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Okay, this morning I'm speaking

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on the question of corruption.

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And corruption is defined

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as the abuse of a position of trust

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for the benefit of yourself -- or, in the case of our context,

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your friends, your family or your financiers.

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Okay? Friends, family and financiers.

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But we need to understand what we understand about corruption,

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and we need to understand that

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we have been miseducated about it, and we have to admit that.

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We have to have the courage to admit that

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to start changing how we deal with it.

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The first thing is that the big myth, number one,

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is that in fact it's not really a crime.

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When we get together with friends and family

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and we discuss crime in our country,

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crime in Belmont or crime in Diego or crime in Marabella,

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nobody's speaking about corruption.

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That's the honest truth.

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When the Commissioner of Police comes on TV to talk about crime,

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he isn't speaking about corruption.

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And we know for sure when the Minister of National Security

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is speaking about crime, he's not talking about corruption either.

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The point I'm making is that it is a crime.

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It is an economic crime, because we're involving the looting of taxpayers' money.

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Public and private corruption is a reality.

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As somebody who comes from the private sector,

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I can tell you there's a massive amount of corruption

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in the private sector that has nothing to do with government.

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The same bribes and backhanders and things that take place under the table,

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it all takes place in the private sector.

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Today, I'm focusing on public sector corruption,

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which the private sector also participates in.

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The second important myth to understand --

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because we have to destroy these myths,

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dismantle them and destroy them and ridicule them --

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the second important myth to understand

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is the one that says

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that in fact corruption is only a small problem --

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if it is a problem, it's only a small problem,

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that in fact it's only a little 10 or 15 percent,

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it's been going on forever, it probably will continue forever,

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and there's no point passing any laws, because there's little we can do about it.

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And I want to demonstrate that that, too,

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is a dangerous myth, very dangerous.

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It's a piece of public mischief.

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And I want to speak a little bit,

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take us back about 30 years.

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We're coming out today from Trinidad and Tobago,

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a resource-rich, small Caribbean country,

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and in the early 1970s we had a massive increase in the country's wealth,

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and that increase was caused by the increase in world oil prices.

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We call them petrodollars. The treasury was bursting with money.

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And it's ironic, because

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we're standing today in the Central Bank.

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You see, history's rich in irony.

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We're standing today in the Central Bank,

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and the Central Bank is responsible for a lot of the things I'm going to be speaking about.

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Okay? We're talking about irresponsibility in public office.

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We're speaking about the fact that across the terrace,

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the next tower is the Ministry of Finance,

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and there's a lot of connection with us today,

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so we're speaking within your temple today. Okay?

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(Applause)

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The first thing I want to talk about is that

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when all of this money flowed into our country about 40 years ago,

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we embarked, the government of the day embarked

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on a series of government-to-government arrangements

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to have rapidly develop the country.

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And some of the largest projects in the country

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were being constructed through government-to-government arrangements

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with some of the leading countries in the world,

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the United States and Britain and France and so on and so on.

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As I said, even this building we're standing in -- that's one of the ironies --

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this building was part of that series of complexes,

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what they called the Twin Towers.

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It became so outrageous, the whole situation,

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that in fact a commission of inquiry was appointed,

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and it reported in 1982, 30 years ago it reported --

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the Ballah Report -- 30 years ago,

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and immediately the government-to-government arrangements were stopped.

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The then-Prime Minister went to Parliament

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to give a budget speech, and he said some things that I'll never forget.

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They went right in here. I was a young man at the time.

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It went right into my heart.

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And he said that, in fact — Let me see if this thing works.

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Are we getting a, yeah?—

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That's what he told us.

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He told us that, in fact,

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two out of every three dollars of our petrodollars

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that we spent, the taxpayers' money,

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was wasted or stolen.

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So the 10 or 15 percent is pure mischief.

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As we say, it's a nancy-story. Forget it.

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That's for little children. We are big people,

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and we're trying to deal with what's happening in our society.

