| Recorded at | December 12, 2012 |
|---|---|
| Event | TEDxPortofSpain |
| Duration (min:sec) | 17:49 |
| Video Type | TEDx Talk |
| Words per minute | 213.73 very fast |
| Readability (FK) | 61.78 easy |
| Speaker | Afra Raymond |
| Description | transparency activist; expert in property valuation |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
Trinidad and Tobago amassed great wealth in the 1970s thanks to oil -- but 2 out of every 3 dollars earmarked for development ended up wasted or stolen. This fact has haunted Afra Raymond for 30 years. Shining a flashlight on a continued history of government corruption, Raymond gives us a reframing of financial crime.
| 1 | 00:16 | Okay, this morning I'm speaking | ||
| 2 | 00:17 | on the question of corruption. | ||
| 3 | 00:21 | And corruption is defined | ||
| 4 | 00:23 | as the abuse of a position of trust | ||
| 5 | 00:28 | for the benefit of yourself -- or, in the case of our context, | ||
| 6 | 00:32 | your friends, your family or your financiers. | ||
| 7 | 00:35 | Okay? Friends, family and financiers. | ||
| 8 | 00:39 | But we need to understand what we understand about corruption, | ||
| 9 | 00:43 | and we need to understand that | ||
| 10 | 00:46 | we have been miseducated about it, and we have to admit that. | ||
| 11 | 00:49 | We have to have the courage to admit that | ||
| 12 | 00:51 | to start changing how we deal with it. | ||
| 13 | 00:53 | The first thing is that the big myth, number one, | ||
| 14 | 00:56 | is that in fact it's not really a crime. | ||
| 15 | 00:59 | When we get together with friends and family | ||
| 16 | 01:00 | and we discuss crime in our country, | ||
| 17 | 01:02 | crime in Belmont or crime in Diego or crime in Marabella, | ||
| 18 | 01:06 | nobody's speaking about corruption. | ||
| 19 | 01:07 | That's the honest truth. | ||
| 20 | 01:09 | When the Commissioner of Police comes on TV to talk about crime, | ||
| 21 | 01:12 | he isn't speaking about corruption. | ||
| 22 | 01:14 | And we know for sure when the Minister of National Security | ||
| 23 | 01:16 | is speaking about crime, he's not talking about corruption either. | ||
| 24 | 01:20 | The point I'm making is that it is a crime. | ||
| 25 | 01:23 | It is an economic crime, because we're involving the looting of taxpayers' money. | ||
| 26 | 01:28 | Public and private corruption is a reality. | ||
| 27 | 01:30 | As somebody who comes from the private sector, | ||
| 28 | 01:32 | I can tell you there's a massive amount of corruption | ||
| 29 | 01:35 | in the private sector that has nothing to do with government. | ||
| 30 | 01:37 | The same bribes and backhanders and things that take place under the table, | ||
| 31 | 01:40 | it all takes place in the private sector. | ||
| 32 | 01:43 | Today, I'm focusing on public sector corruption, | ||
| 33 | 01:46 | which the private sector also participates in. | ||
| 34 | 01:49 | The second important myth to understand -- | ||
| 35 | 01:52 | because we have to destroy these myths, | ||
| 36 | 01:53 | dismantle them and destroy them and ridicule them -- | ||
| 37 | 01:56 | the second important myth to understand | ||
| 38 | 01:58 | is the one that says | ||
| 39 | 02:00 | that in fact corruption is only a small problem -- | ||
| 40 | 02:04 | if it is a problem, it's only a small problem, | ||
| 41 | 02:06 | that in fact it's only a little 10 or 15 percent, | ||
| 42 | 02:10 | it's been going on forever, it probably will continue forever, | ||
| 43 | 02:14 | and there's no point passing any laws, because there's little we can do about it. | ||
| 44 | 02:17 | And I want to demonstrate that that, too, | ||
| 45 | 02:20 | is a dangerous myth, very dangerous. | ||
| 46 | 02:22 | It's a piece of public mischief. | ||
