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Top Corrupt Leaders in the World
Corruption has been the coveted jewel in everybody’s crown since antiquity. Aristotelian philosophy believed that everybody who had power could become corrupt. Nietzsche said that we commit corruption only because there is financial gain. In the 19th century when those that had the power made politics apparently accessible even to the poor by paying politicians a salary in our democracies where already paving the way for their own wealth accumulation. Paying salaries to politicians for the first time so that the wealthy did not have the monopoly of the control of the function of decision making? Were they kidding us back then into believing that politics was democratic? Of course they were pulling the wool over our eyes into making us believe that everybody, whatever their status, would get to govern the country. What they were really doing was making sure that they were able to siphon of the greenbacks from the state, but this time making it look as if it were all above board. How rueful we may feel when we look back those wily boys and how ‘we the people’ all fell for it.
Corruption is a many splendid thing: the dishonest and illegal behavior of our powerful, void of all principle or moral virtue, inducement to wrong-doing through improper means. The thing our politicians seem to do every day. But, who’s the worst of them all? Who’s done things that are unique and that’s not just talking about the millions or billions that are diverted from public to private accounts in the click of a button or the blink of an eye. Here’re the winners it would seem. It’s up to you to decide who the losers in this big fun game actually might be.
Transparency International looked at who the worst (or the best) at corruption were and here’s who they came up with.
The Most Corrupt
10. Joseph Estrada
In the Philippines this guy was elected both President and Vice-President. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 and found guilty of corruption. He said that the court that sentenced him, after being ousted from power in 2001 was nothing more than a “kangaroo court”, with blatant disregard for upholding the law. That’s always the way with corrupt leaders; they are always the first to blow the whistle on someone else, aren’t they? He diverted $78 as well as receiving money from the sale of shares in government pension funds. He had originally risen to power defending the poor and protecting the interests of the neediest in the country. Prior to entering politics he was an actor (sound familiar?) and he always had the role of the tough guy that defended the poor too even on screen. Corrupt deep down or just diverted from the original goal as he got more and more powerful? By the time he was ousted from power the debt of the country had risen to P2.1 trillion ($0.05 trillion) (1999). He had doubled the fiscal debt to P100 billion (2.23 billion) also.
9. Arnoldo Alemán
Alemán was the 81st President of Nicaragua between 1997 and 2002. Information was made available to the public showing that there was widespread corruption in his administration and he was subsequently barred from running from office again. 14 people were charges with corruption under his administration (including his family, who fled the country, and the Chief of the Department of Taxes, Byron Jeréz. Alemán was sentenced in 2003 to 20 years in prison for his corruption at the highest level of the country. He was convicted of money laundering and embezzlement amongst other things. The former President was shown to have used government credit cards for personal use: $13,755 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Bali; $68,506 in India spent on handicrafts and hotels, for example. The average citizen of the country was only making $430 a year at the time. In 2004, Transparency International named him as the 9th most corrupt person in the world stating that he had probably looted roughly $100 million, siphoning it off from state coffers. In 2009, a court overturned the prison sentence and he was set free. Some say there was a secret deal with Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua (president since 2007).
8. Pavlo Lazarenko
This former Prime Minister of Ukraine is reported to have stolen $200 million from the state. It was siphoned off from state funds over a period of just twelve months and placed in bank accounts in the Bahamas. He was convicted and sentenced in 2006 for money laundering and extortion as well as wire fraud. He is reported by the United Nations to have extorted 50% of the profits ($60 million) of businessman Peter Kiritchenko. The money was then laundered through a shell company in the USA to conceal property that had been bought. In 2013 the US authorities confiscated a mansion in California worth $6.75 million.
7. Alberto Fujimori
Fujimori was president of Peru from 1990 until 2000. He fled to Japan after the breaking of a major corruption scandal and human rights abuses accusations were revealed. He is perhaps most famous for his Fujimorism policies of anti-terrorism and free-market economics accompanied by right-wing pragmatism and an anti-communist approach. In 2007 he was convicted of search and seizure under illegal circumstances in the country and in 2009 he was convicted of human rights violations (25 years in prison). He killed and kidnapped opponents fighting against the leftist guerillas (1990s). He was the first elected head of state to be extradited (in 2007) back to his own country (from Chile where he was arrested in 2005). He was found guilty of forced sterilization of indigenous women (300,000) under a campaign called Voluntary Surgical Contraception.
