TIME, Corrupción en Colombia

ESTO ES HISTORICO

Mensaje de Alfredo Vanegas Montoya, publicado en la Revista Norteamericana TIME, y relacionado con un artículo de ese Medio sobre corrupción en Colombia.

Forum, Mar. 15, 1976

To the Editors:

Thanks for telling us about the graft in Colombia. Now we want the names of the grafters for our tribunals.

Alfredo Vanegas Montoya

Medellín, Colombia

Traducción:

Gracias por el informe sobre corrupción en Colombia. Ahora necesitamos los nombres de los corruptos para nuestros Tribunales.

Alfredo Vanegas Montoya, Medellín, Colombia

*****

A big bravo to those business executives who bring in profitable orders from abroad [Feb. 23]. And if the bribe is tacked onto the selling price, further kudos are in order.

I’ll opt for high employment, growth and prosperity any day.

William T. Cuddy Jr.

Calabasas, Calif.

Everyone thinks he can get away with anything. If some of those conspirators went to jail and spent the full sentence there, the world might not have as much moral corruption.

Steven Kuensting

St. Louis

Payola is the name of the game in business. The company that doesn’t «bribe» its customers in one way or another is probably a statistic in bankruptcy court.

Ronald G. Birnback New York City

The profit motive is the catalyst of our free-enterprise system. It «leads us into temptation,» but the system corrects itself. Let’s not knock «the goose that laid the golden egg» too hard, or we will end up with a dead goose on our hands.

Glenn Wm. Simmons

Atlanta

I was raised under the impression that capitalism was a system of the people, by the people and for the people. The greed and graft demonstrated by Lockheed and other corporate giants has led me to believe that they have one overriding ambition: to take from the people and from the people and from the people.

Conrad J. Buehler

Fremont, Ind.

It is only one step from awareness of Lockheed’s self-serving to questioning whether free-market advocates have Adam Smith in mind or the lucrative-ness of their veiled misdeeds.

Kenneth Cooley

Berkeley, Calif.

What’s all this «scandal» fussing about? Bribery has been a common (and timehonored) practice as far back as Marco Polo and even before that. I find it surprising that Americans still cling to illusions of innocence after the years of Viet Nam, Watergate and intelligence investigations. Won’t this country ever grow up and realize there is rottenness in the world?

Clay Rooks

St. Paul

News of bribery causes no surprise here in Brazil, where «special payment arrangements» are routine in all deals with government departments. In Rome, you must do as the Romans. Your multinationals are right.

Paulo Moreira Dias

Rio de Janeiro

What is needed now is a bipartisan congressional committee headed by individuals whose honesty is unquestioned, like Senators Hugh Scott and Hubert Humphrey, to ferret out those in Congress whose campaigns have received illegal corporate financing.

Penny K. Alden

Key Biscayne, Fla.

SCANDALS: THE BIG PAYOFF

Monday, Feb. 23, 1976

«The unending flow of disclosures of corporate bribes and illegal political contributions to officials in the U.S. and abroad has spread a darkening stain over the global reputation of American business. Throughout the revelations of the past 18 months, however, there was one minor consolation: reports of rampant payoffs by Exxon, Gulf, Mobil, Northrop, United Brands and other corporate giants had not directly implicated any major world leaders. Most under-the-table payments abroad had apparently gone to shadowy intermediaries, lower-or middle-level government officials, or chiefs of small developing countries that had never been known for political purity. But last week the scandal exploded into the highest policy levels in Europe and Japan, shaking the governments of important U.S. allies. Said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: «The implications for the stability of other countries could be extremely serious.»

> “In Colombia, the government is investigating references in Lockheed records that indicate that at least two air force generals falsified the country’s defense needs in return for Lockheed commissions that the Church subcommittee calculated to total $200,000. The references are contained in a letter written in 1968 by a Lockheed agent in Bogotá to Lockheed’s Georgia office when Colombia was ready to buy a third Lockheed Hercules transport for about $2 million. The agent assured his superiors that even though the Colombian military budget was being cut, the air force officers could «justify the true necessity for more equipment in order to guarantee the national security.» Then he added: «Just between you and me, this is not exactly true—as you can imagine—but the important point for us is that they [the generals] want sugar [a common term for payoffs], and for that they are ready to do almost anything.» If that is true, the scheme would tend to bear out one of the ugliest suspicions of business critics: corporate bribery encourages poor nations to spend cash on military equipment they do not really need.

Along with these revelations came some less grave—but still nasty—ones. In Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific Airways fired its director of flight operations, E.B. («Bernie») Smith. Only two weeks ago, he was pictured in four-color ads in U.S. magazines, describing Lockheed’s Super-TriStar as «the most intelligent aircraft I’ve ever flown.» But Cathay Pacific found that Smith was the official identified in Church subcommittee documents as receiving $80,000 in Lockheed money from an «unidentified British agent living in France.» He got the payment for helping Lockheed sell planes to other lines.

In the U.S., too, the damning Lockheed revelations have touched off profound repercussions. Says a Church subcommittee staffer: «This is the first time this thing is being taken seriously at the White House, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. People are saying, ‘Oh my God, we can’t let it go on.’ «