No place for corrosive corruption

Sir Bob Jones Photo/File

New Zealand vies with Singapore each year in the annual corruption index as the world's least corrupt nation. It's arguably our proudest achievement but I suspect few are aware of it, as we simply take it for granted.

This is not merely a matter of morality; rather, corruption is the scourge of the world and carries a huge economic cost.

In my travels, I've encountered petty corruption with officialdom everywhere. Here are some examples:

Once I drove all over Honduras with Latin buff and Auckland lawyer Geof Cone. Knowing the ropes, Geof came armed with specially manufactured, ornate one-page certificates signed by Benito Mussolini in the name of a fictional state.

Periodically, we were stopped by army roadblocks and the routine was always the same - they would hit on us for cash, we would say our money was back in the hotel, they would demand our passports and Geof would whip out a couple of his certificates, which sometimes they would attempt to read upside down. They would then say we could have our "passports" back at such-and-such location on payment of $50.

We dished out a fair number. I've encountered similar roadblocks hitting on rental cars (sucker tourists) in numerous countries, such as Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Madagascar and even once by the Russian Army on the road from Trans-Niestra to Moldova. Shouting abuse saw them all off.

In 1978, with a girlfriend, we went to Afghanistan to fly-fish the northeastern pan-handle stretching up into China. But the communist takeover occurred the day we arrived and they wouldn't give us a travel permit until they had secured total control.

While ensconced in our Kabul hotel, I befriended an elderly Boeing vice-president, there for a ceremonial signing for the state airline's order of new passenger jets. He told me this was all he now did, travelling about the world for such ceremonies.

One evening he returned bewildered. It transpired the new communist regime had declined the standard pre-agreed bribe, which he had then deducted from the purchase price. This, he said, was a worldwide first in his extensive experience with Third World state airlines.

The United States has now legislated to make it a serious crime for American corporations to pay foreign bribes. This will be the end of exporting, corporations protested, and tried to have the legislation amended to allow bribes to government officials to do what they're supposed to do, rather than what they shouldn't. But the legislators stuck to their guns.

The Australians then introduced the same legislation, to similar protests from their exporters. The recent scandal over the Australian Wheat Board paying bribes to Saddam Hussein is a consequence of that. Nevertheless, the exporters' concerns were real.

In Hanoi in the early 1990s, returning to my hotel after midnight, I stopped to look at a 20-metre deep construction hole where dozens of men working under floodlight were carrying the excavated soil up in shallow panniers. The Aussie site manager joined me. "This is ridiculous," I protested. "Why not use diggers?"

"Mate, they've been on the wharves for nine months but we're not allowed to bribe the officials any more to release them."

In the 1970s, my company let a contract to a Sydney building company whose boss told me he was just back from Indonesia where he had secured a large government construction contract. When it came time to sign, the figure was now US$4 million higher than his tender. He was then handed a note with a Swiss bank account number belonging to the president and told he was to pay the extra US$4 million into it.

Corruption is rife in New South Wales and Queensland, and scandals are regular news items. Once I was sitting in my Sydney office when a young fellow came in. "Andrew [the manager] said I have to get your approval," he said. This was a contract to lease a warehouse to the navy, scarcely the sort of thing they would normally bother me with.

Puzzled, I asked why. "Well, we have to sling an all-expenses Fiji holiday to the naval purchasing officer's family," he replied.

Outraged, I buzzed Andrew and told him to go to the police. "Are you mad?" he barked. "They won't understand what the problem is."

I had exactly the same response more recently - this after a Sydney-based former wife wrote off my new BMW, or so she was told.

Six months later, I received a phone call in New Zealand from a senior Adelaide detective who told me a local "crim" they were tailing was now driving my "written off" BMW around and I'd been a scam victim of the tow-truck firm.

I found out the tow company's name and when the detective called back I suggested this would be an easy catch for the NSW police. "They'll be in on it," he spluttered.

I mention all of this given the outrageously light sentence of nine months' home detention accorded to Christchurch policeman Gordon Meyor. Offering to trade fines for sexual favours is not simply sleazy, as the judge seemed to view it - it's about a principle which is absolute, regardless of its nature or monetary dimension.

It behoves the Police Commissioner to appeal this ridiculous sentence so that wiser heads can send a vitally important message - namely that corruption is corrosive, strikes at the heart of civil society and will absolutely not be tolerated.