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Abdul Kader Mollah |
There are many reasons countries are and/or stay impoverished. While globalization, unfair tariffs, a history of colonization, and other external bogeymen often receive a disproportionate share of the blame, a significant % of the fault also lies internally.
This article, posted on the news tab by mutineer Art Vandalay presents a particularly galling example –
He was a lowly sales assistant on a salary of $100 a month, but Abdul Kader Mollah allegedly amassed a personal fortune of $300 million by becoming Bangladesh’s Mr Big of corporate bribery.In 12 years with the Titas Gas Distribution Company, Mr Mollah struck corrupt deals with thousands of factories to undercharge them for the gas they consumed, and pocketed millions of dollars in bribes in return, officials claim.
With a population of ~150M, Mr. Mollah quite literally stole 2 bucks from every man / woman / child in the impoverished nation over the course of his treacherous career.
Making things even worse, however, is that Mollah’s exploits were replicated through out the firm –
His case, although extreme, is not an isolated one. Last week authorities said that at least 80 per cent of Titas’ 2,800 workers had made millions of dollars by under-charging in exchange for bribes…The Ittefaq newspaper today ran a front page story on three more multi-millionaire gas workers, including a former receptionist who now allegedly owns an apartment complex and plots of land in smart districts of Dhaka.
Let’s do some back of the envelope calculations… 80% of 2800 workers with conservative estimate of 2 million a piece adds up to almost $4.4BILLION swindled over the course of thier scheme (that would be a little over 1% of Bangladesh’s annual GDP or $30/head).
My econ 101 hat forces a couple of questions about how this scheme could endure so powerfully for so long… For a commodity as, uh, liquid as the international market for Oil & Gas, and with the massive & competitive (relatively speaking) Indian economy a few hundred miles away, how can this lowly clerk have so much power to set local prices?
Afterall, by selectively handing out discounts, he’s robbing his own firm of revenues/profits and thus should be affecting his own prospects at the company in the long term… And, presumably, shouldn’t his customers be able to save the $$$ associated with the bribe and take their biz somewhere else?
The reason, of course, that this “state” of affairs was able to persist is revealed off-handedly in the article –
Titas is the country’s largest state-owned gas distributor, with an 80-per cent market share in Bangladesh
State ownership = price controls, locked in consumers & locked in market share = instead of a market price for the commodity, there’s a market price for bureaucratic favors.
Great points, though the puzzle doesn’t even really stop there–why is the market for bureaucratic favors necessarily so inefficient (as it appears to be on average in S. Asia). . . it seems to work ok-ish in Scandinavia–see, e.g., the wonderful book by Canadian political economist Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge U. Press 1998). At the end of the day, I’m still more confused than sure of myself or the correct view–this is truly one of the more important unknown questions to be solved (hopefully) in the 21st century!
that is coz he is passing on a % of his take to his superiors.
amazing entrepreneurial skills – albeit misplaced.
Announcing the 2008 Winner of the Kenneth Lay/Enron Entrepreneurial Vision Award.
300 Million? Damn. With scratch like that, the brother should’ve grabbed a bitch and bounced to Barbados.
He is a clever genius. A little bit on the evil side, but a still a genius.
When I was overcharged for electricity in 2001 (Mountain View, California), I paid quite a bit more than $30 extra.
Which, on an eerily similar note was also the product of an fcked up regulatory system – in this case, both a retail price cap *and a supply cap. Unlike Titas Gas, however, what eventually brought down Enron wasn’t corruption per se (they weren’t a govt agency) but rather, accounting fraud which was eventually discovered via capital market analysts…
“why is the market for bureaucratic favors necessarily so inefficient (as it appears to be on average in S. Asia). . . it seems to work ok-ish in Scandinavia”
It could be because Scandinavia is homogeneous and South Asia is not.
I’ve met a few Bangladeshis over here in Boston, and I’ve read about some of them in the newspapers, such as that kid who rescued that Jewish boy in NYC not-so-long ago. They all claim that their family was very rich and owned a lot of property and slaves.
This man is my idol!
10 · boston_mahesh said
There’s a few of us Bangladeshis on this forum too. And not all of us claim rich families with large properties and slaves 😉
Besides passing some money up to his superiors, Mollah also ensured that this cronies would end up in lucrative branch postings for Titas Gas, thus ensuring that one could always have access to a corrupt gas purveyor, and that money (minus his cut) would continue to be funnelled through him.
Tight Ass Gas Distribution Company…hilarious
Yes but Bangladesh is a fairly homogenous unit.
There is only one hope for eliminating corruption in the developing countries – media that is uncensored and vigilant.
at least he things big.
I wonder if this guy Abdul Mollah got a micro-loan from Grameen Bank?
Do Sylhetese think they are Bangla? The ones who run restaurants (and this I believe is all of them) try to pass as Indian. Then there is this one fellow who tries to pass as French Breton fooling of course exactly one person– himself.
18 · my_dog_jagat said
In Bangladesh, most Sylhetis consider themselves Bengali. Mind you, many are often rather clannish and suspicious of outsiders, but you’ll find them cheering on say, the Bangladeshi cricket team like there’s no tomorrow.
In England, most Sylheti run restaurants were called “Indian” because that term had a better recognition factor than say, “Bangladeshi” or “Sylheti”. While that is still largely true, many of these restaurants, particularly after the success of Bangladeshi-born celebrity chef Tommy Miah, are now identifying themselves as Bengali or Bangladeshi.
That said, there does seem to be a splinter movement in England (among some of the younger generation) to consider Sylheti as something distinct from Bengali, particularly when it comes to language. Frankly, it seems to me, a native Bengali (Bangla) speaker, to be just another Bengali dialect influenced somewhat by Assamese; I can follow it, albeit with the same minor difficulty that I have with say some of the other regional Bengali dialects, e.g. Chittagongian (Chatgai).
Hahaha. As a Sylheti, I must say that I find this statement hilarious. I think you can think of Sylhetis to Bangladesh as Texans to America. They’re very much about community and togetherness but they don’t differentiate themsevles from Bengali vs. non-Bengali and Sylheti instead. It IS true that in London there is a huge Sylheti community who are focused in on maintaining their Sylheti identity, but most of those immigrants come from small villages in Sylhet, so have been used to living with only Syhletis, speaking only Sylheti, etc..
Although the dialect is quite different from Bangla, there is no distinction really between culture and tradition.
I’m a Molvi Bazari Sytlheti and my identity is primarily Sylheti. I don’t consider myself Bengali at all.
This is because of our unique language, outlook, habits, family togetherness and foods. Inter-marriage between Sylhetis and Bengalis from other areas is not common and rivalry eg. over Monica Ali’s book, is often fierce. This despite the fact we are racially similar and mostly follow the Muslim religion.