英語語言學習-18談腐敗

1、英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）英語語言學習-18談腐敗When we talk about corruption, there are typical types of individuals that spring to mind.Theres the former Soviet megalomaniacs. Saparmurat Niyazov, he was one of them. Until his death in 2006, he was the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country rich in

2、 natural gas. Now, he really loved to issue presidential decrees. And one renamed the months of the year including after himself and his mother. He spent millions of dollars creating a bizarre personality cult, and his crowning glory was the buil ding of a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself

3、which stood proudly in the capitals central square and rotated to follow the sun. He was a slightly unusual guy.And then theres that clich , the Afric an dictator or minister or official. Theres Teodor n i Obiang. So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation that ha

4、s exported billions of dollars of oil since the 1990s and yet has a truly appalling human rights record. The vast majority of its people are living in really miserable poverty despite an income per capita thats on a par with that of Portugal. So Obiang junior, well, he buys himself a $30 million man

5、sion in Malibu, California. Ive been up to its front gates. I can tell英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）you its a magn ificent spread. He bought an ?18 million art collection that used to belong to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, a stack of fabulous sports cars, some costing a million dollars apiece - oh, and a Gu

6、lfstream jet, too. Now get this: Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salary of less than 7,000 dollars.And theres Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria under President Abacha, and it just so happens hes a convicted money launderer too. Weve spent a great deal of t

7、ime investigating a $1 billion - thats right, a $1 billion - oil deal that he was involved with, and what we found was pretty shocking, but more about that later.So its easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good

8、in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there?Well, at 22, I was very lucky. My first job out of university was investigating the 川egal trade in African ivory. And thats how my

9、relationship with corruption really began. In 1993, with two friends英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）who were colleagues, Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley, we set up an organization called Global Witness. Our first campaign was investigating the rol e of illegal logging in funding the war in Cambodia.So a few years late

10、r, and its now 1997, and Im in Angola und ercover investigating blood diamonds. Perhaps you saw the film, the Hollywood film Blood Diamond, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, some of that sprang from our work. Luanda, it was full of land mine victims who were struggling to survive on the streets

11、and war orphans living in sewers under the streets, and a tiny, very wealthy elite who gossiped about shopping trips to Brazil and Portugal. And it was a slightly crazy place.So Im sitting in a hot and very stuffy hotel room feeling just totally overwhelmed. But it wasnt about blood diamonds. Becaus

12、e Id been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of corruption on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going missing. And for what was then a very small organization of just a few people, trying to even begin to think how we mig

13、ht tackle that was an enormous challenge. And in the years that Ive been, and weve all been campaigning and investigating, Ive repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）global, massive scale possible, well it isnt just greed or the misuse of power or that nebul ous phrase weak gov

14、ernance. I mean, yes, its all of those, but corruption, its made possible by the actions of global facilitators.So lets go back to some of those people I talked about earlier. Now, theyre all people weve investigated, and theyre all people who couldnt do what they do alone. Take Obiang junior. Well,

15、 he didnt end up with high-end art and luxury houses without help. He did business with global banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and American banks, well, they funneled 73 million dollars into the States, some of which was used

16、 to buy that California mansion. And he didnt do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the property, and another, which was in somebody elses name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place.And then theres Dan Etete. Well, when he was oil minister, he a

17、warded an oil block now worth over a billion dollars to a company that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of. Now, it was then much later traded on with the kind assistance of the Nigerian government - now I have to be careful what I say here - to英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）subsidiaries of Shell and the I

18、talian Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around.So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption, well, it exists far beyond the shores of countries like Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This engine, well, its driven by our international banking system, by the problem of anonymou

19、s shell companies, and by the secrecy that we have afforded big oil, gas and mining operations, and, most of all, by the failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff.Now lets take the banks first. Well, its not going to com

20、e as any surprise for me to tell you that banks accept dirty money, but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too. For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Now this region, it has just five percent of its forests left intact. Five percent. So how did that happen? Well, because an elite a

21、nd its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scal e for many years. So we sent an undercover investigator in to secretly film meetings with members of the ruling elite, and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry, and you can s

22、ee that on YouTube, but it proved what we英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）had long suspected, because it showed how the states chief minister, despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family. And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolled the regions largest log

23、ging companies that were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak and elsewhere. The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process, but it earned around 130 million dollars. Now shortly after our expos , veryeshortly after our expos earlier this year, the bank announced a p

24、olicy review on this. And is this progress? Maybe, but were going to be keeping a very close eye on that case.And then theres the problem of anonymous shell companies. Well, weve all heard about what they are, I think, and we all know theyre used quite a bit by people and companies who are trying to

25、 avoid paying their proper dues to society, also known as taxes. But what doesnt usually come to light is how shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries. In virtually every case of corruption that weve investigated, shell companies have

26、appeared, and sometimes its been impossible to find out who is really involved in the d eal.A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）found that over 70 percent of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars. Now many o

27、f these companies were in America or the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and Crown dependencies, and so its not just an offshore problem, its an on-shore one too. You see, shell companies, theyre central to the secret deals which may benefit wealthy elites rather than ordinary citizens.One

28、striking recent case that weve investigated is how the government in the Democratic Republic of Congo sold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assets to shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. So we spoke to sources in country, trawled through company documents and other information

29、trying to piece together a really true picture of the deal. And we were alarmed to find that these shell companies had quickly flipped many of the assets on for huge profits to major international mining companies listed in London. Now, the Africa Progress Panel, led by Kofi Annan, theyve cal culate

30、d that Congo may have lost more than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals. Thats almost twice the countrys annual health and education budget combined. And will the people of Congo, will they ever get their money back? Well, the answer to that question, and who was really involved and what really ha

31、ppened, well thats going to probably英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）remain locked away in the secretive company registries of the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere unless we all do something about it.And how about the oil, gas and mining companies? Okay, maybe its a bit of a clich to talk about them. Corruption in

32、 that sector, no surprise. Theres corruption everywhere, so why focus on that sector? Well, because theres a lot at stake. In 2011, natural resource exports outweighed aid flows by almost 19 to one in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen to one. Now thats a hell of a lot of schools and universit

33、ies and hospitals and business startups, many of which havent materialized and never will because some of that money has simply been stolen away.Now lets go back to the oil and mining companies, and lets go back to Dan Etete and that $1 billion deal. And now forgive me, Im going to read the next bit

34、 because its a very live issue, and our lawyers have been through this in some detail and they want me to get it right.Now, on the surface, the deal appeared straightforward. Subsidiaries of Shell and Eni paid the Nigerian government for the block. The Nigerian government transferred precisely the s

35、ame amount, to the very dollar, to an account earmarked for a shell company whose英語語言學習（高級聽力材料）hidden owner was Etete. Now, thats not bad going for a convicted money launderer. And heres the thing. After many months of digging around and reading through hundreds of pages of court documents, we found

36、 evidence that, in fact, Shell and Eni had known that the funds would be transferred to that shell company, and frankly, its hard to believe they didnt know who they were really dealing with there.Now, it just shouldnt take these sorts of efforts to find out where the money in deals like this went. I mean, these are state assets. Theyre supposed to be used for the benefit of the people in the country. But in some countries, citizens and journalists who are trying to expose stories like this have been harassed and arrested and some have even risked their lives to do so.And