Last night, the PBS current affairs program Frontline broadcast “Black Money” - an hour-long investigation into the nexus of power and cash that comprises globalized corporate and government corruption. The reporter -the legendary Lowell Bergman - traced alleged kickbacks on the Al Yamamah weapons deal from British Aerospace to the Saudis, specifically Prince Bandar (aka Bandar Bush). The amounts involved are staggering, in the billions of dollars.
Bergman's reporting leads to two equally plausible though contradictory conclusions. First, since the dawn of time this is the way business gets done. And second, nobody is willing to explicitly countenance corruption as an intrinsic aspect of commercial transactions.
Enter Karlheinz Schreiber et al. Make no mistake, the issues addressed by the Oliphant commission, on a much smaller scale, invite comparisons to the BAE affair. And everybody who weighs in - from Stephen Harper to Michael Ignatieff to Robin Sears to Eddie Greenspan - for whatever reason and to whatever end, is going to be held accountable one way or the other.
I'll be watching this Friday when CBC's The Fifth Estate revisits the Airbus Affair. And if you're Canadian and you have a pulse, you should too.