| 47 | 02:24 | And I want to speak a little bit, | ||
| 48 | 02:27 | take us back about 30 years. | ||
| 49 | 02:29 | We're coming out today from Trinidad and Tobago, | ||
| 50 | 02:31 | a resource-rich, small Caribbean country, | ||
| 51 | 02:34 | and in the early 1970s we had a massive increase in the country's wealth, | ||
| 52 | 02:39 | and that increase was caused by the increase in world oil prices. | ||
| 53 | 02:43 | We call them petrodollars. The treasury was bursting with money. | ||
| 54 | 02:46 | And it's ironic, because | ||
| 55 | 02:49 | we're standing today in the Central Bank. | ||
| 56 | 02:51 | You see, history's rich in irony. | ||
| 57 | 02:54 | We're standing today in the Central Bank, | ||
| 58 | 02:55 | and the Central Bank is responsible for a lot of the things I'm going to be speaking about. | ||
| 59 | 02:59 | Okay? We're talking about irresponsibility in public office. | ||
| 60 | 03:02 | We're speaking about the fact that across the terrace, | ||
| 61 | 03:05 | the next tower is the Ministry of Finance, | ||
| 62 | 03:07 | and there's a lot of connection with us today, | ||
| 63 | 03:09 | so we're speaking within your temple today. Okay? | ||
| 64 | 03:11 | (Applause) | ||
| 65 | 03:16 | The first thing I want to talk about is that | ||
| 66 | 03:19 | when all of this money flowed into our country about 40 years ago, | ||
| 67 | 03:22 | we embarked, the government of the day embarked | ||
| 68 | 03:24 | on a series of government-to-government arrangements | ||
| 69 | 03:26 | to have rapidly develop the country. | ||
| 70 | 03:28 | And some of the largest projects in the country | ||
| 71 | 03:31 | were being constructed through government-to-government arrangements | ||
| 72 | 03:34 | with some of the leading countries in the world, | ||
| 73 | 03:36 | the United States and Britain and France and so on and so on. | ||
| 74 | 03:38 | As I said, even this building we're standing in -- that's one of the ironies -- | ||
| 75 | 03:42 | this building was part of that series of complexes, | ||
| 76 | 03:43 | what they called the Twin Towers. | ||
| 77 | 03:47 | It became so outrageous, the whole situation, | ||
| 78 | 03:50 | that in fact a commission of inquiry was appointed, | ||
| 79 | 03:53 | and it reported in 1982, 30 years ago it reported -- | ||
| 80 | 03:57 | the Ballah Report -- 30 years ago, | ||
| 81 | 04:00 | and immediately the government-to-government arrangements were stopped. | ||
| 82 | 04:04 | The then-Prime Minister went to Parliament | ||
| 83 | 04:06 | to give a budget speech, and he said some things that I'll never forget. | ||
| 84 | 04:09 | They went right in here. I was a young man at the time. | ||
| 85 | 04:11 | It went right into my heart. | ||
| 86 | 04:13 | And he said that, in fact — Let me see if this thing works. | ||
| 87 | 04:17 | Are we getting a, yeah?— | ||
| 88 | 04:20 | That's what he told us. | ||
| 89 | 04:22 | He told us that, in fact, | ||
| 90 | 04:26 | two out of every three dollars of our petrodollars | ||
| 91 | 04:29 | that we spent, the taxpayers' money, | ||
| 92 | 04:31 | was wasted or stolen. | ||
| 93 | 04:33 | So the 10 or 15 percent is pure mischief. | ||
| 94 | 04:37 | As we say, it's a nancy-story. Forget it. | ||
| 95 | 04:40 | That's for little children. We are big people, | ||
| 96 | 04:41 | and we're trying to deal with what's happening in our society. | ||
| 97 | 04:44 | Okay? This is the size of the problem. | ||
| 98 | 04:46 | Okay? Two thirds of the money stolen or wasted. | ||
| 99 | 04:49 | That was 30 years ago. 1982 was Ballah. | ||
| 100 | 04:53 | So what has changed? | ||
| 101 | 04:55 | I don't like to bring up embarrassing secrets | ||
| 102 | 04:56 | to an international audience, but I have to. | ||
