[HN Gopher] How Two Irish Businessmen Almost Took Nigeria for $11B
___________________________________________________________________
How Two Irish Businessmen Almost Took Nigeria for $11B
Author : pseudolus
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-02-12 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nytimes.com)
| pseudolus wrote:
| http://archive.today/NEh2L
| sgu999 wrote:
| > He would have to surrender a sum of taxpayer dollars that
| equaled five times the budget for education and 10 times the
| budget for public health.
|
| I can't imagine for a second the state of mind of someone who
| thinks that's OK as long as they can make money.
|
| That these Quinn and Cahill and the ones in London who arbitrated
| in their favour can be free, and very likely richer than most
| good people are, makes me loose all faith in our stupid
| civilisation.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I can't imagine for a second the state of mind of someone who
| thinks that's OK as long as they can make money.
|
| Devil's advocate, but they can rationalize it because the
| education and public health budget is anyhow going to be
| embezzled by some Minister (eg. the current Education Minister
| of Nigeria [0]) or local politician.
|
| The amount of rot and corruption in LDCs is insane, as
| governance and institutions are inherently rotten.
|
| The only solution in such an environment is to be corrupt like
| everyone else, and hope there are enough suckers motivated by
| ideals like "patriotism" or "responsibility" in order to
| continue managing development.
|
| This is why you see a brain drain from a number of LDCs - a lot
| of smart people don't want to live in that kind of an
| environment. It's very soul crushing.
|
| Edit: Devil's Advocate means I'm arguing for a position I am
| morally opposed to. This doesn't mean I support this kind of
| corruption.
|
| [0] - https://eng.fatshimetrie.org/2024/01/07/corruption-
| scandal-n...
| r00fus wrote:
| > Devil's advocate, but they can rationalize it because the
| education and public health budget is anyhow going to be
| embezzled by some Minister (eg. the current Education
| Minister of Nigeria [0]) or local politician.
|
| Yeah, the bullshit self-justification that "someone will
| steal it, it might as well be me" is definitely what any
| functioning society is ostensibly designed to handle (either
| to formalize it for autocracies or prevent it from disrupting
| for republics).
| alephnerd wrote:
| > is definitely what any functioning society is ostensibly
| designed to handle
|
| That's how I know you grew up in an Upper Middle Class
| American household.
|
| Newsflash - humans suck.
|
| America used to be this corrupt 50-60 years ago as well,
| but it required generational bipartisan reforms to change.
|
| You can't expect a county that's still in the economic
| equivalent of the 1910s-20s to speedrun generational
| legislative changes.
|
| Take a look at European countries like Poland, Hungary,
| Portugal, Greece, etc. They might be "developed" in the
| sense that there are shiny buildings and people aren't
| starving to death anymore, but wheeling and dealing,
| cronyism, and judicial+legislative tampering still occur.
|
| -----------
|
| Also, view corruption as a feature, not a bug.
|
| In developing countries, you don't rule by ideology, you
| rule by pure unadulterated power.
|
| Before the internet, you could shoot someone in a ditch and
| it won't trend on Twitter or IG.
|
| Now it will, so the best solution to maintain compliance is
| to use corruption as a way to keep everyone in line - all
| politicians in these countries partake in it, but if they
| don't listen to leadership, they will be prosecuted for it.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Bryant Garth, a law professor who wrote the standard history
| book on arbitration, told me that the P.&I.D. process showed the
| danger of the arbitration system's being manipulated by a greedy
| actor. "It treats the state as if it's just another business," he
| said, "rather than the representative of the people.""_
|
| Calling a series of rapaciously corrupt administrations which
| often engage in electoral fraud[1] 'representative of the people'
| seems laughably charitable. I'm also unsure of why anyone would
| engage in business with a state if the latter were permitted to
| do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, without regard to its
| own commitments, simply by invoking its 'representation'.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_Nigeria
| alephnerd wrote:
| > why anyone would engage in business with a state if the
| latter were permitted to do whatever it wanted
|
| High risk, high reward.
|
| Also the state isn't permitted to do whatever it wants if it
| wishes to remain a part of the global financial system.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Also the state isn't permitted to do whatever it wants
| if it wishes to remain a part of the global financial system.
| "_
|
| International arbitration is supposed to enforce this, and is
| exactly what the quote is against.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > Also the state isn't permitted to do whatever it wants if
| it wishes to remain a part of the global financial system.
|
| Interestingly, the article also paints this fact in a fairly
| cynical light.
|
| > A country that doesn't pay its arbitration bills can wind
| up blackballed by foreign investors. "Rather than hopelessly
| resist," Born told me, "the overwhelming majority of parties
| voluntarily comply."
|
| Those damned foreign investors, not wanting to do business
| with corrupt governments that screw them.
| gwern wrote:
| > High risk, high reward.
|
| Which usually means _no_ trade because for many transactions,
| the required sufficiently high reward would outweigh the
| intended gains. So you get deadweight loss. Think of a lemon
| market for used cars. Yes, there will still be _some_
| transactions for cars which look like a sufficiently
| astounding bargain, but overall, both buyers and sellers are
| much worse off.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The world isn't as rational as your blog tries to make it.
| Some people (not me) are fine with taking the risk, or have
| additional aces up their sleeves.
|
| Corruption works thanks to information asymmetry. In other
| cases, this is (sadly) just standard operating procedure.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| > Also the state isn't permitted to do whatever it wants if
| it wishes to remain a part of the global financial system.
|
| Unless the state in question is USA. USA can do whatever it
| wants.
| pcrh wrote:
| The "capitalists" in this story don't come out smelling of
| roses either.
| vittore wrote:
| How you like them apples, Prince!
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The solution to the money problem came from a lawyer named
| Seamus Andrew, who had represented P.&I.D. in arbitration. Andrew
| worked in litigation finance -- he took on cases with a high
| possible reward, then found investors to fund the court battle.
| After P.&I.D. won the arbitration, Andrew foresaw a costly legal
| challenge, so he made a deal with VR Capital, a London-based
| hedge fund that focused on exactly these sorts of "specialized
| situations."
|
| Ahh, one of those firms where the interview process is that you
| have to unironically recite Al Pacino's monologue from _The Devil
| 's Advocate_. It takes a lot to make the government of Nigeria
| look like the innocent party.
| pcrh wrote:
| What a nest of vipers!
|
| And that twist in the end....
|
| >The hedge fund that bankrolled P.&I.D.'s defense in London, VR
| Capital, stood to make a profit if the verdict had gone its way.
| After the bribery allegations came out, the fund took action to
| hedge its investment: It filed an arbitration case against
| Brendan Cahill and Lismore Capital, Seamus Andrew's litigation-
| funding company. According to VR, Cahill and Andrew took its $45
| million but misled them about how P.&I.D. had won the contract to
| begin with.
| tilwidnk wrote:
| It's behind a paywall, why post a link to an article that can't
| be read?
|
| Also, I wonder if the recent crash that killed a Nigerian Bank
| CEO and his family is related to this?
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/nigerian-bank-executiv...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-12 23:02 UTC)