Sins call for atonement, crimes must be punished. And what better, if such redemption can be detached from those really culpable and outsourced to some dumb creature that cannot complain? This was the idea behind the Biblical practice of casting a goat into the wilderness after ascribing all manner of ills and improvidence to it. Many virtues extolled by religion have waned over time; scapegoats have thrived.

Right now, Barisan really needs some scapegoats, big, healthy ones. We list a few suggestions for the high command’s consideration.

Barisan  government has stressed that it “does not deny” that crime, corruption and tax evasion led to the outflow RM173.84 billion in 2011.That there would be corruption in the government is perfectly understandable (how else are parties supposed to mobilise the fortunes they need to function?), but did he even make an attempt to speak up in defence of the government when accused of assorted scams? Nowa scam in public perception, instead of the genuine revolution – which has spread to the remotest corners of the land, empowered people and raised productivity and economic growth – that deserves to be celebrated.Despite numerous scandalous revelations, former transport minister Dr Ling Liong Sik is of the opinion that the government was right in its decision to set up the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ).Ling, a former MCA president, justified his stance by saying that PKFZ was now doing very well.

The real problem is the Congress party’s degeneration into a bunch of powerbrokers that has completely forgotten the political party’s primal role, of empowering the people, of mediating between the people and the state. Only leaders and power matter for the party, the people have fallen off its map, except as voters who have to be managed with handouts, identity politics and poll-eve temptations.

This is why it stands devoid of any organic emancipatory imagination of its own and its government needs an external brain graft in the form of a  MCA National Advisory Council.

Implications of  Chinese leaderes inBNhad hatched an elaborate   plan to bribe everyone, from cops to doctors to even judicial officers  so that he would BN leaders  not be convicted

I won’t mince my words.http://suarakeadilanmalaysia.wordpress.com

Implications of Chinese Bigotry is an Chinese essence. One doesn’t need historian Herbert George Wells to divulge the details. A cursory glance in the past will highlight the present.

The country has the longest list of goddesses and yet not very many days back had thrown fresh widows to the fire. This is a country where wine and warmth walk hand in hand with thirst and cold. This is the birth place of ambiguity where veiled idealism and virulent prejudice are one and the same expression. We have thrown the entire palette of criminal colors on his or her face? What mawkish moral justice is demonstrated when one completely shuts off visibility? Who exactly are these men and women stalking the corridors of  power

NEW DELHI: The government introduced an improved Lokpal bill in Rajya Sabha on Friday but its fate continues to hang in the balance because of stiff resistance from the Samajwadi Party which repeatedly disrupted the House to ensure that the landmark anti-graft legislation was not passed.

The government introduced the new bill accepting 14 of the 16 recommendations of the select committee of Rajya Sabha. This is an improvement on the Lokpal bill that the government had sought to pass in December 2012.

Although the majority in the House favoured passage of the bill, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s outfit, which has never disguised its opposition to the proposed Lokpal, managed to have its way because of the steadfast insistence of the chairman of the Upper House, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, that he would not allow passage of the legislation in the din.

Congress managers, who would in the past invariably manage SP’s support, pleaded helplessness in the face of SP’s intransigence and the chairman’s stand not to conduct business unless there was normalcy.

SP’s success can also be a warning shot for the government as to what could be in store when it brings the legislation to neutralize the Supreme Court judgment that has re-criminalized consensual sex among gay adults. SP has been opposed to the move to de-criminalize gay sex, and the indifference of large sections of the political class towards the demand of the LGBT community can encourage it to push up its ante.

The determination of SP, which sees the Lokpal bill as aimed against the political class, stood out because it defied the assessment that the spectacular showing of Aam Aadmi Party, which started as a campaign for the setting up of the anti-graft ombudsman, will chasten opponents of the bill.

The bill, which was languishing because of differences between government and opposition, was dusted off and introduced in the Upper House because of the fresh fast undertaken by anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare.

With the plan to pass the Lokpal bill running into a serious hurdle, the government will have to either get SP to give up its “principled” objections to the Lokpal bill or persuade Ansari to set aside his reluctance over the legislation being passed amid din.

Sources said SP has held out the threat that if its views on the Lokpal bill are ignored, it is prepared to back the notice for a no-confidence motion submitted by anti-Telangana MPs in Lok Sabha.

On Friday, SP, agitating ostensibly against price rise, managed to prevent Rajya Sabha from considering and passing the bill to set up an anti-corruption ombudsman.

EXCLUSIVE Crime, corruption and tax evasion – the hemorrhaging of billions of ringgit in dirty money from Malaysia, one of the world’s top countries in illicit capital flight, continues unabated.

Just be a Crony and you can get away with a lot of things

A total of RM173.84 billion (US$54.18 billion) was siphoned out of Malaysia in 2011, Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI) says in its latest annual report that tracks capital flight.

Having catapulted into second position last year when close to RM200 billionof dirty money was siphoned out of Malaysia in 2010, putting the country just under Asian economic powerhouse China in global capital flight. Malaysia is ranked No 4 in this year’s GFI report.

GFI has yet to obtain data for 2012 and 2013, but these will be included in future reports.

For 2011, Malaysia is behind giants Russia (US$191.14 billion), China (US$151.35 billion) and India (US$84.93 billion). Still, the level of illicit cash flowing out of Malaysia is second highest in the past decade.

