Corruption has followed power almost everywhere, from ancient courts and royal treasuries to modern police departments, movie financing scandals, rigged elections, and stolen relief funds. This list looks at 50 cases where greed, bribery, abuse of office, and cover-ups left marks on history, politics, and ordinary people around the world.
1 Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune
During the 1980s, Zaire’s president Mobutu Sese Seko received an official presidential budget that exceeded the combined budget for the country’s roads, schools, and hospitals. During the Cold War, he used his pro-West position to obtain Western development aid, then diverted and benefited from it while ruling Zaire from 1965 to 1997. According to Transparency International in 2004, Mobutu stole about US$5 billion, making him one of the most corrupt leaders of his era. Rivals finally forced him out in 1997, and he fled the country before dying shortly afterward of cancer.
2. In ancient Rome, plebeians used the Secessio Plebis when patrician rule became too corrupt or unjust to ordinary citizens. During the first secession in 494 BCE, debt and political exclusion pushed the commoners to leave Rome together and camp on the Sacred Mountain, cutting off much of the city’s labor and military strength. The patricians negotiated because Rome could not function without them, and the crisis led to the creation of the tribune of the plebs to defend plebeian interests.
3. Chinese politician Hu Yaobang, whose 1989 funeral helped trigger the Tiananmen Square protests, backed reforms that angered powerful Communist Party elders. In office, he supported giving Tibetans and Uyghurs more control over their own affairs, pushed improved Sino-Japanese relations, and joined Chinese politician Zhao Ziyang in an anti-corruption program that investigated protected children of senior party officials. In December 1986 and January 1987, student protests spread across China, and Deng Xiaoping ordered Hu to dismiss several reformist intellectuals from the party. Hu refused, and in January 1987 party elders, senior military officials, and Deng forced him to resign as General Secretary for being too lenient toward the protesters.
4. Around 400 B.C., Chinese minister Ximen Bao took charge of Ye County in the State of Wei and found that corrupt officials, powerful elders, and a shamaness had built a tax racket around sacrifices to Hebo, the River God. They told locals that floods would come unless the county paid for a beautiful young woman to become the god’s bride, then kept most of the money for themselves. At the ceremony, Ximen Bao rejected the chosen woman as unworthy of a god and ordered the shamaness, her disciples, and the three elders thrown into the river to explain the delay. Terrified local officials promised to stop the ritual, and the practice of river-bride sacrifices ended in Ye County.
5. In 2013, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was financed by Red Granite Pictures, a company co-founded by film producer Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. U.S. prosecutors later alleged that Red Granite used more than $100 million unlawfully diverted from Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund to make the film. The scandal tied a movie about financial fraud to a real corruption case, and Red Granite agreed in 2018 to pay $60 million to settle U.S. forfeiture claims.
6 Maeno’s Kamikaze Attack On Kodama
In March 1976, Japanese pornographic actor Mitsuyasu Maeno grew enraged after right-wing leader Yoshio Kodama became a central figure in Japan’s Lockheed bribery scandal. Maeno had admired Kodama as an ultranationalist leader, but he believed Kodama betrayed the right wing and the samurai code by taking money from Lockheed. On March 23, 1976, Maeno rented a small plane near Tokyo, dressed as a kamikaze pilot, and flew it into Kodama’s home in Setagaya. Maeno died in the crash, two servants were injured, and Kodama survived unharmed.
7. Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia spent decades reporting on government corruption, nepotism, money laundering allegations, and misconduct by politically exposed people in Malta. In 2016 and 2017, her work on the Panama Papers and related allegations made her one of the country’s most prominent anti-corruption voices. On 16 October 2017, a bomb exploded in her car shortly after she left her home, killing her instantly. Her final blog post ended with the line: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”
8. Italian poet Dante Alighieri was condemned to exile in 1302 on corruption and financial misconduct charges connected to his time as one of Florence’s priors in 1300, and he faced execution by burning if he ever returned without meeting the court’s demands. Refusing to admit guilt or pay the fine, Dante spent the rest of his life in exile, where he wrote most of his greatest works, including the Divine Comedy. He never returned to his native city, dying in Ravenna in 1321. In June 2008, nearly seven centuries after his death, the Florence City Council formally rescinded his sentence and symbolically pardoned him.
9. Around 525 BC, Sisamnes served as a royal judge under Persian king Cambyses II and accepted a bribe to deliver an unjust verdict. Cambyses punished the corruption by having Sisamnes arrested, flayed alive, and turning his skin into leather strips. The king then used that skin to cover the judgment seat as a warning to future officials. Sisamnes’s own son, Otanes, replaced him as judge and had to sit on the chair made from his father’s skin.
10. A kleptocracy is a government where corrupt rulers use public power to steal or exploit national resources for personal gain. These rulers often treat the state treasury as personal wealth, spend public money on luxuries, and move stolen funds into hidden accounts abroad. The result weakens public services, damages the economy, and diverts money away from roads, schools, hospitals, and other needs.