| 103 | 04:59 | Four months ago, we suffered a constitutional outrage in this country. | ||
| 104 | 05:02 | We call it the Section 34 fiasco, the Section 34 fiasco, | ||
| 105 | 05:07 | a suspicious piece of law, and I'm going to say it like it is, | ||
| 106 | 05:10 | a suspicious piece of law | ||
| 107 | 05:11 | was passed at a suspicious time | ||
| 108 | 05:14 | to free some suspects. (Laughter) | ||
| 109 | 05:15 | And it was called, those people are called | ||
| 110 | 05:22 | the Piarco Airport accused. | ||
| 111 | 05:24 | I'm going to have my own lexicon speaking here today. | ||
| 112 | 05:27 | They are the Piarco Airport accused. | ||
| 113 | 05:28 | It was a constitutional outrage of the first order, | ||
| 114 | 05:31 | and I have labeled it the Plot to Pervert Parliament. | ||
| 115 | 05:35 | Our highest institution in our country was perverted. | ||
| 116 | 05:38 | We are dealing with perverts here | ||
| 117 | 05:40 | of an economic and financial nature. | ||
| 118 | 05:42 | Do you get how serious this problem is? | ||
| 119 | 05:44 | There was massive protest. A lot of us in this room | ||
| 120 | 05:46 | took part in the protest in different forms. | ||
| 121 | 05:49 | Most importantly, the American embassy complained, | ||
| 122 | 05:52 | so Parliament was swiftly reconvened, | ||
| 123 | 05:54 | and the law was reversed, it was repealed. | ||
| 124 | 05:56 | That's the word lawyers use. It was repealed. | ||
| 125 | 05:58 | But the point is | ||
| 126 | 06:01 | that Parliament was outwitted in the whole course of events, | ||
| 127 | 06:05 | because what really happened is that, | ||
| 128 | 06:07 | because of the suspicious passage of that law, | ||
| 129 | 06:10 | the law was actually passed into effect | ||
| 130 | 06:13 | on the weekend we celebrated our 50th anniversary of independence, | ||
| 131 | 06:16 | our jubilee of independence. | ||
| 132 | 06:18 | So that is the kind of outrage of the thing. | ||
| 133 | 06:20 | It was kind of a nasty way to get maturation, but we got it, | ||
| 134 | 06:23 | because we all understood it, | ||
| 135 | 06:25 | and for the first time that I could remember, | ||
| 136 | 06:26 | there were mass protests against this corruption. | ||
| 137 | 06:30 | And that gave me a lot of hope. Okay? | ||
| 138 | 06:32 | Those of us who are, sometimes you feel like | ||
| 139 | 06:34 | you're a little bit on your own doing some of this work. | ||
| 140 | 06:37 | That passage of the law and the repeal of the law | ||
| 141 | 06:41 | fortified the case of the Piarco Airport accused. | ||
| 142 | 06:45 | So it was one of those really superior double bluff kind of things that took place. | ||
| 143 | 06:49 | But what were they accused of? | ||
| 144 | 06:51 | What was it that they were accused of? | ||
| 145 | 06:52 | I'm being a bit mysterious for those of you out there. What were they accused of? | ||
| 146 | 06:56 | We were trying to build, or reconstruct largely, | ||
| 147 | 06:58 | an airport that had grown outdated. | ||
| 148 | 07:01 | The entire project cost about 1.6 billion dollars, | ||
| 149 | 07:05 | Trinidad and Tobago dollars, | ||
| 150 | 07:07 | and in fact, we had a lot of bid-rigging | ||
| 151 | 07:10 | and suspicious activity, corrupt activity took place. | ||
| 152 | 07:14 | And to get an idea of what it consisted of, | ||
| 153 | 07:18 | and to put it in context in relationship to this whole | ||
| 154 | 07:21 | second myth about it being no big thing, | ||
| 155 | 07:23 | we can look at this second slide here. | ||
| 156 | 07:26 | And what we have here -- I am not saying so, | ||
| 157 | 07:29 | this is the Director of Public Prosecutions in a written statement. He said so. | ||
| 158 | 07:34 | And he's telling us that for the $1.6 billion cost of the project, | ||
