Leandros Rakintzis Quotes
I don’t think it is right that we spend the money to investigate only to have the laws give immunity retroactively. Maybe there should be protection for political decisions. But if you stole a million dollars you should be treated like a common criminal.
His office was responsible for investigation of public official’s corruption. The law changed as Rakintzis was building cases against several prominent politicians. The Greek task forces to investigate corruption operated on shoestring budgets, however, they had already had a few notable victories in a country that was rarely able to get convictions in the past. The immunity statute in effect negated the anti-corruption initiatives in a country that has historically been riddled with political corruption. See {642277} for the “justification” of the immunity legislation.
Leandros Rakintzis, Greek Inspector General of Public Administration, Criticism of the Greek Parliament which had given retroactive immunity to politicians who were being investigated for corruption, Statement Athens, September 2014, Quoted in New York Times, October 17, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In the midst of some corruption investigations of prominent Greek politicians, the Greek Parliament passed legislation giving politicians retroactive immunity from prosecution for most corruption situations. Alivizatos was one of the few supporters of the new laws who would defend them publically. Critics observe that one sad conclusion that could be reached from his statement is that no one would want a political position in Greece unless they could steal and make money. See {642276} for the reaction of the Greek Inspector General who was in the midst of many corruption cases.
Many corporations getting corporate welfare in the form of subsidies and tax breaks often to not even perceive that they are taking something from the government. They sometimes think that they create jobs and the workers in turn pay taxes to the governments so the subsidies or other benefits that they are getting from government is an "investment" by government. Of course that usually do not perceive it to be a government investment to pay for training for an unemployed worker, or heath care for the poor who in good health might be working. That is welfare.
At the time, Root was a Senator from New York and was trying to eliminate the large number of patronage jobs, most of which were not even real jobs—just payment. These developed the name of “No Show Jobs.”
The George W. Bush administration had a strong penchant for loyalty and would not fire Republican officials who had proved incompetent or unethical. In the midst of a disastrous Iraq War, there was a sex scandal in the House of Representatives whereby a Republican member was making homosexual advances to young pages. The House Republican leadership had tried to cover it up rather than protect the pages. Yet no one was fired even after the Congressman resigned and admitted it.
Actually a few minor characters were prosecuted for financial crimes committed during that period but none were prosecuted whose behavior caused or accelerated the meltdown, and no bank officers were prosecuted despite the FBI reporting that hundreds of thousands of Mortgage Foreclosure involved perjury by bank officers in a pattern that was used by most of the large major banks. The Obama administration was in the dilemma of either choosing one or two bank officers of whom to make an example or if all those who had committed serious crimes were prosecutors, it would involve thousands of the officers of almost every major bank and tens of thousands of officials and mortgage related firms. These were among the wealthiest and most influential people in the country, and there would be few left to build the American Banking System back up when that was one of our most important national priorities. They were also amongst the largest political contributors to both political parties. So the government bailed the bankers out financially, allowed them to maintain million dollar of more salaries and bonuses, and gave the entire batch of people who broke the law a de facto immunity from criminal prosecution. A further complicating factor was that many of the most egregious, greedy, and publicly harmful were not illegal as a result of much change in the law as a part of financial deregulation or were new schemes that the financial industry had successfully lobbied to prevent regulation as with Derivatives.