11 FIFA’s Corruption Film Flopped Spectacularly
In 2015, United Passions reached North American theaters after FIFA had financed most of its estimated $29 million budget. The film presented FIFA’s history through figures such as Jules Rimet, João Havelange, and Sepp Blatter, but critics attacked it as propaganda because it ignored the organization’s long-running corruption allegations. It was released during the FIFA corruption case, after several current and former FIFA officials faced corruption charges. The film earned only $918 from 10 theaters in its opening weekend and became one of the most notorious box-office disasters in sports-film history.
12. In 2000, Essex County, New Jersey, executive James Treffinger denied The Sopranos production crew a permit to film the episode “Pine Barrens” at South Mountain Reservation. Treffinger cited the show’s depiction of Italian-Americans as corrupt as his reason, and the crew moved the forest scenes to New York instead. In 2003 he was arrested for corruption. Treffinger pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and mail fraud after admitting that he solicited an illegal $15,000 campaign contribution for a county contract and put two people on the county payroll to work on his Senate campaign. He received a 13-month prison sentence.
13. In 1984, Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof helped organize Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” after BBC reporter Michael Buerk’s coverage pushed Ethiopia’s famine into global attention. The song and other awareness projects sent millions of dollars’ worth of aid and supplies into Ethiopia, but corruption within the system meant international organizations routed much of the food aid through the Derg government in the south. The Derg used food supplies as a military tool in the north, where civil war and separatist conflict had worsened the famine. The aid saved some people from starvation, but corruption and the way officials handled it also prolonged the Ethiopian Civil War and cost many other Ethiopians their lives.
14. Egypt’s Suez Canal has long been nicknamed the “Marlboro Canal” in the shipping industry because some workers allegedly demanded cartons of upmarket cigarettes to let ships pass without trouble. In 2017, an Egyptian merchant shipper named Amin Wahab described on Facebook how canal workers boarded his ship and demanded cigarettes, food, and other goods. One official reportedly demanded 17 cartons of cigarettes, nuts, dried fruit, fruit, bottled water, and a hot meal while threatening to impose a $20,000 fine. Wahab later deleted the post after it went viral.
15. In July 1978, the FBI launched ABSCAM as an undercover operation aimed at New York City criminals dealing in stolen art. Agents created a fake Long Island company called Abdul Enterprises, then used the front to reach criminals selling fake securities and politicians willing to sell influence. The investigation eventually moved through southern New Jersey and Washington, D.C., where corrupt officials discussed helping a supposed wealthy Arab sheik for payments of $50,000 up front and $50,000 later. By the end, one senator, six congressmen, and more than a dozen other corrupt officials and criminals had been arrested and found guilty.
16 Georgia Fired Its Corrupt Police
After the 2003 Rose Revolution, the Republic of Georgia treated corruption as a national emergency and earned praise from Transparency International as “the best corruption-buster in the world.” In 2004, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s government dissolved the corrupt traffic police and quickly fired 16,000 officers, while also broadcasting arrests of senior officials to show the crackdown was serious. The reforms raised salaries for young, often Western-educated public servants, centralized parts of education, reduced petty bribery, and created the Anti-Corruption Interagency Council in 2008. Since then, low-level corruption has fallen sharply, though later reports warned that high-level and clientelistic corruption remained a problem.
17. Roman general and statesman Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC but later faced political attacks from rivals, including Cato the Elder. In 187 BC, Scipio and his brother Lucius faced trials over bribes they supposedly received from the Seleucid king Antiochus III during the Roman-Seleucid War. Disillusioned, Scipio left Rome and retired to his villa at Liternum, where he died around 183 BC. Later tradition says he refused burial in Rome and ordered an epitaph reading, “Ungrateful fatherland, you will not even have my bones.”
18. French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer disappeared from a shopping center parking lot in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in 2004 while investigating money laundering, illegal currency transfers, and government corruption. He had worked in West Africa and reported on political corruption for various media outlets. CBC journalist Carol Off later linked his probable murder to his investigation of the Ivorian government and the cocoa industry, including allegations around dangerous labor practices in cocoa production. In 2008, Ivorian first lady Simone Gbagbo was called for questioning by a French investigative judge, but Kieffer’s fate and the identity of his kidnappers remain unresolved.
19. In 1953, U.S. officials tried to pull Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser into the proposed Middle East Defense Organization, a Western-backed Cold War defense plan for the region. According to later accounts, the CIA reportedly offered Nasser a $3 million bribe to join the alliance and shift Egypt toward the American camp. Nasser accepted the money but refused to join, because he wanted Egypt and the Arab League, not a Western-backed bloc, to lead regional defense.