| 159 | 07:39 | one billion dollars has been traced | ||
| 160 | 07:41 | to offshore bank accounts. | ||
| 161 | 07:43 | One billion dollars of our taxpayers' money | ||
| 162 | 07:45 | has been located in offshore bank accounts. | ||
| 163 | 07:48 | Being the kind of suspicious person I am, | ||
| 164 | 07:50 | I am outraged at that, and I'm going to pause here, | ||
| 165 | 07:53 | I'm going to pause now and again and bring in different things. | ||
| 166 | 07:56 | I'm going to pause here and bring in something I saw | ||
| 167 | 07:57 | in November last year at Wall Street. I was at Zuccotti Park. | ||
| 168 | 08:01 | It was autumn. It was cool. It was damp. It was getting dark. | ||
| 169 | 08:05 | And I was walking around with the protesters | ||
| 170 | 08:07 | looking at the One Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street movement walking around. | ||
| 171 | 08:12 | And there was a lady with a sign, a very simple sign, | ||
| 172 | 08:14 | a kind of battered-looking blonde lady, | ||
| 173 | 08:16 | and the sign was made out of Bristol board, as we say in these parts, | ||
| 174 | 08:19 | and it was made with a marker. | ||
| 175 | 08:21 | And what it said on that sign hit me right in the center. | ||
| 176 | 08:24 | It said, "If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention." | ||
| 177 | 08:28 | If you're not outraged by all of this, you haven't been paying attention. | ||
| 178 | 08:31 | So listen up, because we're getting into even deeper waters. | ||
| 179 | 08:35 | My brain started thinking. | ||
| 180 | 08:37 | Well, what if -- | ||
| 181 | 08:40 | because I'm suspicious like that. I read a lot of spy novels and stuff. | ||
| 182 | 08:43 | What if -- (Laughter) | ||
| 183 | 08:45 | But to make it in these wrongs, | ||
| 184 | 08:48 | you have to read a lot of spy novels | ||
| 185 | 08:49 | and follow some of that stuff, right? (Laughter) | ||
| 186 | 08:52 | But what if this wasn't the first time? | ||
| 187 | 08:56 | What if this is just the first time | ||
| 188 | 08:59 | that the so-and-sos had been caught? | ||
| 189 | 09:01 | What if it had happened before? How would I find out? | ||
| 190 | 09:06 | Now, the previous two examples I gave | ||
| 191 | 09:09 | were to do with construction sector corruption, okay? | ||
| 192 | 09:13 | And I have the privilege at this time | ||
| 193 | 09:15 | to lead the Joint Consultative Council, which is a not-for-profit. | ||
| 194 | 09:18 | We're at jcc.org.tt, and we have the -- we are the leaders | ||
| 195 | 09:22 | in the struggle to produce a new public procurement system | ||
| 196 | 09:25 | about how public money is transacted. | ||
| 197 | 09:27 | So those of you interested in finding out more about it, | ||
| 198 | 09:30 | or joining us or signing up on any of our petitions, please get involved. | ||
| 199 | 09:34 | But I'm going to segue to another thing that relates, | ||
| 200 | 09:36 | because one of my private campaigns I've been conducting | ||
| 201 | 09:39 | for over three and a half years | ||
| 202 | 09:41 | is for transparency and accountability | ||
| 203 | 09:44 | around the bailout of CL Financial. | ||
| 204 | 09:47 | CL Financial is the Caribbean's largest ever conglomerate, okay? | ||
| 205 | 09:52 | And without getting into all of the details, | ||
| 206 | 09:55 | it is said to have collapsed — I'm using my words very carefully — | ||
| 207 | 09:58 | it's said to have collapsed in January of '09, | ||
| 208 | 10:01 | which is just coming up to nearly four years. | ||
| 209 | 10:04 | In an unprecedented fit of generosity -- | ||
| 210 | 10:07 | and you have to be very suspicious about these people -- | ||
| 211 | 10:10 | in an unprecedented — and I'm using that word carefully — | ||
