive Nation
Veritable proof of this has been all over Vancouver like white on rice and it's certainly no mystery.
I think you mean "my interest was piqued":
http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/07/29/has-your-curiosity-been-peaked-...
Otherwise great and very interesting article as yours always are.
Yeah, "piqued". It was late, and I was still partying when this went out. My editor did not see it either.
I have nearly 1,000 articles on the web, not one of them is free of a mistake of some sort or another. But I really do try to eliminate them before they go out the door.
I just posted the article at Business Insider (I always post at ZH well before BI). I fixed the "piqued" for that posting. I'll leave it in this one.
I'm glad you enjoyed this piece, warts and all....
bk
that's what you get for being human...
Piqu-a-boo.
When the great American amateur skier Picabo Street finished racing, she fell back on her nursing license. She got the job in Intensive Care but when she answered the phone, she said, "ICU, Picabo. May I help you?"
They didn't let her answer the phone again.
True story.
:D
what a street tramp that girl is made to sound like, without her skis on and her pants off, replaced by the nursy frock.
Sweet picabo, she had very nice moguls.
Picabo Street Pictures - Pics of the sexy women of sports
Peak's a boo-boo.
Pique Oil.
Pique Porn.
Picque your nose.
pique corruption
Now you're being piquey.
Pourquois? ?Por que? ?Porquê? Perché?
Peter Piper picqued a pecque of picqueled peppers. He was in the pique of his prime.
there's "truthiness" and then there's "crookiness." if the crook is "from over there and coming here"...that's one thing. if the crook is from here and is now "over there" that's a whole 'nother thing all together. How DARE you insult my Chinese friends. YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE!
luo guan = looong gone bitchez
Well now, what is this development?...communists aren't righteous & communal beings? Surely this wasn't some high ranking vetted party official or paragon of virtue of the communist business model class!
Why, this could change everything I thought I knew about human behavior, my world view is shattered.
Clearly they need stronger state regulations than simply the family buying the bullet & paying for the funeral ;-)
The Rats are abandoning the sinking Chinese ship.
The rats are abandoning the Chinese ship taking US dollars with them.
Ditto the US and EU where open market operations are money laundries allowing central bankers' 'friends' to cash out ahead of everyone else. What do the rats do with the cash? Same as the Chinese, they leave their particular countries with it.
Maybe we should help our friends the Chinese government out and boycott Chinese-made shite. Fewer dollars = fewer dollars to steal.
People ask, "When?" When is the dam going to break ... the answer is, "Now!"
The rats were abandoning the ship long before it started sinking. And western governments welcomed the new immigrants with their "investment" of dirty money- mainly into real estate in accommodating cities.
The losers were working middle class families that lost their jobs to the slave owners in China.
Aw, you know how it is - you steal a hundred million or two, and suddenly you're *tired* of living in a country with a billion+ people shitting on the side of the road. You think to yourself, "Fuck this citizenism! I wanna live in a place with flush-toilet citizenism!"
I wonder if anyone on the plane said "I would have liked to have seen Montana" when it landed. That's one of my favorite lines (Hunt for red october)
'Wang fled China with $30Mn in his pocket back in April.'
Yeah, right! Thirty 1-million-dollar bills, in a gold money clip.
Tough to get change when you spend them at the supermarket. Then the Secret Service shows up. FAIL.
Hell the Fedral Reserve will give you free money without allowing you to pay it back to the tune of +16 Trillion.... End the Fed
Results comming in from US Senator Sanders.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-...
Good for real estate markets in the US. And since an investment in a business here gets you special treatment on the green card line, it's a no brainer. Kleptocratic bankers here are actually praised, they have no need to run and hide.
Jon Corzine makes this Charlie Chan look like a piker. BRuce you sound really naive. Unions do this daily. Loads of govt pension plans are being plundered like CALPERs by the Dems. Wake up man. Ching chong ding dong.
So much for the Fat Cat Bankers bullshit now you know what obama really meant when he told them he was the only one keeping them from pitchforks.
The case against Lehman Brothers
Everything is so crooked over there when it falls the economy will be a mess. The paybacks and kickbacks are purvasive throughout every single aspect of living.