20. In colonial Virginia, electoral candidates commonly bribed voters with food and alcohol, and George Washington learned that lesson after losing his first run for the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1758, his election agent distributed about 144 gallons of rum, punch, hard cider, and beer during Washington’s second campaign. Washington won the seat.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Heshen Stole A Dynasty’s Fortune
A Qing dynasty official named Heshen became so powerful under the Qianlong Emperor that later accounts described him as the most corrupt official in Chinese history. He controlled major state offices, stole public funds and tax revenue, placed his own allies in government posts, and amassed an estimated 1.1 billion taels of silver, roughly US$270 billion. After the Qianlong Emperor died in 1799, the Jiaqing Emperor arrested Heshen, confiscated his property, charged him with 20 crimes, and ordered him to commit suicide by hanging. His fortune was reputedly equal to about 12 years of Qing imperial revenue.
22. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme began in 2003 to stop conflict diamonds from entering the mainstream rough-diamond market. Its system depended on certificates and government compliance, but critics said weak enforcement, smuggling, secrecy in trading centers, and limited monitoring left the process open to abuse. Global Witness, one of the campaign groups that helped bring blood diamonds to global attention, abandoned the scheme in 2011 and said it had failed to stop conflict diamonds. Human Rights Watch and other critics later argued that the process remained too narrow, making it difficult for buyers to know whether a diamond was truly free from violence and corruption.
23. In 2017 and 2018, American philosopher Peter Boghossian, British author Helen Pluckrose, and American mathematician James A. Lindsay submitted hoax papers to academic journals in gender, race, sexuality, and cultural studies. They said they wanted to expose what they viewed as intellectual corruption in “grievance studies,” arguing that some journals rewarded ideology over scholarship. One accepted paper rewrote part of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in feminist language, while other papers made deliberately absurd arguments. The project continued until 2018, when media attention and a public reveal exposed the hoax after several papers had already been accepted or published.
24. Irish adventurer William Lamport from County Wexford, later known in Mexico as Don Guillén de Lamport, has often been cited as an inspiration for the fictional hero Zorro. In the 1640s, Lamport claimed he had been sent to New Spain to report on the colonial viceroy, but he instead began plotting rebellion against Spanish rule. His writings attacked Spanish authority, defended Indigenous people and enslaved Black people, and framed colonial corruption and injustice as reasons for resistance. The Mexican Inquisition arrested him in 1642, kept him imprisoned for 17 years, and condemned him to death in 1659.
25. After taking office in 1829, American president Andrew Jackson accused John Quincy Adams’s administration of corruption and ordered investigations into every executive department. The inquiries uncovered $280,000 stolen from the Treasury and pushed Jackson to ask Congress for tougher laws on embezzlement and tax evasion. The investigations also cut costs in the Department of the Navy, saving about $1 million, and led Jackson to support better government accounting.
RE: Fact #50 (Blue House Curse Haunted Presidents) – So, looking at how it goes: 1. President 1 leaves. 2. President 2 is elected and charges the first for corruption. 3. President 2 leaves. 4. President 3 is elected, charges the second for corruption, and pardons the first. And it just keeps going like that.
RE: Fact #43 (LA Deputies Hid FBI Informant) – How can they waterboard someone because their relative bombed a station on the other side of the world, put it on TV, and yet when our own prisons here are staging gladiator-style battles between inmates, nobody says a word?
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – “I’m playing both sides so that I always come out on top.” – Gamal Abdel Nasser
[Let’s pull up our bootstraps, oil up a couple of asses, and do a little plowing of our own]💪🏻 – Gamal Abdel Nasser, probably
RE: Fact #33 (Cheran Expelled Crime And Corruption) – Pine smugglers? That’s definitely not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of items being trafficked by a mafia.
“Nice forest you’ve got here, it’d be a shame if anything were “to happen” to it.”
“Tell Marco that Juan ‘sleeps with the pine straw.’ He’ll know what that means.”
RE: Fact #50 (Blue House Curse Haunted Presidents) – I think you could link almost any president in the world to corruption if you looked hard enough. That seems to be part of the job’s appeal. I suspect most people enter politics with idealistic goals, but after a while, they just stay for the money and influence.
RE: Fact #2 (Plebeians Abandoned Rome’s Corrupt Elites) – This is how the Plebs secured, among other things, the tribunate positions that allowed them to elect officials with the power to veto motions in the Senate or Public Assembly. They also got legal transparency through the publication of the 12 tablets in the forum. Most importantly, they managed to abolish the legal distinction between Plebian and Patrician classes, which allowed Plebs to run for election and reach the highest positions in the Cursus Honorum.
I’m just waiting for the modern-day Gracchi brothers to show up.
I am no expert, but everything I have read suggests the Patricians were only placating the Plebians for show while retaining most of the power. It was better than nothing, but they were never actually made equals.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – He’s probably my favorite general. He goes to modern-day Spain at 27, beats all of Hannibal’s brothers, and is the only volunteer to face the Carthaginians on their home turf. He even convinced Hannibal’s own cavalry to switch sides. When Rome wouldn’t give him a full army, he raised his own and just went to Africa to handle it himself.
