Sunday, January 11, 2009

Transparency and Accountability (Part 2)

With Wall Street in meltdown, a lot of people has been accusing Wall Street executives of greed. They have been running up heavy bills on spas, resort holidays, and huge year-end bonus for themselves. All while their companies are losing money.

Some have even accused them of outright fraud, with the behavior of Bernard Madoff as their leading example. Bernard Madoff is accused of running a pyramid scam that cost his investors US$50 billion, and at least 2 of his investors has taken their lives over the scam. Here in Asia however, events in India and China has proved that the culture of greed is not a wholly American thing.

Last week the Indian stock market tumbled about 7% after news came out that software giant Satyam Computers founder and chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted that he has been falsifying his company's accounts and assets for years. In China, officials from China's Guangdong province gambled away more than $3million of the public money in recent years. Six officials had been jailed and punished with the heaviest sentence handed to Wu Xingkui, an official in the Communist Party of China that had carried out several successful operations against gambling, pornography and drugs. Obviously he had been successful because he was a gambler himself.

It happen in America, in China, in India; who can can it wouldn't happen in Singapore? Rightly or wrongly, a lot of Singaporeans are worried and worried people asked more questions. As such, I suggest the Singapore government make an effort to increase the transparency and accountability of the government.

It's in everyone's interest.

1 comment:

Zenebi said...

Zen's jaded response: It's in everybody's interest except the gov's.