If you think personal and professional corruption and malfeasance of public sector employees is relegated to Third World countries, “Banana Republics” and other non-English speaking countries, I envy your ability to compartmentalize your life and avoid contemplation of subjects which increase your heartbeat rate past 60 beats per minute.
Americans like to believe bribery, kickbacks, and payoffs involving federal officials could not happen here, not where the Ten Commandments is the original law of this country. Those persons working for any federal government in our hemisphere and having character flaws must be “south of the border” in Mexico (involved with drug cartels) and maybe Brazil (where Petrobras was paying legislators for federal contracts, and it cost the president his job). Oddly, both of these Latin American countries are predominantly Catholic, a religiously based population, but the corruption flag is flown by many people from many countries, even people in the United States.
Human nature knows no boundaries. If you read two of the books written by Niccolo Machiavelli (Discourses and The Prince), both published in the early 1600’s, you will read truisms which apply today. Machiavelli did not write solely about how to be an effective politician, having no scruples, he delved into the mind of the corrupt man which drove politician and federal worker to ignore his conscience.
After having been privy to a number of federal corruption instances, and now being a plaintiff in a matter involving a contractor (known as a Fiscal Agent) which has received three (3) contracts since 2008 to disburse US Treasury payments, and charging a fee to do so, the “dots” to be connected are becoming more clear. The denial of corruption with regard to federal contracts awarded by the US Treasury cannot be justified when facts are presented.
The public can submit Freedom of Information requests in an attempt to determine how a federal contract was awarded, who or what group had the final authorization, and what did the applicant submit in order to persuade the decision makers to choose a specific applicant. The interestingly enough, this request is submitted to the same agency which denied the informal or unofficial request, necessitating the FOI Request.
I have written on this subject but some points bear repeating in order to make a different point. The pattern of continued submissions of false information to US Treasury in an attempt to continue being a Fiscal Agent, along with investigations and audits detailing violations of the Fiscal Agent Agreement, did not deter the “decision makers” at the Bureau of Fiscal Service to continue a relationship with said Fiscal Agent, Comerica Bank.
While it was documented that Comerica Bank falsified consumer feedback information (using an “in-house” survey rather than one being independent), Comerica Bank also made the assertion that the infrastructure was available for Comerica Bank to handle the program of over five million debit cards. There was no infrastructure, and Bureau of Fiscal Service decision makers known as the “Evaluation Team” refused to be interviewed because they knew that I knew the contract was tainted. Comerica Bank used a third party call center named Conduent, not a bank, to field customer service call. This has been an ultimate disaster for debit card holders needing to address fraud matters.
Not only did Comerica Bank not have a call center, according to a Conduent manager Comerica Bank houses no debit card customer information or files within their system; Conduent controls all calls, and all banking activity. But wait; Conduent is not a bank. This is part of the reason Comerica Bank and Conduent are defendants in a number of lawsuits in federal court.
You ask how do employees of the Bureau of Fiscal Service, Department of Treasury, justify and ignore the fraudulent submission of documents in order to obtain a lucrative federal contract? These employees feel untouchable as they and their lawyers ignore FOI requests and subpoenas. The legislators in Brazil felt they had the same insulation as they took money from Petrobras officials, and Mexican law enforcement taking money from cartels.
US federal employees have no reason to be smug. Criminals in any country know that the only catalyst necessary to persuade a federal employee to commit a crime, take a bribe, turn a blind eye, or ignore an investigation is quite simply motivation, and motivation can take many forms.
Federal Corruption 