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Exposing corporate Lobbying

SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Belgian TV series Salamander where detectives ruthlessly seek out vested interests - unlike the modern British press

Morning Star readers who like a good box set should definitely get hold of Belgian detective series Salamander.

The show aired on BBC, but I'm afraid is no longer on iPlayer. However you can buy the 12 episode show for around £20 or borrow it for less.

Some newspapers were a bit sniffy about Salamander compared with other popular subtitled detective series.

But far from having what one called a "hookey plot," Salamander is very close to the real world. Scriptwriter Ward Hulselmans was a court reporter - and it shows.

Top cop Paul Gerardi stumbles onto a secret organisation called Salamander, bringing politicians, businessmen and security officials together around a private bank.

A senator's wife explains that Salamander is "a sort of interest group. They arrange appointments to high office, ensure each other's companies win government contracts, manipulate unions, act as intermediaries for a commission."

Gerardi asks if this is "for power?" He is told: "No, for money, but money buys power."

Gerardi's attempts to unravel Salamander involve people shooting each other or sleeping with each other in cop-show style.

In the real world of course, there wouldn't be the shooting. Only the sleeping with each other. And the corruption.

Because, aside from the gunfight, Salamander isn't far fetched. The main difference is that in real life the network isn't secret. Just ignored.

If you look on the Conservative Party website you'll see that you can join the party's "leaders' group" for just £50,000.

This is the "premier supporter group of the Conservative Party." For their money, "members are invited to join David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, lunches, drinks receptions."

Cheques are presumably payable to "Salamander PLC."

In the Salamander episodes, as the plot unravels, a newsreader talks about "huge fraud involving government grants." The concierge in the seedy hotel where hunted cop Gerardi is hiding out says that the politicians saw "billions of francs straight in their pockets. They should be in jail." In the background demonstrating workers face police baton charges.

We've certainly seen the baton charges. We've also seen money that was seeded in the Conservative Party apparently grow into government contracts.

So Jamie Ritblat's company Delancey gave £50,000 to the Tories to join Cameron's "leaders' group" in 2011.

Within weeks Ritblat and his partners were allowed to buy the whole Olympic Village for £557 million, to sell on as London flats.

That sounds like a lot of money, but was actually a £275m loss to the taxpayer - it cost more to build the flats than Ritblat's consortium paid.

In Salamander these kind of ties are unpicked by thrilling detective work. But in Britain they were laid bare by a public speech by Cameron.

In 2010, before he became PM, Cameron warned about "the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money," saying it was "the next big scandal waiting to happen."

Cameron gave an inside description of this lobbying - "the lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way."

Just as in Salamander, this is not limited to one party. The reference to "manipulating unions" in Salamander refers to the way European Social Democrat parties get drawn into business corruption, bringing union officials with them.

In Britain our Labour Party has certainly been drawn into the corruption of "ex-ministers for hire."

Former health secretary Alan Milburn now works for Bridgepoint, which makes money investing in the NHS privatisations he launched.

Patricia Hewitt, another former health secretary, now works for Bupa, which makes money by both competing with and contracting to the NHS.

Minister for women and key Blair adviser Sally Morgan sat on the board of care home firm Southern Cross, which took millions from the state to look after old people, treated them badly, then collapsed because investors had sucked all the cash out of the company.

Former employment secretary David Blunkett went to work for A4E, a company entirely dependent on Department for Employment contracts whose work was marred by fraud.

Former defence and home secretary John Reid went to work for G4S, a firm accused both of fraud on government contracts and whose staff have actually killed people in their custody.

Cameron's own ministers have fought hard to catch up. His old energy minister Charles Hendry now works for oil trader Vitol.

This is a firm that pleaded guilty to "grand larceny" for paying around $13 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government in exchange for oil contracts.

Former cabinet minister Lord Strathclyde now works for URS, a US engineering company which is wasting millions on government contracts running a dangerous nuclear site at Sellafield.

Lord Strathclyde's new employer is, despite its failure, being given charge of all Britain's army barracks.

Another former minister, Gerald Howarth, left office to work for a payday lender called QuickQuid.

Just as the government promised to regulate firms charging poor people interest rates of over 1,000 per cent APR, ex-ministers were joining such firms.

So there is no secret about this corruption, but it is reported less well than it appears in detective shows. Why so?

One problem is that our press is personality driven. They don't think we can understand anything about companies, so corporate misbehaviour is underreported. The fact that newspapers are run by corporations has some influence here.

While the press rightly reports on the financial misbehaviour of individual politicians like Maria Miller, we get much less about corporations financial involvement with politicians.

We often read about the bribed politician, much less about the bribing corporation.

Some of the best exposure of "cabs for hire" politicians involves "stings," where reporters pretend to be lobbyists to catch politicians offering influence for cash.

This is powerful journalism. But these reports expose real politicians only by using fake companies. They let the real companies off.

So I thoroughly recommend a watch-a-thon of Salamander. It's gripping stuff and puts the bad banker at the centre of the crime in a way our newspapers often don't.

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