RE: Fact #18 (Guy Kieffer Vanished Investigating Cocoa) – People ignore it, but most luxury goods like coffee, chocolate, and electronics involve slavery. Even “fair trade” labels aren’t regulated by anyone with real authority, much like how vitamins and supplements aren’t FDA-approved. How can you be sure the private org testing those products is legitimate? Most people don’t actually care enough to give up their phones or coffee to help stop slavery.
I think just “giving up” products isn’t the fix. If we stop buying from one brand, the slaves just get moved to another. There’s no easy fix because this is deeply tied to local economies and long-standing practices. We need sustainable, long-term solutions. Consumers should definitely try to find ethical brands, but that’s incredibly time-consuming and hard to verify. Real change requires legislation and corporate accountability. As long as slavery is profitable, it won’t stop just because a few people boycott coffee.
We could pass laws to stop companies from importing goods made with slave labor. Nestlé managed to dodge that in court by claiming the U.S. has no jurisdiction over what happens abroad, even though U.S. companies are the ones pulling the strings. To hell with Nestlé.
RE: Fact #25 (Jackson’s Corruption Hunt Found Theft) – It seems like every 19th-century American government was comically corrupt until we finally outlawed political appointments for the civil service.
RE: Fact #20 (Washington Won Election With Alcohol) – That still happens in smaller places. I live five hours from the city in a town of about 2, 500 people. Up until about 20 years ago, candidates for mayor would walk around the poorer neighborhoods and retirement homes with cases of beer to buy votes. Funny.
RE: Fact #14 (Suez Canal’s Marlboro Bribe Culture) – Egyptian culture leans heavily on bartering and scamming. You should check out some Cairo travel reviews on YouTube.
The whole region is the same. A good life hack for tourists is to act like you’re personally offended as soon as you hear the first price. They rely on Westerners being conflict-averse and polite. Even when they drop the price by half, they’re still making a huge profit, even if they put on a show about how you’re hurting their family. It’s just the standard routine.
RE: Fact #2 (Plebeians Abandoned Rome’s Corrupt Elites) – The modern equivalent is a general strike, and we are long overdue for one.
Last time we tried, manufacturing got shipped down to Mexico or out to China. The elites will always make sure they get theirs.
RE: Fact #47 (Diplomats Turned Parking Into Corruption) – It’s almost like the corrupt powers of the world are just used to being above the law. What a shocker.
RE: Fact #30 (Truman Committee Exposed War Profiteering) – It is wild to think that Harry Truman had zero clue the Manhattan Project existed until after Roosevelt passed away in 1945. I really wonder what his internal reaction was when he found out they were pouring a billion dollars into a bomb he didn’t even know was possible.
According to David McCullough’s biography, Truman actually stumbled onto the Manhattan Project funding during his investigation. When he asked General Marshall about it, Marshall basically shut him down by saying, “I can’t tell you what it’s for, but we need it.” Truman held Marshall in such high regard that he just said, “Okay, ” and dropped the subject.
RE: Fact #28 (Forbes Looted Veterans Bureau Funds) – Harding is a fascinating contradiction. He had one of the worst presidencies ever, but if he had surrounded himself with a different administration, he might have actually had a positive legacy.
He was a puppet from the start. He never would have sniffed the office without his handlers behind him.
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – I think the abysmal working conditions for sailors at the time were a huge, underrated factor. It wasn’t unusual for a captain to feed his crew rancid food, and if guys died, it just meant less mouths to feed and less pay to hand out. Since the cargo was worth way more than the crew’s lives, and the crew knew it, it isn’t surprising that they’d mutiny and sign up with people willing to look past their pasts. Some of these pirate ships essentially turned into worker co-ops, though the vibe really depended on the individual crew.
RE: Fact #14 (Suez Canal’s Marlboro Bribe Culture) – I’ve been there. It’s basically a tradition for the pilots to board and expect a few cartons of cigarettes. That said, the pilots are genuinely incompetent. It seems like they land these jobs through connections rather than actual skill.
And they insist on riding the ship even when they’re clearly out of their depth. They don’t even use radar; they just pilot by “feeling.” I’m 90% sure that’s how that whole grounding incident happened.
I went through twice during my time in the Navy. The “pilot” just sat in the captain’s stateroom the whole trip. We were explicitly told not to talk to him because he’d just start asking for handouts, and we already had a protocol in place.
It’s a total racket. I remember watching our captain shake his head in disbelief at the orders the pilot was shouting. It was pure incompetence; I don’t even think the guy knew the difference between port and starboard. I had completely put that experience out of my mind.
RE: Fact #37 (Large Banknotes Help Hide Corruption) – If we had $1000 bills, some jerk would inevitably walk into my store to buy a $2 keychain and expect me to break the bill.
Technically, we still do. The U.S. stopped printing $500 and $1000 bills in 1934. They are still technically legal tender, but collectors pay way more than face value for them now.