| 212 | 10:12 | unprecedented fit of generosity, the government of the day | ||
| 213 | 10:16 | signed, made a written commitment, to repay all of the creditors. | ||
| 214 | 10:20 | And I can tell you without fear of contradiction | ||
| 215 | 10:22 | that hasn't happened anywhere else on the planet. | ||
| 216 | 10:25 | Let's understand, because we lack context. | ||
| 217 | 10:27 | People are telling us it's just like Wall Street. It's not just like Wall Street. | ||
| 218 | 10:30 | Trinidad and Tobago is like a place with different laws of physics or biology or something. | ||
| 219 | 10:35 | It's not just like anywhere. (Applause) | ||
| 220 | 10:39 | It's not just like anywhere. It's not just like anywhere. | ||
| 221 | 10:44 | Here is here, and out there is out there. Okay? | ||
| 222 | 10:47 | I'm serious now. | ||
| 223 | 10:49 | Listen. They've had bailouts on Wall Street. | ||
| 224 | 10:52 | They've had bailouts in London. | ||
| 225 | 10:54 | They've had bailouts in Europe. | ||
| 226 | 10:56 | In Africa, they've had bailouts. In Nigeria, six of the major | ||
| 227 | 10:58 | commercial banks collapsed at the same time as ours, eh? | ||
| 228 | 11:01 | It's interesting to parallel how the Nigerian experience has -- | ||
| 229 | 11:03 | how they've treated it, and they've treated it | ||
| 230 | 11:06 | very well compared to us. | ||
| 231 | 11:07 | Nowhere on the planet | ||
| 232 | 11:09 | have all the creditors been bailed out | ||
| 233 | 11:12 | in excess of what their statutory entitlements were. | ||
| 234 | 11:14 | Only here. So what was the reason for the generosity? | ||
| 235 | 11:18 | Is our government that generous? And maybe they are. | ||
| 236 | 11:21 | Let's look at it. Let's look into it. | ||
| 237 | 11:23 | So I started digging and writing and so and so on, | ||
| 238 | 11:26 | and that work can be found, my personal work | ||
| 239 | 11:27 | can be found at AfraRaymond.com, which is my name. | ||
| 240 | 11:31 | It's a not-for-profit blog that I run. | ||
| 241 | 11:34 | Not as popular as some of the other people, but there you go. | ||
| 242 | 11:36 | (Laughter) | ||
| 243 | 11:38 | But the point is that the bitter experience of Section 34, | ||
| 244 | 11:43 | that plot to pervert Parliament, that bitter experience | ||
| 245 | 11:45 | that took place in August, | ||
| 246 | 11:48 | when we were supposed to be celebrating our independence, | ||
| 247 | 11:51 | going into September, forced me to check myself | ||
| 248 | 11:56 | and recalculate my bearings, | ||
| 249 | 11:58 | and to go back into some of the work, some of the stuff I'd written | ||
| 250 | 12:00 | and some of the exchanges I'd had with the officials | ||
| 251 | 12:03 | to see what was really what. | ||
| 252 | 12:05 | As we say in Trinidad and Tobago, who is who and what is what? | ||
| 253 | 12:09 | Okay? We want to try to recalculate. | ||
| 254 | 12:10 | And I made a Freedom of Information application | ||
| 255 | 12:13 | in May this year to the Ministry of Finance. | ||
| 256 | 12:17 | The Ministry of Finance is the next tower over. | ||
| 257 | 12:19 | This is the other context. | ||
| 258 | 12:21 | The Ministry of Finance, we are told, | ||
| 259 | 12:23 | is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. | ||
| 260 | 12:26 | I'm going to take you through a worked example of whether that's really so. | ||
| 261 | 12:30 | The Central Bank in which we stand this morning | ||
| 262 | 12:33 | is immune from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. | ||
| 263 | 12:37 | So in fact, you can't ask them anything, | ||
| 264 | 12:39 | and they don't have to answer anything. | ||
| 265 | 12:40 | That is the law since 1999. | ||
| 266 | 12:43 | So I plunged into this struggle, and I asked four questions. | ||
