A different way to make some money

In the past, men at least got red in the face when asked about bribes he had taken. Today, they will not bat an eyelid

It is said that 20 per cent of Americans own 70 per cent of America. I have no idea what the corresponding figure is for Pakistan, however, I suspect that the number of ‘owners’ is far less and their share of this nation’s wealth much more, judging by the amounts being looted.

The other day, I asked someone, who till recently headed a government-run company, what was the ‘take’ of his minister. He asked me: “Per day, or per month?” I said “10 or 20 lakhs” a month. The man said: “More, more, more, more.” He added: “It’s one crore — A DAY.”

This was more than what an African first lady asked for when I visited her ‘business office’ in the hope of selling her Pakistan-made railway carriages. Or what a provincial African governor pocketed for giving out a large contract to a private entrepreneur who revealed the secret of the deal. And it was certainly less than what former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha’s son demanded, merely to be received by him. His fees, as it happens, was considerably less than the fees demanded here — a lakh for every minute spent in the high ups company. We seem to be in a class of our own.

When I asked my now retired interlocutor how exactly was looted money handed over. Was it done, for instance by handing over a credit card with the amount specified to be drawn from a freshly opened bank account or was the payment made by cheque or did the person or someone else receive it abroad on his behalf. He said it was cash and delivered on a “hard board file cover in a brown envelope held in place by the file-ribbon”.

General Abacha was perhaps the most blasé of all dictators when it came to acquiring money for himself. Military trucks were dispatched to the national printing press to be loaded up with fresh notes. Next to our Chancery at Abuja, Nigeria was a guest house with no guests. A solitary sentry guarded the place. Nobody gave it much thought but following Abacha’s death from a heart attack, suffered during a tryst with an obviously heart stopping Indian starlet, it came to light that in the house was stored $278 million of his cash.

Yemeni high-ups had a more conventional method. They had Swiss Bank accounts. But the amounts they took were only a few percentage points of the money allocated for the project. Suharto of Indonesia, yet another $6 billion dollar man (or was it $8 billion?) made the most productive use of his money. He used it to buy into just about every profitable enterprise in his own country that way he, at least, created jobs for his countrymen. The trouble with ours is not only that they grab the lion’s share of the project money but they park it abroad and mostly spend it there.

A batch mate, once deputy commissioner, complained how he was forced by the politicians to allot district road projects to certain contractors. These men, in turn, were forced to cough up as much as 60 per cent of the project cost to their patron with the result that if the contractor were also to emerge with a profit the road got built for a pittance. Inevitably, this meant that it got washed away during the rains. The road would then have to be rebuilt and a different set of looters would reap the benefit. And so the process goes on. I asked my friend why he did not resist. “Because”, he said, “the next bastard has already promised to do whatever they ask and is dying to replace me”.

In DHA, Karachi, manhole covers made of metal are prized by thieves. Hence the authorities have switched to cement covers. The trouble is that they too get stolen, not for any reward they may bring, but because the resident making the complaint gets charged for ‘labour’ for the replacement, except that the replacement cover is stolen from the manhole of another street or sector. And when the residents there complain they, too, incur ‘labour’ charges, and so the merry go round of ‘stolen’ manhole covers goes on and on.

Perhaps it has always been so. After all Gibbon called corruption “the most infallible sign of constitutional liberty”. And who can deny we do not have constitutional liberty, even if it really does not agree with our natural constitution. But that’s not the point. In the past when asked how many bribes he had taken, men at least had the grace to get red in the face. Today, they will not bat an eyelid.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2011.