RE: Fact #8 (Dante’s Corruption Exile Created Masterpiece) – Fun fact: The Divine Comedy was originally just titled The Comedy because back then, stories only fell into two categories: tragedies and comedies. This is why theater is represented by the ‘Sock and Buskin’ masks, where the sock represents comedy and the buskin represents tragedy. When Giovanni Boccaccio read it, he called Dante ‘divinely inspired, ‘ which is how the author was described. The title eventually changed to Divina Commedia, with the first published use in 1555 by Gabriel Giolito. However, the word ‘Divine’ originally referred to the author himself rather than the work.
I own the edition published by Olschki in Florence for the 600th anniversary, number 43 if I remember correctly. It is a pretty impressive book.
RE: Fact #49 (Greylord Exposed Chicago Court Corruption) – That was back in the 80s, and sadly, we still have a long way to go to fix the corruption here.
RE: Fact #29 (Tom Noe’s Rare Coin Scandal) – I don’t know who’s more to blame here. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to let a guy invest $50 million of state money into rare coins?
Remember that governments are massive. Some background: in 1996, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature changed the rules so the state didn’t have to keep its money in bonds. That opened the door for people like Tom Noe, a big GOP fundraiser and coin dealer, to manage state funds. Since the state had so much cash, they wanted to earn returns, and some people claimed they could help with that. Noe got $50 million, and he just stole it. It’s classic corruption.
RE: Fact #4 (Ximen Bao Drowned River Scam) – At the ceremony, Ximen Bao met them at the river. The elder, the local official, and the shamaness’s disciple were there. Ximen Bao claimed the maiden wasn’t pretty enough, so he told his soldiers to throw the shamaness into the river to report the delay to the River God. After a while, he asked why she was taking so long, then tossed the disciples in one by one. When they didn’t return, he suggested the inspector and the local power-brokers go in to fetch them, but they all knelt and begged for mercy. The people of Ye were terrified, and nobody ever brought up finding a bride for the River God again.
RE: Fact #39 (Savonarola Burned Florence’s Corrupt Luxury) – Not exactly a shocker, is it?
RE: Fact #13 (Band Aid Relief Fueled Corruption) – I was in the class of 1987 and needed a research topic for a paper, so I tried to verify if those famine relief songs actually accomplished their goal. After digging through weeks of reporting, I landed on the same conclusion: the only real result was that a lot of people in the West got to feel better about themselves.
RE: Fact #9 (Sisamnes Sat On Corruption’s Skin) – Just imagine going to bed knowing you have to go skin a guy alive when you wake up because someone ordered you to do it.
‘F— yeah, I love flay Fridays!’ The person who says that is the guy who already applied for the torturer job in the first place.
Imagine showing up to work and your seat is upholstered with the remains of your predecessor, who happened to be your father.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – You missed every time a president has used an executive order to deploy troops without a formal declaration of war.
Presidents get away with that because of Congressional AUMFs. Congress basically passed the buck on war powers. The problem is that recent presidents have interpreted those authorizations so broadly that they use them for almost anything. It’s not technically illegal, but it’s definitely a result of Congress shirking its responsibilities.
RE: Fact #13 (Band Aid Relief Fueled Corruption) – Meanwhile, back in the 1960s: [Biafra Airlift] >By 1968, a year after the Nigerian Civil War began, a blockade by the military meant massive numbers of children were starving to death. Reports by 1969 indicated over 1, 000 children were dying each day. An official declared, “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it.” >The international community, including the UN and most governments, mostly stayed silent, calling it an internal affair. U Thant, the UN Secretary General, refused to back the airlift. >President Lyndon Johnson even complained to the State Department about having to “get those … babies off my TV set, ” while using a slur. Despite that, the U.S. started funding relief. By 1969, the U.S. had sold eight C-97 military cargo planes to JCA and reportedly provided 49% of all aid. >At least 29 relief crew members were killed in 10 different incidents during the airlift. >The existence of the airlift proved how much public opinion and civilian action can drive change. Later relief efforts in places like Ethiopia, Somalia, or Yugoslavia never saw that same level of public response.
RE: Fact #28 (Forbes Looted Veterans Bureau Funds) – The Ohio Gang has earned their own spot in the Hall of Presidential Corruption, right across from Grant’s buddies. Both of them were decent men, but they were terrible at picking the right people for the job.
Grant could have been a legendary president just like he was a general, if he’d only been allowed to appoint horses to his cabinet instead of people.
It really destroys a president’s legacy when they’re such a poor judge of character, doesn’t it?
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – That’s cool, but I always felt like the golden age of piracy was more like 2010 to 2016.
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – I wonder if this event inspired the system of veteran-based government in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
RE: Fact #11 (FIFA’s Corruption Film Flopped Spectacularly) – Yes, that is triple digits. The movie is estimated to have lost $26.8 million worldwide.