This is despite Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) having set up a task force in 2010 to implement measures to put a plug on illicit funds leaving the country. However, BNM has taken pains to stress that the estimates by GFI are essentially ‘unrecorded financial flows’, which are not necessarily synonymous with ‘illicit financial flows’.

The central bank also pointed out that, among others, the data does not take into account goods that are exported via re-export hubs.

“After taking into account Malaysia’s trade that is exported via Singapore and Hong Kong (re-export hubs), the estimate of trade mispricing between Malaysia and its top 10 trading partners were reduced significantly by about 70 percent,” BNM said in a statement in March.

“Since the estimates in the report of trade mispricing do not take into consideration such discrepancies in trade statistics, the estimates of illicit flows are overstated.”

The ‘Hong Kong Effect

GFI Chief Economist Dev Kar, who authored the 2013 GFI report with Junior Economist Brian LeBlanc, said the financial watchdog had taken cognisant of the re-exporting issue and this was addressed in its latest report.

“We adjusted for the ‘Hong Kong effect’ in estimating trade misinvoicing by Malaysian traders. Essentially, the revised methodology involves taking account of disaggregated re-exports data published by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department that breaks down re-exports to and from Hong Kong by destination and source countries, including Malaysia,” Kar told Malaysiakini.

“Because such a detailed breakdown of re-exports data are not published by Singapore, a similar adjustment of Malaysian exports and imports involving Singapore could not be made.However, please note that the adjustment involving Singapore would be far smaller (due to the fact that Hong Kong eclipses Singapore as a trade entrepot, i.e., the volume of re-exports) and are unlikely to impact the misinvoicing estimates significantly.”

BNM has also argued that the entire errors and omissions (E&O) figure could not be attributable to illicit activities, as it also includes genuine statistical errors from the compilation of statistics of external trade and cross-border financial transactions.

Kar (left) said BNM was correct that the net errors and omissions (NEOs) reflect both statistical errors and unrecorded capital flows.

“Economists have for decades used the NEOs as a proxy for illegal capital flight provided two conditions are met – (i) they are persistently negative and (ii) they are sizable.Both these conditions are met in the case of Malaysia whose reported balance of payments statistics are basically reliable (due to the fact that they average around 2 percent of total trade).We therefore feel that persistently negative NEOs under conditions of overall statistical reliability, provides prima facie evidence of illegal capital flight.”

Kar nevertheless commented Malaysia’s central bank for the formation of the task force following publications of GFI reports.

“At a minimum, such governmental actions convey to the public that it is serious in addressing governance issues and that it will take action against corruption wherever such actions are warranted.”

Tax haven secrecy

GFI’s latest report released today – ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002-2011′ – is its 2013 annual update on the amount of illicit capital flowing out of developing economies, and it is the first of GFI’s reports to include data for 2011.

“Anonymous shell companies, tax haven secrecy, and trade-based money laundering techniques drained nearly a trillion dollars from the world’s poorest in 2011, at a time when rich and poor nations alike are struggling to spur economic growth,” said GFI President Raymond Baker.

“While global momentum has been building over the past year to curtail this problem, more must be done. This study should serve as a wake-up call to world leaders: the time to act is now.”

The report incorporated for the first time trade data on re-exports from Hong Kong and the first to integrate bilateral trade data for those countries which report it – making this report the most accurate analysis of illicit financial outflows produced by GFI to date.

“We’re constantly striving to improve the accuracy of our estimates. We determined that by omitting data from the use of Hong Kong as a trade intermediary, the previous methodology – which was accepted by most economists studying trade misinvoicing – had the potential to overstate illicit outflows from many Asian countries,” said Kar.

Correcting for this ‘Hong Kong effect’ sharply reduces the share of outflows from Asia.

“Nevertheless, Asia still has the largest share of illicit flows among the regions, and six of the top 15 exporters of illicit capital are Asian countries (China, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines),” said Kar.

“The estimates provided by our new methodology are still likely to be extremely conservative as they do not include trade misinvoicing in services, same-invoice trade misinvoicing, hawala transactions, and dealings conducted in bulk cash,” added Kar, who served as a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before joining GFI in January 2008.

“This means that much of the proceeds of drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other criminal activities, which are often settled in cash, are not included in these estimates.”

Financial transparency

The US$946.7 billion of illicit outflows lost in 2011 is a 13.7 percent increase from 2010 – which saw developing countries hemorrhage US$832.4 billion – and a dramatic increase from 2002, when illicit outflows totaled just US$270.3 billion.

The GFI study estimates the developing world lost a total of US$5.9 trillion over the decade spanning 2002 through 2011.

“It’s extremely troubling to note just how fast illicit flows are growing,” said Kar.

“Over the past decade, illicit outflows from developing countries increased by 10.2 percent each year in real terms – significantly outpacing GDP growth. This underscores the urgency with which policymakers should address illicit financial flows.”

Meanwhile, Baker hailed the effort by some countries to increase the transparency in the international financial system as a means to curtail the illicit flow of money.

“Much progress has also been made in targeting anonymous shell companies over the past year, with the United Kingdom announcing in October that they would be creating the world’s first central public registry of corporate beneficial ownership information,” he said.

“(British Prime Minister) David Cameron should be commended for his courage, but the rest of the world must now move to follow suit – making public registries of beneficial ownership information the global standard.”

Cameron was spurred to action following a global investigation coordinated by Washington-based International Confederation of Investigative Journalists
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