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Okay? This is the size of the problem.

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Okay? Two thirds of the money stolen or wasted.

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That was 30 years ago. 1982 was Ballah.

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So what has changed?

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I don't like to bring up embarrassing secrets

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to an international audience, but I have to.

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Four months ago, we suffered a constitutional outrage in this country.

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We call it the Section 34 fiasco, the Section 34 fiasco,

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a suspicious piece of law, and I'm going to say it like it is,

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a suspicious piece of law

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was passed at a suspicious time

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to free some suspects. (Laughter)

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And it was called, those people are called

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the Piarco Airport accused.

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I'm going to have my own lexicon speaking here today.

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They are the Piarco Airport accused.

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It was a constitutional outrage of the first order,

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and I have labeled it the Plot to Pervert Parliament.

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Our highest institution in our country was perverted.

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We are dealing with perverts here

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of an economic and financial nature.

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Do you get how serious this problem is?

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There was massive protest. A lot of us in this room

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took part in the protest in different forms.

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Most importantly, the American embassy complained,

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so Parliament was swiftly reconvened,

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and the law was reversed, it was repealed.

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That's the word lawyers use. It was repealed.

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But the point is

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that Parliament was outwitted in the whole course of events,

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because what really happened is that,

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because of the suspicious passage of that law,

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the law was actually passed into effect

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on the weekend we celebrated our 50th anniversary of independence,

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our jubilee of independence.

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So that is the kind of outrage of the thing.

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It was kind of a nasty way to get maturation, but we got it,

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because we all understood it,

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and for the first time that I could remember,

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there were mass protests against this corruption.

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And that gave me a lot of hope. Okay?

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Those of us who are, sometimes you feel like

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you're a little bit on your own doing some of this work.

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That passage of the law and the repeal of the law

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fortified the case of the Piarco Airport accused.

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So it was one of those really superior double bluff kind of things that took place.

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But what were they accused of?

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What was it that they were accused of?

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I'm being a bit mysterious for those of you out there. What were they accused of?

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We were trying to build, or reconstruct largely,

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an airport that had grown outdated.

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The entire project cost about 1.6 billion dollars,

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Trinidad and Tobago dollars,

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and in fact, we had a lot of bid-rigging

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and suspicious activity, corrupt activity took place.

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And to get an idea of what it consisted of,

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and to put it in context in relationship to this whole

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second myth about it being no big thing,

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we can look at this second slide here.

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And what we have here -- I am not saying so,

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this is the Director of Public Prosecutions in a written statement. He said so.

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And he's telling us that for the $1.6 billion cost of the project,

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one billion dollars has been traced

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to offshore bank accounts.

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One billion dollars of our taxpayers' money

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has been located in offshore bank accounts.

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Being the kind of suspicious person I am,

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I am outraged at that, and I'm going to pause here,

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I'm going to pause now and again and bring in different things.

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I'm going to pause here and bring in something I saw

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in November last year at Wall Street. I was at Zuccotti Park.

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It was autumn. It was cool. It was damp. It was getting dark.

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And I was walking around with the protesters

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looking at the One Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street movement walking around.

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And there was a lady with a sign, a very simple sign,

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a kind of battered-looking blonde lady,

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and the sign was made out of Bristol board, as we say in these parts,

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and it was made with a marker.

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And what it said on that sign hit me right in the center.

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It said, "If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention."

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If you're not outraged by all of this, you haven't been paying attention.

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So listen up, because we're getting into even deeper waters.

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My brain started thinking.

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Well, what if --

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because I'm suspicious like that. I read a lot of spy novels and stuff.

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What if -- (Laughter)

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But to make it in these wrongs,

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you have to read a lot of spy novels

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and follow some of that stuff, right? (Laughter)

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But what if this wasn't the first time?

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What if this is just the first time

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that the so-and-sos had been caught?

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What if it had happened before? How would I find out?