6. Jean-Claude Duvalier
The Haitian Baby Doc (1971-1986) succeeded his father Papa Doc, François Duvalier as President of the country when the latter died in 1971. Thousands were killed and tortured and hundreds of thousands decided to flee the country. His wedding was state-sponsored to the tune of $2 million in 1980 and he was found guilty of selling body parts as well as running a drug-trafficking business. He fled to France in 1986, ousted from power and that was on board a US Air Force aircraft. He remained in France until 2011 when he finally returned to Haiti. He was arrested the day after arrival in the country and charged with corruption. He pleaded not guilty and he died of a heart attack in 2014. The world was largely tolerant for some reason to his human-rights abuses and corruption. He is supposed to have amassed somewhere in the region of $300 to $800 million during his time in office, but this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
5. Slobodan Milosevic
Milosevic was President of Serbia and then subsequently Yugoslavia (1989-1997 and then 1997-2000). His nickname was Sloba. He was arrested in 2001 after resigning as president in 2000 and charged with corruption, abuse of power and embezzlement. He was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia and charged with war crimes when there was a lack of evidence regarding his corruption. He defended himself during the trial and refused to recognize its authority because of it not having been mandated by the United Nations General Assembly. He died in his prison cell in 2006, apparently from heart ailments and after having refused to take his medication. He was also charged with having kidnapped and murdered political opponent former President Ivan Stambolic in 2000. He reportedly embezzled $1 billion from the state.
4. Sani Abacha
The Nigerian General was the de facto President of Nicaragua (1993-1998). Under his presidency there were economic records in growth. Foreign-exchange reserves increased from $494 million (1993) to $9.6 billion (1997). External debt of the country fell from $36 billion (1993) to $27 billion (1997). Inflation was stunted from dizzy heights of 54%, ending up at just 8.5% in 1998. But, despite all of the economic prosperity he was accused of human rights abuses (notably, killing by hanging opponent Ken Saro-Wiwa). He reportedly diverted $5 billion from government funds during his term in office? The US revealed in 2014 that it had frozen accounts that had $458 million that it believed to have been illegally obtained by Abacha.
3. Mobutu Sese Seko
Once the president of Zaire. But before getting to the highest ranks of the country he led an army coup in 1960 and got appointed as army chief of staff as a result. In a 2nd coup that took place in 1965 he became prime minister and then as from 1967 became president of the country. He suppressed tribal conflict and made all citizens drop names that were not African in origin. His biggest aim was to amass wealth through economic exploitation and corruption or exploitation in a kleptocratic type of rule of law. Due to his anti-Communist stance the USA maintained his position as dictator supporting him. He is recorded as having embezzled some $5 billion.
2. Ferdinand Marcos
This corrupt political leader stole $10 billion from the Philippines during his reign. He is well-known for having diverted public funds intended for a nuclear power station to buying gifts for his family and friends. The country is still paying it off today. The number of people in the Philippines living below the poverty line doubled between 1965 and 1986 under Marco (going from 18 million to 35 million). The percentage of forest cover in the country was depleted from 75% to just 27% during that same period. Marcos’ wife spent over $2 million on jewelry in just one day on a shopping trip.
1. Mohammed Suharto
This is apparently the most corrupt leader that embezzled the most money from the state. Or, at least, the one that was caught or denounced. He stole some $15 billion from Indonesia. He nationalized state industries and gave them to his friends to benefit from their wealth. He is said to have stolen money from state charities also. The ex-president of Indonesia (1967-1998) was forced to resign in 1998 and there was a government investigation that was carried out. He was placed under house arrest, but as usual in such circumstances his health issues were used as a means to make sure that the court case was dropped. Or perhaps somebody took another back-hander and dropped the accusations.
