Cargolux: Shootout at the OK Corral.

    My Orchids. Will there be Blood? Photo ET

Corruption, Sanctions, and Deal-

Making: Luxembourg Style

Nuqudy has been on this story quite some time. All you always wanted to know about wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, but were too afraid to ask about. Or to talk about. Nuqudy is well informed, I can tell you. Nothing to add for now, except be aware of a US backlash!

Corruption, Sanctions, and Deal-Making: Luxembourg Style is the link to Nuqudy's article, where I want to quote just two paragraphs about a Luxembourg culture of permissiveness:

"From at least 2006 through 2008, Cargolux, the national cargo airline of Luxembourg majority-owned by direct and indirect holdings of the state, ran a coordinated smuggling operation transporting cigarettes to Iran. These cigarettes were unloaded directly into Iranian Revolutionary Guard trucks and then smuggled back to Europe by land where they were sold. The illicit profits are believed to have been laundered into the Western banking system through front companies used by Iran to acquire dual-use parts for their nuclear program. While we found no evidence showing that the Luxembourg facilitators of this operation were aware of the proliferation dimension of their crimes, we were informed that on December 21^st, 2007 Western intelligence agencies intercepted dual-use parts that were scheduled to be flown from Frankfurt to Tehran on one of these same Cargolux flights."

And further:

"Current Luxembourg policy does not forbid government ministers and civil servants from sitting on boards of for-profit companies and they are even allowed to personally keep the payments for this activity, which they affectionately refer to as "jetons" or tokens. Apparently, the quest for "jetons" was the beginning of a slide into corruption that led Jeannot Krecké and his deputy Jean-Claude Knebeler to become cigarette smugglers and nuclear proliferators for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."

Of course there are some original perspectives on the facts. Some urgent conclusions have to be drawn, in order to avert further damage. And certainly we'll see which parties propose as an electoral program for the upcoming October elections, to get rid of the culture exposed here, and by which actions and means it should be done. 

For those reading Luxembourgish, please see here what should be done: http://peckvillchen.blogspot.com/2013/08/main-walprogramm-2013.html Doesn't that sound very much like a consulting paper for the spread of democracy in Zimbabwe?