“Globalization has become a motor for corruption in Germany”… “It creates dangerous potential if you do not control it.” The man talking is Mr. Wolfgang Schaupensteiner, the boss of the financial crime unit in Frankfurt.
The New York Times published today a news article about his struggle against white-collar criminals. Illicit dealings help to create the success of a few executives in Germany, according to Mr. Shaupensteiner.
Crime also pays in Sweden. Here too globalization has become a motor for corruption. More and more signs are being distinguishable behind the murkiness of daily politics, which speak softly to alert ears about how global energy companies nowadays have safe places in the front row of the political theatre in Sweden, the Riksdagen.
But to prove it is almost impossible. In Sweden there are few party funding regulations. Here we have faith in the national myth of transparency and accountability in the conduct of public affairs. It explains why not a single investigative journalist in Sweden for example has yet tried to dig into the wealth of the Moderate Party, and see if the hole s/he opens in the dark blue mud leads to the gas-rich wallets of some Russian benefactors.
Political corruption undermines without a doubt democratic and economic well-being. External controls on parties are perhaps not enough, as it has been shown by researchers. But to continue living in a myth and thinking corruption is only the problem of other countries, as the Swedes prefer to do, may be even more counterproductive.
