Corruption in the Comoros Islands: The Passport Scandal.

Disclaimer: I met a gentleman from Comoros in my local coffee shop on Friday who suggested I look into corruption there.)

Twelve years ago, Comoros Islands, a small chain of islands off the Southeastern coast of Africa, started a scheme to allow stateless persons from the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to buy Comoros citizenship. According to a report in Reuters, there are immediate concerns about where and what the profits of the sold passport were going towards. There were also concerns about how the promised development projects the UAE and Kuwait pledged to would come to fruition. According to a report in November of 2022 by Al Jazeera, the president at the time, Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, was sentenced to life in prison for crimes of “high treason” after it was found that he embezzled $1.8 billion in government profits from the scheme. Sadly, like many other African leaders, Sambi wanted to enrich himself and his immediate circle with the proceeds of a scheme that seemed dodgy straight from the off.

The Failure of the healthcare system in Ohio.

In Today’s Washington Post is a lengthy article on the fall of life expectancy in Ashtabula County in Ohio (A place I visited earlier this year). At its heart, this story is not about corruption but political neglect in middle America. Republican governors in states like Ohio since the 1980s have decided that it is not worth putting money into improving state healthcare systems. As a result, life expectancy has plummeted in places like Ashtabula, with Ohioans having life expectancy akin to those in nations like Slovakia and Ecuador. This is mainly due to high rates of smoking-related diseases such as Lung Cancer and alcoholism. This sad state of affairs has no signs of abating as long as Republicans continue to hold on to the levers of power in states like Ohio.

(Disclaimer: the article I reference in this piece is behind a paywall.)

The Sad State of Captain Tom’s Legacy.

In 2020, at the beginning of COVID, a 99-year-old British World War II veteran Captain Tom Moore captured the hearts of a nation by walking laps in his back garden. In a time of deep uncertainty and fear about an ever-growing pandemic, Captain Tom gave everyone hope. He raised £38 million for National Health Service (NHS) charities and was knighted for his efforts. However, since then, much of the initial goodwill has receded as the charity sent up by his daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, has been embroiled in scandal.

A few weeks ago, the Guardian reported that the charity in question called the Captain Tom Fund, has stopped receiving money from donations after it emerged that a building attached to Ingram-Moore’s house, purported to be office space, was denied retrospective planning permission (an essential step in the UK for any new construction). It emerged that the building was not an office but a recreational space, including a swimming pool and changing rooms. Subsequently, Central Bedfordshire Council, which rules on planning issues, ordered the building to be torn down. This is on top of questions being asked about the charity’s governance and where the donations were ending up. Captain Tom lifted many people’s spirits, and seeing his legacy being sullied by family members is profoundly sad.

Is Thames Water Going Down the Drain?

This week in the UK, Thames Water, the company that supplies water to London and the South of England, faces an uncertain future. It has racked up debts of nearly £15 billion, and the UK government will likely have to bail the company out. Thames was privatized during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the 1980s, and since then, different entities have bought portions of the company. According to an article in The Independent, the single largest shareholder is a Canadian pension fund called the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, which holds around 32 percent of the company. On top of that, the sovereign wealth funds of both Abu Dhabi and China. While there may not be any outright corruption, there is a valid question: why would a bunch of pension funds and sovereign wealth funds want a piece of a British water company? Besides making money, the whole situation seems murkier than the Thames. The future of Thames Water is uncertain; however, this proves that the Renationalization of crucial industries in the UK should be considered.

ProMedica and Toledo: How Big Healthcare Isn’t the Cure-All For Development.

Last week I was in Toledo, Ohio, a city in middle America that has suffered due to the decline of American manufacturing. It has a beautiful library and baseball stadium and has aspirations of renewal. Walking around town, I noticed several large buildings with the branding of a company called ProMedica. I had never heard of the company before and was curious about what it did and how it gained such a large local footprint. In talking to several people around town, I quickly got the impression that the company had recently run into financial difficulties due to the COVID Pandemic.

According to wtol.com, as of May 23rd of this year, ProMedica had sold off its hospice and home healthcare business for $710 million to pay down its existing debts. They aim to return to their core business of running hospitals in the mid-west. As a result of this downsizing, according to Wtol, around 200 nursing employees have been laid off. On top of all the laid-offs and selling off unprofitable businesses, ProMedica has also lessened investment in Toledo. Recently, they announced that they would invest $10 million into redeveloping the riverwalk; however, in March of this year, ProMedica announced that they pulled out of that partnership due to financial issues. This highlights the perils of allowing one company to dominate a city; if that company fails, the whole town suffers.