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – There were several African countries where the General of the Army was handed the entire monthly payroll. He would skim what he thought he was worth and then hand the remainder to his subordinates. This continued down the line until the money was gone. By the time it reached field officers, let alone enlisted soldiers, there was nothing left. Eventually, entire companies of soldiers would just take over roads and charge tolls so they could actually get paid.
RE: Fact #3 (Hu Yaobang’s Reformist Corruption Clash) – It is good to know that there was a politician in China who was a decent, honorable public servant, genuinely loved and respected by his people. Decent politicians actually do exist.
There was also a letter to the government signed by former leaders of the party urging them not to use the “people’s” army against the people.
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – This is such a low-profile story in US history, almost like it’s intentional so people don’t get the idea that they can actually stand up to their government.
And yet, we have a whole national holiday celebrating an event where we successfully overthrew a government.
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – Rumor has it that Cairo Tower was built using that bribe money as a massive middle finger.
RE: Fact #15 (ABSCAM Caught Congress Selling Influence) – Here are the officials convicted of bribery and conspiracy in 1981: Senator Harrison A. Williams, Representatives Frank Thompson, John Jenrette, Raymond Lederer, Michael “Ozzie” Myers, John M. Murphy, and Richard Kelly. Plus five others, including: Angelo Errichetti (Mayor of Camden, NJ), George X. Schwartz (Philadelphia City Council President), Harry Jannotti and Louis Johanson (Philadelphia City Councilmen), and an INS inspector. One Republican, and the rest were Democrats.
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – Some choice quotes from Mobutu: “”When I need one million, I ask my private secretary. He calls the Prime Minister asking for two million. The Prime Minister asks the Finance Minister for three million who in turn calls the Governor of the Central Bank demanding 4 million. In the end I get my million.”” “”Dictatorship is necessary to ensure stability and progress.”” “”I am the father of the nation; my word is law.”” “”I will rule until the end of time.””
RE: Fact #30 (Truman Committee Exposed War Profiteering) – It is worth noting that it wasn’t just Truman leading the charge; the committee reached a unanimous decision every single time. I’m torn on whether the massive savings or the level of teamwork is the more impressive part.
RE: Fact #42 (Schoolcraft Recorded NYPD Quota Corruption) – It seems like CompStat is the main reason police corruption is so bad. The system is built on tracking numbers for everything, arrests, citations, tickets, and expecting those numbers to increase every year. Officers are basically pressured to pump up their stats, and when a serious crime like rape occurs, they’re incentivized to downgrade it just to make the crime rate look lower.
“Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels. I’ve been here before.”
RE: Fact #27 (Athens Veterans Fought Ballot Corruption) – These kinds of stories are exactly why the debate over gun ownership isn’t going anywhere.
RE: Fact #7 (Daphne Galizia’s Final Corruption Warning) – She reported on government corruption, money-laundering allegations, nepotism, patronage, links between Malta’s online gambling industry and organized crime, and payments from the Government of Azerbaijan. Throughout her career, she was constantly harassed and threatened for her work and opinions. This is not a complete list, but here it goes: 1. Her front door was set on fire in 1996. 2. The family dog had its throat slit and was left on her doorstep. 3. Years later, her neighbor’s car was burned, likely in a botched attack. 4. In 2006, two stacks of tires were doused with gasoline and set on fire next to her family home. Paul Caruana Galizia stopped the fire from spreading when he woke his parents, who were sleeping inside. 5. After she started her blog, her terrier Zulu was poisoned and her collie Rufus was shot. Death threats were an almost daily occurrence, arriving through phone calls, letters, notes, text messages, emails, and comments on her blog. Her writing also led to numerous legal battles; by her death, she was dealing with 42 different libel suits. Even so, she never backed down and kept reporting until her death.
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – In New York, when Governor Cuomo’s corruption investigation started pointing toward his office, he just shut the whole thing down.
RE: Fact #45 (Nixon Operatives Targeted Jack Anderson) – The only thing that kept Richard Nixon from ruling as a dictator for life was that he wasn’t a team player, and his paranoia led him to make enemies within his own party before he could fully marginalize them. American history is chillingly fragile. Our luck is going to run out eventually.
RE: Fact #8 (Dante’s Corruption Exile Created Masterpiece) – I remember hearing that when Dante wrote the Inferno, he was essentially kissing up to the ruling class in Florence by dropping his enemies into hell, but by the time it was released, the people he had put in hell had gained power and were not impressed. That is just off-the-cuff history I picked up about 30 years ago, though, so it might be a myth.
I have an annotated copy of The Divine Comedy. Half of the notes explained who the political figures were and why Dante included them. Imagine if someone wrote a fantasy version of the Watergate scandal and you were reading it in the year 2672.
To quote Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions summarizing the man: ‘…The Medieval Italian poet who told several popes to go to hell, and then followed through with a detailed description of their fiery eternal torment.’
