Culture of corruption

A culture of corruption The biggest news story throughout Septemberin Ireland has been the scandal revealed in “Greencore” the first major state company to be privatised by the 26 county government. The privatisation programme of the Dublin government is now in disarray as more and more corrupt practices by the company’s board are revealed.

So far it is known that the Chief Executive of Greencore [formerly the Irish Sugar Company] Chris Comerford and four other executives were set to pocket profits of over £7 million from ripping off their own company. The most damaging and politically embarrassing factor for the fovernment was that the swindle occurred when Irish Sugar was a wholly state owned company for which the had direct responsibility.

In 1988 the board of Irish Sugar directed by Comerford approved a loan of £1 million to four of the executives to buy out 49% of a company called Sugar Distributors for £1.7 million. The state through the Irish Sugar Company already owned 51% of the company since 1975 and it was the main marketing and distributing company for Irish Sugar products. Fifteen months later Irish Sugar bought off these same shares for £9.5 million.

THIEVES FALL OUT

The Irish public might never have found out about this scam except that Chris Comerford and the other executives fell out over dividing the loot. The 49% share had been bought by a company named “Gladebrook” whose ownership is hidden behind a string of at least 8 offshore companies registered in Jersey. Itwasonly when Comerford went to the High Court in Dublin claiming against his former cronies’ beneficial ownership of one of these companies that the scandal began to unravel. A week later Comerford was forced to resign over Greencore, but not before the board granted him a golden handshake in cash and pension nghts worth over £2 million, A few days later company secretary Michael Tully went also.

A CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

For Irish workers Greencore is secn not as a glimpse of the unacceptable face of capitalism but as its only face. There has been a plethora of scandals in recent years and the general attitude to the enquiry into Greencore is one of cynicism.

Over a period there has been the collapse of the Larry Goodman group of beef exporting companies in which hundreds of millions of taxpayer’ s money has been lost in export insurance and other scams. The Gallagher group collapsed with a swindle of further millions of small inves tors savings. Both Gallagher and Goodman were prominently identified with the Fianna Fail party and Taoiseach Charlie Haughey. Comerford and his company chair Bernard Cahill wer supporters of Fine Gael. Fianna Fail ministers and deputies have been involved for years in county council planning decisions and land rezonings which have netted untold fortunes for private speculators. In fact Dublin County Council had no time for any other business during its last six year tenure because of planning and rezoning applications. Ina month in which aroof top protest at Dublin’s Mountjoy jail was brutally suppressed by a major mobilisation of State forces Irish a An Reabhloid page 5 —————e

tO See Ir tne Rogues Gallery Larry Goodman board of Greencore join the inmates in their squalid conditions. The likelihood of the present enquiry netting the entire web of accomplices in the Greencore affair seem re: mote. To obtain disclosure of ownership of the offshore companies could require a court order in Jersey which can only be granted if criminal proceedings are underway. Given the govermment’s involvement as being directly responsible for overseeing the Sugar company and Sugar distributors and that the consultants responsible for overseeing the flotation of Greencore found nothing amiss it would seem that dubious dealings with offshore companies are commonplace and that the whole affair came to light by chance and Comerford’s greed.

THE TRADE UNIONS

The Unions have played a sorry role in the whole affair There has been complete silence from the’ Irish Came gress of Trade Unions [ICTU] - not surpnsing eae that ICTU is locked into a 10 year joint econgmm programme [The Programme for Economic and Sagal Progress - PESP] with the government. One mujer justification given for this unholy alliance is a minieal pay deal which the government now wants to remege on. ICTU has also quietly dropped its policy of oppe= sition to privatisation without a conference decisiam i do so. Another factor in their silence is Billy Atiey [General Secretary of SIPTU and ICTU leader]. HES also a director of Greencore.

The one positive result of these scandals is that i working class, which has been reeling under a massive austerity offensive and the breakneck speed with whieh the public sector has been restructured to the demands of the International Monetary Fund and the European Community’s single market plan, has lost its tolerance of crooked politicians and their business friends. In the June local government elections the two main bourgeois parties lost heavily to left and protest candidates.

The political crisis is now so deep that it is unlikely that either party would come out of a general election able to form a stable government.

FURTHER BLOWS

The privatisation policy was dealt further blows when An Reabhloid page 6