| 267 | 12:47 | And I'll relate the questions to you in the short form with the reply, | ||
| 268 | 12:50 | so you could understand, as I said, where we are. | ||
| 269 | 12:53 | Here is not like anywhere else. | ||
| 270 | 12:54 | Question number one: | ||
| 271 | 12:57 | I asked to see the accounts of CL Financial, | ||
| 272 | 13:00 | and if you can't show me the accounts -- | ||
| 273 | 13:02 | the Minister of Finance is making statements, | ||
| 274 | 13:04 | passing new laws and giving speeches and so on. | ||
| 275 | 13:07 | What are the figures he's relying on? | ||
| 276 | 13:09 | It's like that joke: I want whatever he's drinking. | ||
| 277 | 13:12 | And they wrote back and said to me, | ||
| 278 | 13:14 | well what do you really mean? | ||
| 279 | 13:15 | So they hit my question with a question. | ||
| 280 | 13:18 | Second point: I want to see | ||
| 281 | 13:21 | who are the creditors of the group who have been repaid? | ||
| 282 | 13:24 | Let me pause here to point out to you all | ||
| 283 | 13:26 | that 24 billion dollars of our money has been spent on this. | ||
| 284 | 13:30 | That is about three and a half billion U.S. dollars | ||
| 285 | 13:33 | coming out of a small -- we used to be resource-rich -- | ||
| 286 | 13:36 | Caribbean country. Okay? | ||
| 287 | 13:38 | And I asked the question, | ||
| 288 | 13:40 | who was getting that three and a half billion dollars? | ||
| 289 | 13:44 | And I want to pause again to bring up context, | ||
| 290 | 13:46 | because context helps us to get clarity understanding this thing. | ||
| 291 | 13:50 | There's a particular individual who is in the government now. | ||
| 292 | 13:52 | The name of the person doesn't matter. | ||
| 293 | 13:54 | And that person made a career | ||
| 294 | 13:57 | out of using the Freedom of Information Act | ||
| 295 | 13:59 | to advance his political cause. | ||
| 296 | 14:01 | Okay? His name isn't important. | ||
| 297 | 14:04 | I wouldn't dignify it. I'm on a point. | ||
| 298 | 14:07 | The point is, that person made a career out of using | ||
| 299 | 14:09 | the Freedom of Information Act to advance his cause. | ||
| 300 | 14:12 | And the most famous case | ||
| 301 | 14:14 | was what we came to call the Secret Scholarship Scandal, | ||
| 302 | 14:17 | where in fact there was about 60 million dollars in government money | ||
| 303 | 14:20 | that had been dispersed in a series of scholarships, | ||
| 304 | 14:23 | and the scholarships hadn't been advertised, and so and so on and so on. | ||
| 305 | 14:26 | And he was able to get the court, using that act of Parliament, | ||
| 306 | 14:29 | Freedom of Information Act, | ||
| 307 | 14:30 | to release the information, | ||
| 308 | 14:32 | and I thought that was excellent. | ||
| 309 | 14:36 | Fantastic. | ||
| 310 | 14:39 | But you see, the question is this: | ||
| 311 | 14:41 | If it's right and proper for us to use the Freedom of Information Act | ||
| 312 | 14:45 | and to use the court | ||
| 313 | 14:49 | to force a disclosure about 60 million dollars in public money, | ||
| 314 | 14:54 | it must be right and proper | ||
| 315 | 14:55 | for us to force a disclosure about 24 billion dollars. | ||
| 316 | 14:59 | You see? But the Ministry of Finance, | ||
| 317 | 15:02 | the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, | ||
| 318 | 15:04 | wrote me and said to me, that information is exempt too. | ||
| 319 | 15:07 | You see? This is what we're dealing with, okay? | ||
| 320 | 15:10 | The third thing I will tell you | ||
| 321 | 15:12 | is that I also asked | ||
| 322 | 15:15 | for the directors of CL Financial, | ||
| 323 | 15:18 | whether in fact they were making filings under our Integrity in Public Life Act. | ||
| 324 | 15:22 | We have an Integrity in Public Life Act | ||