RE: Fact #1 (Mobutu’s Stolen Zaire Aid Fortune) – People like this are why Africa has received over 50 Marshall-style plans and still ends up in the same position.
RE: Fact #12 (Sopranos Permit Denial Backfired Badly) – This and the intervention for Chrissy are my favorites just because of how much chaos happens in such a short amount of time.
“When I came in to open one morning, there you were with your head half in the toilet. Your hair was in the toilet water… disgusting.”
RE: Fact #33 (Cheran Expelled Crime And Corruption) – 599 murders in four months is a crazy high number for a state with 4.5 million people. For context, Norway had 29 murders for the entire year when their population was around 5.1 million.
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – I’m looking forward to seeing Operation Don’t Mess With Texas, Operation Peach Pit, and Operation Best Dakota.
RE: Fact #43 (LA Deputies Hid FBI Informant) – The only good thing I get from this is that the FBI was actually investigating the corruption. It’s been way too easy lately to just label the whole government as corrupt.
RE: Fact #12 (Sopranos Permit Denial Backfired Badly) – That is my favorite episode, and it was directed by Steve Buscemi. Tony Soprano: [on the phone] It’s a bad connection, so I’m talking fast! The guy you’re looking for is an ex-commando! He killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handed! Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: Get the f— out of here. Tony Soprano: Yeah. Nice, huh? He was with the Interior Ministry. The guy’s like a Russian Green Beret. He cannot come back and tell this story. You understand? Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: I hear you. [hangs up] You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator. Christopher Moltisanti: His house looked like sh*t.
I always wondered why that episode felt so much better than the other good ones. Old Steve at it again.
RE: Fact #19 (Nasser Pocketed CIA Bribe Money) – It also mentions they tried to ruin the Indonesian president by faking a porn video of him with a prostitute, but that didn’t work out.
Pretty sure that was Russia. It wasn’t a fake tape, but a real one. When the KGB tried to blackmail him with it, he just said, ‘Lmao, no one cares, can I have a copy?’
Funny enough, both the CIA and KGB tried that. The KGB had an actual sex tape and threatened him with it. He didn’t care at all and even asked for a copy to share with his country to show off his prowess. The CIA then tried to fake a porno, but it only made him look better. Sukarno: Soviets, inform Indonesia. I have mated with a woman! KGB agent: Uhhggghh…
RE: Fact #38 (Irpinia Earthquake Relief Fed Mafia) – The exact same thing happened with all the funding meant for small business Covid relief in the U.S.
RE: Fact #21 (Heshen Stole A Dynasty’s Fortune) – I bet he lived an incredibly lavish life for the late 18th century in China.
“2, 790 rooms in his estates, 12, 000 acres of land, 10 bank branches, 10 pawnbroker branches, 58, 000 taels of pure gold, 100 large gold ingots, 56, 600 medium silver ingots, 5, 830, 000 small silver ingots, 58, 000 foreign silver dollars, 1, 500, 000 copper coins, 300 kilograms of top-quality Jilin ginseng, 1, 200 jade charms, 230 pearl bracelets, 10 large pearls, 10 large rubies, and dozens of solid gold or silver place settings. He also had 14, 300 bolts of fine silk, 20, 000 sheets of fine sheep-fur wool, 550 fox hides, 850 raccoon dog hides, 56, 000 sheep and cattle hides, 7, 000 sets of fine clothing, 361, 000 bronze and tin vessels, 100, 000 porcelain vessels from famous masters, 24 solid-gold beds, and 460 high-quality European clocks.”
RE: Fact #40 (Rocky Top Exposed Tennessee Corruption) – I always imagine state governments freak out whenever the feds decide to stick their noses into how things are being run. Also, 1986 really wasn’t that long ago.
I doubt many people on factrepublic were even born yet in 1986. Most of us seem to be in our mid-to-late 20s, so that feels like ancient history to the majority of us.
RE: Fact #25 (Jackson’s Corruption Hunt Found Theft) – Oh good. My ancestor and namesake actually did something worthwhile besides the Trail of Tears.
RE: Fact #18 (Guy Kieffer Vanished Investigating Cocoa) – People complain that journalists just write clickbait or ask softball questions, yet nobody wants to pay for real investigative work or seems to care when something like this happens.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – His exile was self-imposed because he didn’t want to go through another trial. He famously burned his campaign account books out of anger, but his prosecutors made a mistake by scheduling his trial on the anniversary of the Battle of Zama, which led to his acquittal. He ended up leaving the city to avoid the risk of a retrial on a day that might go less favorably.
RE: Fact #31 (Chris Hansen Exposed Hidden Corruption) – He has also faced charges for fraud and stole money from a Kickstarter campaign, along with a bunch of other shady stuff.
He was a legitimate, respected journalist until his problems with infidelity and alcohol took over, and he managed to burn through all his credibility.
