Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Singapore corrupt?

My suspicions about squeaky clean Singapore had some support when I saw this article in bloomberg of 11th October 2006.
Excerpts:

``Actually, Singapore's success came mostly from being the money laundering center for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials,'' Xie, who was based in Hong Kong before leaving Morgan Stanley on Sept. 29, wrote in the e-mail. ``Indonesia has no money. So Singapore isn't doing well.'' ``To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corruption money from China,'' Xie said.

I wonder why someone who works with Morgan Stanley, a renowned international firm, would even speculate about such things. Has not Singapore always pride itself of being above board? Maybe their cover-up job is so good that everyone has been hoodwinked into thinking that what is said is true.
But looking at Indonesia for example, I could see that a certain marginalised group has benefited a lot from their business links with Singapore. When push comes to shove, as in the debacle after Suharto's fall, many seek an escape route to Singapore. It is well known that quite a number have big investments in the city state and vice versa. Maybe the long lasting Suharto regime was propped up by money from the island state. Who knows?

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