It’s surprising that Transparency International saw the list of the most corrupt leaders like this. Why didn’t they list anybody from the western world in there or is that a dumb question? Are the leaders of our countries any better than those above? Isn’t a monarch or a leader just a person that descends from or that has acquired the ability to be bloody ruthless in waging a war of arms or words to get to the top? Weren’t these people just the ones that killed literally or metaphorically speaking the opponents that were around them in order to amass greater wealth? Naively, we should ask ourselves why on earth the western leaders are not in there for good measure too.
Politics is a byword today for corruption. How is it that we allow it to happen and to moan at home and yet do nothing to fight against it? If corruption is inevitable where power is concerned, then take the power away from them. Remove their power and reduce their ability to corrupt others to get what they want. These days even the fact that the public might find out wouldn’t stop corruption.
These days corruption happens even before you know it and then we quickly forget. Why not draw up a long list of misdemeanors of our own politicians and make them known? Who would you put on that list and why?
The present salary of a US House and Senate member (rank and file) is $174,000 per year, plus benefits. Leaders of the House and Senate are paid $193,400. Is that enough for them to stop committing fraud and to prevent them from being corrupt?
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I think all politicians that have risen to high levels are corrupt by definition - one cannot rise in a corrupt system without being compliant. Therefore, a good politician is a dead politician.
This is the Ukraine that Obama supports!
A Call for Concentration Camps
On the evening of June 17th prime time television viewers in Ukraine were treated to another of the neo-fascist performances that are now part of the country’s routine. Ideologist of the Ukrainian far right Dmytro Korchynskiy urged the Maidan regime to set up concentration camps for the Donbas’s and Crimea’s population and carry out a full ethnic cleansing and depopulation of the Donbas rebel regions and Crimea: “Americans are our teachers of democracy. The USA is truly the most democratic country in the world today. All democratic institutions were preserved in America during WWII, such as elections, etc. Nevertheless, several million American citizens were deported to particular concentration camps – American citizens of Japanese ethnicity. In wartime they constituted a potential threat. The USA, having preserved the high level of humanism inside its own nation, carried out a nuclear strike upon Japan. They also bombed German cities. Eighty per cent of residential buildings in Germany were destroyed by Anglo-American air raids. The doctrine implied shelling of residential areas first and foremost in order to demoralize German soldiers at the front, etc. Thus, we also should have the highest level of freedom in Ukraine. We have too little freedom. We should have more freedom. Nevertheless, in the front-line zone and occupied territories we should act in the American way; that is, if we lost territories and cannot get them back, they must be lifeless. If they cannot be ours, they ought belong to no one” (Dmytro Korchinskiy’s comments on Ukraine’s channel ‘112’, 17 June 2015 at “Na ukrainskom TV prizvali k sozdaniyu kontslagerei dlya zhitelei Donbassa,”
YouTube, 17 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSv3fixJPc4, last accessed 19 June 2015).
Excerpt from:
http://novorossia.today/one-day-in-the-life-of-ukrainian-democracy/
LYndon Baines Johnson - likely originator of assasination of JFk. Killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese for no apparent reason, as well as significant numbers of Americans, and some Australians as well.
Helped to amp up the military industrial state as well as the NSA/CIA surviellance state.
set in motion the destruction of the gold standard through massive war debt.
Phil Gramm, ex-senator and now UBS vice president.
As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
Cogresscritters inthe US remain exempt from insider trading laws and every former US Pesident seems to end up benefitting immensely from the Carlyle Group who seems to have their hand in everything.........
Few leave political service poorer than when they entered - most leave FAR wealthier (and become even more so aftera few years in 'the private sector'.
They left out Jon Corzine, or do they only count those who are currently in public office?
Not one mention of the tribe who "cares not who makes the laws". Colour me surprised.
Mugabe in Zimbabwe wasn't on the list?!?! More of a surprise.
Anyone who can turn the former Rhodesia - one of the richest countries in Africa into impoverished Zimbabwe AND presiding over hyperinflation that had the most zeroes ever on banknotes - while amassing a personal fortune estimated to be around $1 billion surely deserves mention.
And HE is still holds onto power - despite utterly destroying his nation's economy.
Surely the earthbound lineage of Satan, lord Rottenchild and his tribal banking family ilk, their corporate servants and political puppets deserve some honourable mention.