RE: Fact #17 (Scipio Africanus Rejected Ungrateful Rome) – He claimed he was innocent, but from what I’ve read, he likely was guilty. His argument, and the stance of many other Romans, was that this kind of corruption was just standard practice. Everybody did it.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – >In all cases, Congress or the President acted against the most clearly defined legal course of action at the time, “although in no case were the actions illegal.” That’s a pretty big detail to leave out. The whole idea of a “clearly defined legal course of action” for a presidential pardon is pretty fuzzy to begin with.
RE: Fact #4 (Ximen Bao Drowned River Scam) – I learned about this by reading Shiji, the Records of the Grand Historian. If you are into Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I definitely recommend it. They are great stories.
RE: Fact #7 (Daphne Galizia’s Final Corruption Warning) – Journalism is becoming one of the most dangerous professions in the world.
Journalism has always been one of the most dangerous professions. There is a movie called Kill the Messenger about a real-life reporter facing pressure from all sides, and it is a fascinating watch.
RE: Fact #22 (Kimberley Process Failed Blood Diamonds) – Another fun diamond fact: there is no way to confirm if those companies that claim to turn a loved one’s cremated ashes into a diamond actually do that, or if they just pocket your $4, 000+ and send you a $20 mass-produced stone.
RE: Fact #32 (China Sends Officials To Prison Tours) – We do something similar here. When I started my job with the Navy, I had to watch a full-length feature film that included interviews with people serving time for treason, explaining exactly how they got caught.
RE: Fact #9 (Sisamnes Sat On Corruption’s Skin) – I would imagine in a place where lying is a capital offense, taking a bribe would also result in the death penalty.
Imagine living in a place where a simple execution is getting off easy, and being skinned alive is the punishment for white-collar crime. There is a Hardcore History episode about this called ‘Painfotainment.’
Literally the first thing I thought of when reading your comment was, ‘Oh! Dan Carlin talked about this!’ I am so glad I have an episode lined up for my commute tomorrow.
RE: Fact #26 (Corrupt Bargains Shaped American Politics) – The 1824 election drama only counts as a “corrupt bargain” because it made people angry. Jackson’s supporters expected the House to follow the popular vote, but that isn’t how the Constitution was designed. Those expectations were just misguided. The 1877 Compromise was definitely shady, but it wasn’t illegal. The Republicans won the election, and they just negotiated for votes to kill off Reconstruction. Trading policy for political support isn’t against the rules. The Ford pardon is the real issue because it actually goes against established precedent. If a president can’t pardon themselves from impeachment, most people assume they shouldn’t be able to appoint someone else who will just turn around and do it for them.
RE: Fact #24 (William Lamport Inspired Zorro’s Rebellion) – Yeah, he was actually Irish, which is why Antonio Banderas played him in the movie.
RE: Fact #23 (Grievance Studies Hoax Exposed Corruption) – In other words, everyone just saw what they wanted to see, and nothing actually changed. Even though the hoaxes pointed out a serious issue: some top journals in areas like gender studies can’t distinguish between real research and utter, harmful nonsense. The field seems to rely entirely on the integrity of the authors because it lacks a way to identify quality scholarship. As a result, bad-faith actors and people pushing agendas get a free pass. If you can’t tell garbage from gold, you shouldn’t be in the business of grading gold.
Human nature 101: Priority 1, save your own hide. Priority 2, convince yourself you’re right. Priority 3, convince others you’re right. If number 3 fails, fall back to number 1. These people will never admit to a mistake, not because they’re stupid, but because protecting themselves is always the main goal.
Exactly. And it wasn’t just a ‘bad study’ they managed to get published, it was a chapter of Mein Kampf.
RE: Fact #35 (Peru Built Presidential Prison Cells) – I’m willing to bet this setup is strictly for their own safety. I doubt the general prison population would be very welcoming to a bunch of ex-presidents.
RE: Fact #34 (Susana Higuchi Challenged Fujimori’s Corruption) – I had no idea there were enough Japanese immigrants in Peru that they actually ended up with both a Japanese-descended president and first lady at the same time.
There are actually more people of Japanese descent living in Brazil than in the U.S. There was also a fair amount of Korean and Chinese immigration throughout Latin America and the Caribbean; my own great-grandfather was Chinese-Cuban. Most left around the time of the revolution, but you can still find a Chinatown in Havana. There’s also a significant population of people with Asian heritage in Mexico and Argentina. I recall there’s even a famous Mexican-Uruguayan actress who is of Japanese and Lebanese descent.
There was a surprising wave of immigration from China and Japan to South America during the mid-to-late 1800s. It coincided with the immigration surge in North America, so it makes total sense. I actually had a coworker at a previous job who was Chinese-Peruvian.
RE: Fact #36 (Piracy’s Golden Age Fed Corruption) – No, it was definitely when Gol D. Roger revealed where his treasure was hidden right before he was executed.
RE: Fact #39 (Savonarola Burned Florence’s Corrupt Luxury) – This reads like a slightly grittier version of a Terry Pratchett book.