10 HISTORICAL AND RECENT EXAMPLES OF CORRUPTION - HISTORY - 2025

Among the historical and recent examples of corruption, especially those involving royalty (such as the Queen María Cristina de Borbón scandal) or institutions of wide scope and power (such as FIFA) stand out.

Corruption is defined as a dishonest action carried out by officials or agents of power, who take advantage of the resources or facilities provided by a particular system. Acts of corruption can occur in various settings of public and private life.

Sometimes a corruption case can involve individuals from several countries. Source: pixabay.com

It should be noted that corruption understood as an illegal activity has changed its conception over time according to historical and cultural contexts. The notion has been constantly redefined, which means that the implications have also varied over time.

Some of the most important acts of corruption are the black market scandal, Watergate, the Panama Papers and the one that involved the Siemens company in Argentina, among many other examples.

Some examples of old and recent corruption

Queen Maria Cristina of Bourbon

It happened in Spain in 1854. Corruption was detected as a result of price speculation in the businesses run by Queen María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Silicias, who was the wife of King Fernando VII.

After the death of the king, his daughter Elizabeth II was still a minor and could not exercise her reign. Meanwhile, the mother acted as regent and used her power to abolish the Salic law, which prevented the reign of women on the throne.

When she came of age, Elizabeth II assumed the throne. His mother completed her regency and devoted herself to politics as well as to business and large industrial projects in Spain.

After confirming the acts of corruption, she was expelled from Spain and went into exile in France until her last years of life.

The black market scandal

This scandal is about a case of corruption discovered in Spain in 1935, which exposed businessmen and politicians who converged on manipulating the results of casino games.

The casino owner evaded the law and paid sums of money in bribes to senior government officials belonging to the Radical Party.

When the scandal was discovered, this party lost all the popularity and credibility that it enjoyed at that time. Currently, the term “black market” is used in Spain to refer to a fraudulent business.

Watergate

It is the political scandal that in 1970 uncovered a series of abuses by the Richard Nixon government, and even involved personalities and organizations from both the police and intelligence services, with the sole purpose of keeping secret bribes and other movements that sought re-election of the president.

In 1972 five men were arrested red-handed at the headquarters of the Democratic Party. These men turned out to be agents, later charged with theft and espionage of party communications.

An anonymous source revealed that the group of spies that had been arrested acted under the direction of two of the president's advisers, and that these actions were promoted by Nixon himself.

This prompted the Senate to take sides and investigate, and they found among the evidence a large number of tapes with recordings that directly compromised Nixon's inner circle.

Impeachment

In July 1974, the House of Representatives initiated the impeachment (petition for a process against a high public official) against the president, finding him guilty on charges of contempt, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power.

On August 8, Nixon presented his official resignation to the national media, the next day he left the White House and was relieved by Gerald Ford, who was the vice president in charge. As a first measure of his duties, Ford pardoned Nixon.

Office of the Differential Exchange Regime (RECADI)

In 1983 in Venezuela a differential exchange control system was established, giving a transcendental turn to the economy of this country by establishing a measure that would allow only one dollar to 4.30 bolivars for certain items.

This new exchange regime remained for several presidential periods through a body called RECADI (Office of the Differential Exchange Regime), which generated the abrupt devaluation of the Venezuelan currency.

RECADI handled the dollars that circulated through bank accounts between 1983 and 1989 at its discretion and without apparent comptroller, without publicly accounting for its internal operations.

During this political period, public officials, business owners and even individuals trafficked with influence, received and gave privileges, and evaded taxes, responsibilities and laws behind the RECADI facade, to obtain profits and economic benefits that compromised the stability of the national economy..

In 1990 RECADI was denounced and liquidated, during the second term of President Carlos Andrés Pérez, and it was impossible to prove the crimes of the high government officials.

Enron

This famous case of corruption happened in the late 90s and early 2000s in what until then was known as the best energy company in America.

Founded by Kenneth Lay in 1995, Enron positioned itself as the world's largest energy distributor, with an annual turnover of around $ 100 billion.

