World. "The suspicions that are being investigated are very serious," said First State Attorney Marianne Djupesland of the Økokrim Corruption Hunter Team to the Class Fight this week.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Now it is the state-owned Telenor. Or the Telegrafverket, as it was called when Norway was in union with Sweden and the work was created in 1855. First in 1994, the company changed its name to Telenor, after bearing the name Televerket for the previous 25 years. But even after the Telenor Group company is listed on the stock exchange and is now referred to as "partially privatized", the Norwegian state still owns 54 percent of the shares. The second largest shareholder is Folketrygdfondet with 5 percent, the rest are small shareholders with just one percent share.
In practice, it is thus the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and Minister of Trade, Monica Mæland (H), who have total control over Telenor. At the last general meeting, at Fornebu 14. May, then Thorland Bakke's department director was also present. She voted for the 818.449.421 shares she represented, which was the entire 78 percent of all shareholders present in the Telenor company.
This week, the opposition has criticized Maeland for not knowing that the Telenor-owned company Vimpelcom has been investigated for months for corruption – including for possible disbursement of over 600 million to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the dictatorial president of Uzbekistan.
But the problem is far greater than just the fact that Mæland should have taken better care of CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas and his colleagues in their quest to hijack new million-dollar contracts with corrupt and undemocratic regimes. The problem is rather this whole "Norwegian model" – with state-owned companies such as Telenor, Statoil, Hydro and Yara who have all been convicted or investigated for corruption. It is the Norwegian paternalistic contribution to the world's corruption and state-based mafia activities that should be up for debate – not just an "unfortunate" single transaction in Uzbekistan. But even this time, one will probably end up with the case not being communicated well enough.
This applies to slightly more than Telenor's 43 percent stake in Russian Vimpelcom, large money transfers to Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands, the anonymous company Takilant and the purchase of telephony licenses in Uzbekistan. It is common to blame the Uzbeks, the dictator's daughter Gulnara Karimova and the Russian Vimpelcom. But of those who have seized power and money, from most honest Uzbeks, one can not expect more. Anything other than corruption would be surprising. So the arrow of responsibility should rather point in the opposite direction – towards elected representatives like Mæland, who do not set foot on illegal and unethical trade, who first and foremost destroy for most people in other countries.
For once again, a Norwegian state-owned company ends up in a state of corruption. In January, the fertilizer company Yara approved a fine of NOK 295 million for bribes to the son of the Minister of Petroleum in Libya and for two other corruption cases, in India and Russia. In India, money was also given under the table to the son of a bureaucrat in the Indian Fertilizer Department. On January 5, the case against the four Yara employees – former chief executive Thorleif Enger, former legal director Ken Wallace, Frenchman Daniel Clauw and Thor Holba – will appear in Oslo District Court. "A key issue will be who decided that Yara should enter into an agreement with the consultant, who was the son of the Libyan oil minister. Former legal director Ken Wallace has in interrogation pointed to Tor Holba. Holba, for his part, says he is a whistleblower, "writes DN.
And so the pointer round continues in the corruption cases. For Norwegian state-owned companies, subject to the Minister of Commerce, it seems like they are just about detouring their sons when they serve roughly in undemocratic countries. In 2006, Statoil entered into a settlement with the US Credit Inspectorate after two years earlier, the company approved a fine from Økokrim for bribing President Son Mehdi Hashemi, to secure development licenses in the South Pars gas field. CEO Olav Fjell and Chairman Leif Terje Løddesøl had to go after the disclosures.
Ukas Telenor / Vimpelcom disclosure shows that Norwegian companies are still struggling with the ethical rise in prices. Some in this country obviously have too much to gain from the Norwegian state culture of corruption. The many disclosures – which are probably only a minor proportion of the realities – show that there is also coverage to say that it is "typically Norwegian to be corrupt", in addition to "good".
Should these state corporations, where the top ownership is the government, continue to invest in undemocratic regimes? Because they obviously have to break Norwegian and international law to win all these contracts? Telenor's Vimpelcom relies almost exclusively on markets in undemocratic regimes. And how much do we really know about Statoil's commitment to a country like Angola?
Or what about Telenor as the first in the world to jump into Burma, once Aung San Suu Kyi was released? Baksaas could not wait to see if the military regime's promises of freedom were credible. Recent messages from Burma show that the world has been looking forward too soon. The Nobel Prize winner is absurdly refused to stand for presidential election next year. Nevertheless, Telenor is allowed to enter into its uncritical agreements with the military regime, without debate.
The question is how much Norwegian companies and the government really care about the ethics of these investments. This week, Amnesty International released a new report on the deteriorating human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates. Imprisonment, persecution and torture have become commonplace for democracy activists in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. But when Foreign Minister Børge Brende (H) visited the country this week, he did not even raise human rights issues with the authorities.
The idea of the uniquely strong Norwegian ethics in the face of international corporate culture should have died out. Investments in emerging economies are often seen as an alternative to the so-called aid – or repayment after unfair trade, as aid can also be called. However, there are similarities in the worldview of the two ideas: Paternalism permeates both aid and the business class.
The idea of aid was not dead, as Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo warned in the book "Dead Aid" (2009). When Bob Geldof once again relaunches the Christmas song "Do they know its Christmas?", The very symbol of what is wrong with the aid relationship, it is just the latest example of old ideas of missionary thinking about new thoughts on aid living side by side.
"International development is dying," writes lecturer at London School of Economics (LSE) Jason Hickel at Al-Jazeera this week. He points out that Europe and the United States have been involved in development and development projects for more than six decades. Nevertheless, global differences are increasing and the number of poor is increasing. Fair trade is just a concept. ALI coffee does not cure the mine for Ali and Amina – it only removes the mine for Joh. Johannson Kaffe AS, something it has been doing since 1866.
Some aid actors have realized the injustice. They are therefore working for the democratization of the WTO / World Bank, for fair trade agreements and work against tax evasion. But Hickel points out, "Since the leadership of the Gates Foundation and some NGOs find these cases inappropriate, such alternative voices are ignored in favor of the same old charity and aid story."
Hickel, therefore, suggests “turning the last nails into the coffin of paternalistic aid history, about white saviors and brown poor victims, and rather telling the real story of how the rich get richer behind the backs of the poor. It would be a good starting point to talk about development in the 21st century. ”
Ny Tid believes that neither old-fashioned aid paternalism nor Norwegian state-owned companies' desperate search for new telephony markets and oil fields will be left as something glorious for Norway in the future. But right now it is neo-colonialism and neo-paternalism that prevail.
Leader in Ny Tid 21 November 2014