They are puppet masters, the list is mostly puppets. People who do the bidding for the powerful, its what politicians are..
I don't believe a word of it - I'm quite sure they are all as pure as the driven snow - at least as pure as angelic bankers...
How could you possibly omit the Ovomit/Val-Jar/Insatiable Mooch cadre of corruption. He/she/it has assumed control of the most powerful nation in history without even identifying him/her/itself.
He/she/it leads the destruction/disintegration of the most powerful nation in history and nobody outside the demoniacal Sorosian coven even knows for sure who he is.
"Aristotelian philosophy believed that everybody who had power could become corrupt."
The fuck?
The fictional charcter of Socrates spent quite a long time, in Plato's republik, explaining why we can't use the word "corrupt" without first understanding the true meaning of the words "duty", "altruism" and "truth".
I've read it, and i still don't know what those rich greeks were smoking. I'm nearly certain that riffing on the concept of corruption was something dirty old men did while they waited to crack onto little boys with career aspirations in a glorious democracy of slaves.
Even so, at least those dirty old men defined their terms. Can we define our terms?
We can't define our terms.
ZH blogging is a boil on the ass of classical philosophy.
Cheney and Halliburton are obviously above reproach.
What a BS list
There is no way Marcos, presiding over a piddly nation, reaped more cash than Bush #1&2.
All those suspicious bonds which cleared without review after 911. Who would be the beneficiaries? Not Joe 6pak.
All the MIC rebates for funds deployed tro wars in the MENA region. Whats 10% of a trillion?
No, I'm afraid this list is just as useless as the Forbes billionaire list. Even Trump had to press release he was worth $8.7bn so the lists could update their number. Not everyone does that.
I would have been inclined to title the story "Top Corrupt RULERS of the World". Leaders posess integrity. Rulers don't. Any country's citizens who do not understand this will always be suckers and chumps (and subjects).
Top Corrupt Leaders of the World---: Obama, Obama, and Obama ??
#1 on the charts this week: Hitlery! Stay tuned for some great moments in Testimony. I'm Kasey Kasem, we'll be right back!!
Many Indian politicians should be able to top the list. There is a 2G telecom investigation in progress for 40B USD, Coal scam in that range plus more.
Clinton Foundation..........
Every American president since Kennedy is missing from that list.
I see you only listed ten but I suspect the list can go on for miles.
So corruption equals theft of money. Human life doesn't matter. The author of this article is an idiot and a jackass.
African leaders should be in first place.
You cannot pay an African leader to be honest.
Wait a minute; paying an African leader to be honest is a contradiction. He would only be honest if you didn't pay him; "you"--being, the IMF, the UN, The USA .gov give-away programs, NATO; etc. Like, uhh; Gaddafi, for instance; you didn't pay him. Well, as Hilary Clinton remarked, "what difference does it make?"
Any list without the lying kenyan motherfucking cunt in DC is meaningless
Obama is small change, where is the Pope?
MASSIVE, HUMONGOUS thumbs down. Is the Pope the commander in chief of the perpetual war? How much money is the Vatican's defense budget? You are one UNBELIEVABLE idiot. I could go on endlessly about Obama and his misdeeds. And no I'm not a Catholic, I'm an atheist.
The current pope is a commie posing as a priest.
Or possibly a Pederast posing as a Socialist, who's pretending to be a Communist posing as a Priest. But I woulldn't rule out the possibility that he's just hopelessly stupid.
VooDoo6Actual Shut up you Conspiracy theorist...
"Sweet Caroline" "Sweet Caroline" "Sweet Caroline"
Yeah, 'Shut Up you conspiracy theorist...' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jyY6rqP_3Q
$140 million in grants Clinton Global put them in number 3 but US death tolls "million worth it" Madlin. Heck Half WWII deaths since Korea.. Oh yea already had woman president Wilson's wife nice job... Very very thankful Hitlery doesn't like shoes like Imelda Marcos with those Kankles there would be a leather shortage.. these guys and gals(particularly in Hitlery's case) can claim 1st place
USA USA USA and on the 4th the Boston Pops sang "Sweet Caroline" we're number one, we're number one, we're number one
USA USA USA "Sweet Caroline" "Sweet Caroline"
where do we wave the flag? Oh yea on the soccer football fields... Did they get an air force fly over?
all is well look away nothing here "Hate us for our freedom".... gots to go and apologize Frankie the pedophile protector Five way for proselytizing love thy neighbor. No worries indulgences not required... What's that cast first stone thing anyway.