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Now, the previous two examples I gave

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were to do with construction sector corruption, okay?

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And I have the privilege at this time

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to lead the Joint Consultative Council, which is a not-for-profit.

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We're at jcc.org.tt, and we have the -- we are the leaders

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in the struggle to produce a new public procurement system

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about how public money is transacted.

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So those of you interested in finding out more about it,

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or joining us or signing up on any of our petitions, please get involved.

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But I'm going to segue to another thing that relates,

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because one of my private campaigns I've been conducting

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for over three and a half years

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is for transparency and accountability

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around the bailout of CL Financial.

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CL Financial is the Caribbean's largest ever conglomerate, okay?

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And without getting into all of the details,

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it is said to have collapsed — I'm using my words very carefully —

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it's said to have collapsed in January of '09,

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which is just coming up to nearly four years.

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In an unprecedented fit of generosity --

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and you have to be very suspicious about these people --

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in an unprecedented — and I'm using that word carefully —

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unprecedented fit of generosity, the government of the day

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signed, made a written commitment, to repay all of the creditors.

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And I can tell you without fear of contradiction

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that hasn't happened anywhere else on the planet.

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Let's understand, because we lack context.

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People are telling us it's just like Wall Street. It's not just like Wall Street.

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Trinidad and Tobago is like a place with different laws of physics or biology or something.

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It's not just like anywhere. (Applause)

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It's not just like anywhere. It's not just like anywhere.

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Here is here, and out there is out there. Okay?

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I'm serious now.

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Listen. They've had bailouts on Wall Street.

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They've had bailouts in London.

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They've had bailouts in Europe.

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In Africa, they've had bailouts. In Nigeria, six of the major

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commercial banks collapsed at the same time as ours, eh?

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It's interesting to parallel how the Nigerian experience has --

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how they've treated it, and they've treated it

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very well compared to us.

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Nowhere on the planet

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have all the creditors been bailed out

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in excess of what their statutory entitlements were.

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Only here. So what was the reason for the generosity?

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Is our government that generous? And maybe they are.

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Let's look at it. Let's look into it.

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So I started digging and writing and so and so on,

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and that work can be found, my personal work

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can be found at AfraRaymond.com, which is my name.

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It's a not-for-profit blog that I run.

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Not as popular as some of the other people, but there you go.

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(Laughter)

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But the point is that the bitter experience of Section 34,

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that plot to pervert Parliament, that bitter experience

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that took place in August,

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when we were supposed to be celebrating our independence,

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going into September, forced me to check myself

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and recalculate my bearings,

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and to go back into some of the work, some of the stuff I'd written

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and some of the exchanges I'd had with the officials

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to see what was really what.

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As we say in Trinidad and Tobago, who is who and what is what?

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Okay? We want to try to recalculate.

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And I made a Freedom of Information application

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in May this year to the Ministry of Finance.

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The Ministry of Finance is the next tower over.

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This is the other context.

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The Ministry of Finance, we are told,

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is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

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I'm going to take you through a worked example of whether that's really so.

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The Central Bank in which we stand this morning

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is immune from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

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So in fact, you can't ask them anything,

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and they don't have to answer anything.

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That is the law since 1999.

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So I plunged into this struggle, and I asked four questions.

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And I'll relate the questions to you in the short form with the reply,

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so you could understand, as I said, where we are.

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Here is not like anywhere else.

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Question number one:

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I asked to see the accounts of CL Financial,

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and if you can't show me the accounts --

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the Minister of Finance is making statements,

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passing new laws and giving speeches and so on.

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What are the figures he's relying on?

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It's like that joke: I want whatever he's drinking.

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And they wrote back and said to me,

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well what do you really mean?

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So they hit my question with a question.

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Second point: I want to see

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who are the creditors of the group who have been repaid?

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Let me pause here to point out to you all

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that 24 billion dollars of our money has been spent on this.

