Wednesday 24 June 2009

Politics, Real Estate and Corruption, Part 3

"The Espoo City Manager Marketta Kokkonen and the city's Director of Technical and Environment Services Olavi Louko have denied allegations of bribery violations arising out of official trips they have made.

The National Bureau of Investigation, Finland's central criminal police arm, has suspected there may have been infractions, and has almost completed a preliminary investigation into the matter.

The criminal investigation centres on sixteen official trips made by Louko, one of which Kokkonen also took part in.

It is understood that the police enquiry was launched by a request at the end of last year from Espoo City Councillor Kurt Byman (Ind.).

He passed material to the police concerning 125 trips made by Olavi Louko between 2001 and 2008, examining the parties arranging the trips and events and their links with the City of Espoo.

Byman has claimed that construction firms and developers have entertained Louko and in so doing have received large tracts of land for development from Espoo. Louko has denied the claims.

Kokkonen has been the City Manager of Espoo since 1995
."
Looks really like we have reach the end the real estate cycle as usually it terminate with the discovery of various criminal cases and put into light the high degree of corruption in this field.

I can't believe that the "rating agencies" put Finland as the least corrupt country in the world in the past decade...they were so blind or so uncompetent.

Politics, Real Estate and Corruption, Part 2

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, the rating bodies are themselves one of the main roots of current world economic problems, aren't they?

Globally coordinated corruption is part of the globalization.