| 325 | 15:24 | as part of our framework supposed to safeguard the nation's interest. | ||
| 326 | 15:28 | And public officials are supposed to file | ||
| 327 | 15:31 | to say what it is they have in terms of assets and liabilities. | ||
| 328 | 15:37 | And of course I've since discovered that they're not filing, | ||
| 329 | 15:40 | and in fact the Minister of Finance has not even asked them to file. | ||
| 330 | 15:43 | So here we have it. We have a situation where | ||
| 331 | 15:47 | the basic safeguards of integrity and accountability | ||
| 332 | 15:52 | and transparency have all been discarded. | ||
| 333 | 15:54 | I've asked the question in the legal and required fashion. | ||
| 334 | 15:57 | It's been ignored. | ||
| 335 | 15:59 | The sort of thing that motivated us around Section 34, | ||
| 336 | 16:02 | we need to continue to work on that. We can't forget it. | ||
| 337 | 16:05 | I have defined this as the single largest expenditure in the country's history. | ||
| 338 | 16:08 | It's also the single largest example | ||
| 339 | 16:11 | of public corruption according to this equation. | ||
| 340 | 16:16 | And this is my reality check. | ||
| 341 | 16:19 | Where you have an expenditure of public money | ||
| 342 | 16:21 | and it is without accountability | ||
| 343 | 16:24 | and it's without transparency, | ||
| 344 | 16:26 | it will always be equal to corruption, | ||
| 345 | 16:28 | whether you're in Russia or Nigeria or Alaska, | ||
| 346 | 16:31 | it will always be equal to corruption, and that is what we are dealing with here. | ||
| 347 | 16:36 | I'm going to continue the work | ||
| 348 | 16:38 | to press on, to get some resolution | ||
| 349 | 16:42 | of those matters at the Ministry of Finance. | ||
| 350 | 16:44 | If it is I have to go to court personally, I will do that. | ||
| 351 | 16:46 | We will continue to press on. | ||
| 352 | 16:48 | We will continue to work within JCC. | ||
| 353 | 16:50 | But I want to step back from the Trinidad and Tobago context | ||
| 354 | 16:52 | and bring something new to the table | ||
| 355 | 16:54 | in terms of an international example. | ||
| 356 | 16:56 | We had the journalist [Heather] Brooke speaking | ||
| 357 | 16:59 | about her battle against government corruption, | ||
| 358 | 17:01 | and she introduced me to this website, Alaveteli.com. | ||
| 359 | 17:07 | And Alaveteli.com is a way for us to have an open database | ||
| 360 | 17:11 | for Freedom of Information applications, | ||
| 361 | 17:14 | and speak with each other. | ||
| 362 | 17:16 | I could see what you're applying for. | ||
| 363 | 17:19 | You could see what I applied for and what replies I got. | ||
| 364 | 17:22 | We can work on it together. We need to build a collective database | ||
| 365 | 17:25 | and a collective understanding of where we are to go to the next point. | ||
| 366 | 17:28 | We need to increase the consciousness. | ||
| 367 | 17:30 | The final thing I want to say is in relation to this one, | ||
| 368 | 17:34 | which is a lovely website from India | ||
| 369 | 17:36 | called IPaidABribe.com. | ||
| 370 | 17:38 | They have international branches, | ||
| 371 | 17:40 | and it's important for us to tune into this one. | ||
| 372 | 17:42 | IPaidABribe.com is really important, | ||
| 373 | 17:45 | a good one to log on to and see. | ||
| 374 | 17:47 | I'm going to pause there. I'm going to ask you for your courage. | ||
| 375 | 17:50 | Discard the first myth; it is a crime. | ||
| 376 | 17:52 | Discard the second myth; it is a big thing. | ||
| 377 | 17:54 | It's a huge problem. It's an economic crime. | ||
| 378 | 17:57 | And let us continue working together | ||
| 379 | 17:59 | to betterment in this situation, | ||
| 380 | 18:01 | stability and sustainability in our society. Thank you. |