Where do politicians find this much money when businesses can’t?
hibikir_40k on
Given that the equivalent of cabinet members in Spain make 80K, and how narrow the legal roads for financing political parties is, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see corruption. Say that you are in charge of Fomento: you are the transportation secretary. You are all over the approval of, say, a large tunnel for high speed rail: Budget, 4 billion euros, to be handed out to different large constructing companies. So the yearly salary is 0.0002% of the money to be spent on this one tunnel. It’s trivially easy to just quadruple the guy’s salary just to be sure you get the most lucrative part of the contract. Hire his brother in law, magically reform his vacation home without charging him… They have to be watched like hawks, and no government is really going to favor that much oversight over the economic lives of friends and family of the given dude.
On top of that PSOE and PP both had illegal funding scandals multiple times, all for things that in the US would be completely legal. Also see the whole Catalonian scheme where the brother of the equivalent of their governor would be happy to charge 3% to guarantee you’d get your subsidy, or would be awarded the contract you wanted. Again, the amount of money to be handed out is immense, and the parties are poor. And being the one paying the bribes isn’t going to send you to prison for life or anything. So of course this happens.
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Another day, another corruption scandal in Spain.
Where do politicians find this much money when businesses can’t?
Given that the equivalent of cabinet members in Spain make 80K, and how narrow the legal roads for financing political parties is, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see corruption. Say that you are in charge of Fomento: you are the transportation secretary. You are all over the approval of, say, a large tunnel for high speed rail: Budget, 4 billion euros, to be handed out to different large constructing companies. So the yearly salary is 0.0002% of the money to be spent on this one tunnel. It’s trivially easy to just quadruple the guy’s salary just to be sure you get the most lucrative part of the contract. Hire his brother in law, magically reform his vacation home without charging him… They have to be watched like hawks, and no government is really going to favor that much oversight over the economic lives of friends and family of the given dude.
On top of that PSOE and PP both had illegal funding scandals multiple times, all for things that in the US would be completely legal. Also see the whole Catalonian scheme where the brother of the equivalent of their governor would be happy to charge 3% to guarantee you’d get your subsidy, or would be awarded the contract you wanted. Again, the amount of money to be handed out is immense, and the parties are poor. And being the one paying the bribes isn’t going to send you to prison for life or anything. So of course this happens.