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That is about three and a half billion U.S. dollars

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coming out of a small -- we used to be resource-rich --

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Caribbean country. Okay?

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And I asked the question,

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who was getting that three and a half billion dollars?

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And I want to pause again to bring up context,

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because context helps us to get clarity understanding this thing.

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There's a particular individual who is in the government now.

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The name of the person doesn't matter.

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And that person made a career

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out of using the Freedom of Information Act

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to advance his political cause.

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Okay? His name isn't important.

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I wouldn't dignify it. I'm on a point.

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The point is, that person made a career out of using

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the Freedom of Information Act to advance his cause.

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And the most famous case

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was what we came to call the Secret Scholarship Scandal,

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where in fact there was about 60 million dollars in government money

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that had been dispersed in a series of scholarships,

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and the scholarships hadn't been advertised, and so and so on and so on.

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And he was able to get the court, using that act of Parliament,

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Freedom of Information Act,

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to release the information,

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and I thought that was excellent.

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Fantastic.

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But you see, the question is this:

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If it's right and proper for us to use the Freedom of Information Act

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and to use the court

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to force a disclosure about 60 million dollars in public money,

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it must be right and proper

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for us to force a disclosure about 24 billion dollars.

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You see? But the Ministry of Finance,

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the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance,

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wrote me and said to me, that information is exempt too.

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You see? This is what we're dealing with, okay?

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The third thing I will tell you

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is that I also asked

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for the directors of CL Financial,

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whether in fact they were making filings under our Integrity in Public Life Act.

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We have an Integrity in Public Life Act

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as part of our framework supposed to safeguard the nation's interest.

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And public officials are supposed to file

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to say what it is they have in terms of assets and liabilities.

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And of course I've since discovered that they're not filing,

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and in fact the Minister of Finance has not even asked them to file.

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So here we have it. We have a situation where

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the basic safeguards of integrity and accountability

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and transparency have all been discarded.

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I've asked the question in the legal and required fashion.

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It's been ignored.

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The sort of thing that motivated us around Section 34,

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we need to continue to work on that. We can't forget it.

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I have defined this as the single largest expenditure in the country's history.

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It's also the single largest example

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of public corruption according to this equation.

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And this is my reality check.

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Where you have an expenditure of public money

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and it is without accountability

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and it's without transparency,

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it will always be equal to corruption,

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whether you're in Russia or Nigeria or Alaska,

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it will always be equal to corruption, and that is what we are dealing with here.

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I'm going to continue the work

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to press on, to get some resolution

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of those matters at the Ministry of Finance.

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If it is I have to go to court personally, I will do that.

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We will continue to press on.

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We will continue to work within JCC.

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But I want to step back from the Trinidad and Tobago context

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and bring something new to the table

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in terms of an international example.

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00:16:41,323 --> 00:16:44,224
We had the journalist [Heather] Brooke speaking

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about her battle against government corruption,

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and she introduced me to this website, Alaveteli.com.

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00:16:51,978 --> 00:16:56,648
And Alaveteli.com is a way for us to have an open database

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for Freedom of Information applications,

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and speak with each other.

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I could see what you're applying for.

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00:17:03,780 --> 00:17:07,312
You could see what I applied for and what replies I got.

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We can work on it together. We need to build a collective database

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00:17:10,248 --> 00:17:13,552
and a collective understanding of where we are to go to the next point.

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We need to increase the consciousness.

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The final thing I want to say is in relation to this one,

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which is a lovely website from India

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called IPaidABribe.com.

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They have international branches,

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and it's important for us to tune into this one.

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IPaidABribe.com is really important,

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a good one to log on to and see.

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I'm going to pause there. I'm going to ask you for your courage.

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Discard the first myth; it is a crime.

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Discard the second myth; it is a big thing.

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It's a huge problem. It's an economic crime.

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And let us continue working together

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to betterment in this situation,

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stability and sustainability in our society. Thank you.