In 1997, with the arrival of Jeffrey Skilling as president of Enron, accounting engineering was discovered in the company in a series of processes to camouflage debt, loans as income, inflate benefits and convert liabilities into assets, which kept the board under deception. directive.

In 2004 Skilling was found guilty on 30 different charges, including dealing with confidential information, conspiracy with auditing firms, selling Enron stock for $ 60 million before going bankrupt, and other hoaxes.

Siemens AG

In 1996, the Argentine government called a public tender for three major projects: the printing of new identity documents, the computerization of border crossings, and the electoral rolls.

Siemens AG made illegal payments to obtain such tenders, and later made other payments to maintain the contract by the government.

He later acknowledged having made multiple bribes to foreign officials of at least 290 projects or sales in China, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria and Vietnam, among others.

At the end of the year 2000, as a result of the economic crisis, the Argentine Congress reviewed the State contracts and Fernando de la Rúa was inaugurated as president, trying to renegotiate unsuccessfully due to Siemens' refusal to reveal its cost structure.

In 2001 the government terminated the contract and Siemens started a lawsuit demanding compensation from Argentina.

Finally, after the investigations carried out by the United States, the company acknowledged in 2008 that it had made illegal payments, implicating both President Carlos Menem and his Minister of the Interior Carlos Corach, for which a judicial process was initiated since then in Argentina that is still continuing..

Madoff

Bernard Madoff was described as "the magician of lies" when he carried out one of the most surprising and regrettable millionaire scams in the United States using a pyramid system called the Ponzi scheme, stealing $ 65 billion from those who put their trust in the company of investments he directed.

The conditions of this scheme were clear: add clients without limits and not withdraw everyone's funds at the same time. During the time this firm was founded, money flowed in and people took risks.

At the time of the Great Recession, investors wanted to get their money back, breaking the two rules of the system. Since they were unable to pay the vast majority, the fraud became apparent.

In 2008, Madoff's own children turned him over to authorities and he received a 150-year sentence.

In addition to the shame in front of his family, his greatest sentence was marked in guilt for the countless suicides that this led to, including that of his own son Mark Madoff in 2010.

FIFA Gate

In May 2015, 7 FIFA (International Federation of Associated Football) officials were arrested in a hotel in Zurich on various charges of economic crime, including organized crime, bribery, money laundering, fraud and corruption.

The investigation was later publicly announced in which 14 people were officially charged, including five businessmen and executives and nine FIFA officials.

The reason for the accusation was to have received 150 million dollars after agreeing to bribes in exchange for broadcasting and marketing rights in soccer tournaments in Latin America, sponsorships of tournaments, awarding of championship venues and advertising.

The Panama Papers

This renowned recent news leakage shocked the world in April 2016, implicating multiple companies and various political leaders.

The Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca was hired to create companies where the identity of the owners, assets, businesses and profits was mainly hidden, in addition to other tax crimes such as tax evasion of governments and political personalities.

The scandal known as Panama Papers, occurred when an unidentified source sent 2.6 terabytes of information from confidential documents to a major German newspaper, which in turn provided the information to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Subsequently, this information was broadcast simultaneously in more than 70 countries by all audiovisual and digital media.

Renato Duque: an edge of the Lava Jato case

Art does not escape the lucrative business of money laundering through artistic pieces. This is shown by the exhibition of works under surveillance at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Brazil, which contains paintings by Renoir, Picasso, Miró and Dalí, among others.

This is a selection of works that Renato Duque, former director of Petrobras, bought to launder money. Later, after Operation Lava Jato (considered the largest act of corruption in Brazil in its history and involving Petrobras and several former presidents of different Latin American countries), they were requisitioned and are now being presented to the public.

Currently, the Lava Jato operation continues to uncover crimes of millions of dollars used in the purchase of works of art, which was achieved thanks to the little vigilance that there is on artistic transactions, the ease of being transported and the general ignorance of the value of the works.

References

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