Corruption?
Where? Not here I tell ya!
Rummy had it all wrong, he was a piker.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/report-reveals-8-5-trillion-missing-from-pe...
the concept of "corruption" is both simple
and complex, perhaps profound, inevitable.
the use of the word presumes a certainty,
almost a perspective of omniscience and,
if you are going to do anything about it,
omnipotence. that is ok i guess if you
can buy into it and it works for you, not
so pleasant when it is imposed on you or
others. then, the flaws in understanding and
logic burst out and prove the "corruption"
wasn't what you thought it was or where
you thought it was, perhaps?
very interesting. or ...
all power is a manifestation of some
"corruption" and that is what humans
need, want and seek nearly first and foremost
most of the time.
for example, some one recently told me .....
there are no natural samples of "pure" water.
nature doesn't produce pure water, all the pools
and samples have some "contaminants", those
contaminants being, perhaps the "corruption"
of the pure water that actually makes the water
palatable and nutritious with trace amounts
of mineral elements. he told me that
manufactured "pure" water actually is received
very poorly by those who have tasted it.
sounds right to me even if it is an urban legend.
Sure no doubt. The planet has been corrupted long before this top ten list of ass clowns were here as well. We should at least start from The Whore of Babylon & Council of Nicea in 308-325 AD. From there we can all see that Christianity was all rewritten & pagan ritualized, deitized, mytholized etc. The whole Roman Catholic Church w/ they're Sumerian Dagon pagan Papal Tiara's, Pine Cone in front of the Vatican (a Sumerian Pine Cone / Seat of the Soul / symbolic of Pineal Gland), Nazi Knight's of the Holy See (Sedes Sacrorum) 1933 Concordiant signed w/ SS Heinreich Himmler, Flouridated Drinking water idea taken from the Nazi & put into play in the us since 1945 to calcify & cloud human's pineal glands. Ask the leadership to explain the Starchild & Paracas Skulls that have no human DNA but are at least 4,000-6,000 years old. Ask them why are they Terra Forming the Planet w/ Coal Ash & Barium, Aluminum & Strontium & creating Mass Extinction Evenmts or Malthusian Crisis's ? it goes on & on & the hole is deep & wide at this point...
Truth has no temperature, agenda or needs to defend itself....
Your meds - remember to take them!
Add who is far greater than the sum of the top ten--in effect and outcome? Need I even say it...
Obama covets the black cocksucker award.
Clearly each one had to be banker puppets, otherwise they could never gotten their hands on that much fiat. It must then be assumed that they were at least at one time the protected thus of the western governments as well.
Guess they all fell out of favor eventually... paying their price to Satan.
#1 The US government.
There, fixed it for ya.
It's much simpler than that. Wherever Goldman is integral to the economy, there is corruption. The list probably correlates with having a West-connected central bank.
Good thing we live in the land of checks and balances, and we don't see government intruding into the private sector [eyes roll]
Tsk, Europe alone has had more than that, y'all need to do more reserch.....
That last question is a rhetorical question, isn't it?
Howzabout including Obama for middle class genocide when he created 12 million bufger-flipping jobs out of 12 million good paying manufacturing jobs or Obama allowing the EPA to kill the coal industry and losing thousands of good paying jobs and causing shy high electric rates? HUH? HOWZABOUT THAT?
The list is endless, you only touched the tip of the tip of the iceberg. I quickly scanned the article looking for Obama's name and didn't see it. All credibiity for the author instantly evaporated.
What are you talking about? He has the most transparent administration in history.
Totally agree. They did not even mention the assholes in the US Senate, Congress, Treasury...let alone the asshole vice pres & presidents of near years past.
Btw, where's Bushy??
Corrupt leader is usually redundant