In the past week we learned…
Business corruption
That the financial services group, Friends First defrauded a customer of up to €500,000. The company admitted the fraud but claimed that the customer was not at any loss. They did not report the crime to the police but did inform the Financial Regulator.
The regulator did not inform the police of this crime and failed to properly inform consumers of the dangers of doing business with Friends First.
The victim of this crime, retired businessman John O’Mahony, did not get justice and nobody seems to think this fact is of any importance.
Political corruption
Galway Cllr Michael Fahy was convicted of obtaining €7,000 by false pretences in 2002 and the attempted theft of €7,500 in 2003 as well as five other charges of deception and false accounting.
This type of corruption is common in Ireland but we also learned that the then County Manager, Donal O’Donaghue took the law into his own hands and acted as judge and jury. He made the corrupt Cllr, pay back the money, fined him €3,000 and did not report the crime to the police.
When all this came out in the subsequent trial nobody seems to have thought that covering up a serious crime was of any importance.
Police corruption
Two policemen are enjoying the same freedom as any other citizen even though they ruthlessly destroyed the life, family and finances of an innocent citizen by conspiring to frame him for a serious crime which resulted in him serving a long prison sentence.
The court acknowledged the seriousness of the crime by describing it as “the worst known oppression of a citizen by the State”.
Yet, it is highly unlikely that the corrupt policemen will even be arrested never mind actually stand trial, in fact one of them was promoted before being allowed retire on full benefits and pension.
The judges collectively punished innocent Irish citizens by fining the State €4.6 million for the crimes of the policemen.
Nobody seems to think that allowing corrupt policemen to retire without any sanction whatsoever is of any importance.
None of these cases are seen as particularly unusual because all those involved; the victims, the perpetrators, the state systems and citizens in general all live and work in a country that is itself a corrupt entity.
Generally speaking, Irish people are unaware that such events are seen as abnormal in properly accountable jurisdictions.
One is reminded of the case of the woman who was asked would she have sex for €100. She declined and continued to decline until the offer went to €5,000 at which time she agreed.There is a clear analogy between this and the purveyors of absolute honesty Gavin and Anthony. Here we have a politically motivated website pretending to be completely independent examinining and editorialising on events of the day in an unbiased way. A little dishonesty appears to completely acceptable to these gentlemen to further their cause.
Like the woman and the five grand when its established what exactly you are then only the scale of the dishonesty is whats in question. Are you listening Joe Duffy.?