Corrupting the Argument
What is corruption, anyway?
OK, that’s a pretty broad question, and one which many people would not bother to answer. Corruption is one of those things that you know when you see it, like sarcasm, or bullying, or the constellation of Orion.
Well, maybe. But if that’s the case then there’s been an awful lot of horseshit spoken about corruption in the last few days, most of which has been in connection with Mick Wallace’s underdeclaration of VAT. It’s not been an edifying affair, and those who thought Wallace’s election a good and liberating thing for the Dáil (full disclosure: I was one of them, in spite of his having plenty of shortcomings) would be excused for feeling furious. Wallace should have known that there was an entire culture ready to declare him a chancer. He should have known that there would be a certain glee in tearing down The Guy With The Hair And The Cuclhie Accent and kept his nose so clean it would feature in a Dettol advert. The thought of him justifying himself to the likes of Michael Lowry is beyond ugly, but it’s not like he didn’t ask for it.
Still, the reaction to this has generally been infantile and completely misguided, and for the good of everyone it’s got to stop. We really should be better than this by now.
Much of the discussion I have seen about Wallace has triumphantly recycled his election posters, promising a different kind of politics, as if the view that he is in fact representing More Of The Same – or that he is a “corrupt TD” is a simple truism. Well, it isn’t. This may put me on the side of the apologists, but if that’s so I’m more comfortable here.
What Wallace did was not “corruption.” It was VAT fraud. He did not misuse any of his electoral power. He did not abuse political process for personal gain. What happened was not, in fact, a product of his position at all. Mick Wallace’s business was going down the pan. He falsified a VAT return in order to keep it going. He hasn’t tried to hide from this fact. He hasn’t pretended it was an administrative error or tried to blame an underling. He’s been upfront about the fact that he knowingly did it himself.
This is not to argue that he shouldn’t face the law. If Wallace were to end up in a courtroom over VAT fraud, fine. But this is not corruption, and anyone who says otherwise is frighteningly wrong-headed.
Corruption is about power and privilege. Unless it’s backed by power, it means nothing.
The career of Michael Lowry is a textbook example of corruption. While Communications Minister he abused his position to give Denis O’Brien assistance in getting a mobile phone licence that made O’Brien unimaginably wealthy. He also used his position to achieve rent increases paid by Telecom Eireann to Ben Dunne, and in return Ben Dunne built a nice £400k extension to his house. Breathtaking corruption; Lowry, in a position of power unrivalled by anyone in that country, allowing that power to be abused by others for nothing more than permanent gain.
And Wallace? Where did Wallace’s power lie, exactly? He had a business disintegrating as a property bubble collapsed. It’s certain that Mick Wallace was no angel during the bubble – if he had been, he wouldn’t have been successful – but he did more to help his community than just about any comparable figure. With everything on the slide and the building industry imploding, he underdeclared his VAT by approximately 1.4m. This is not an act of abusing power, it’s an act of desperation; a man trying to keep his business running, and trying to keep his employees in jobs. The €2.1m figure owed to the Revenue includes interest and over €400,000 of penalty charges. His company will not be able to pay the €2.1m, as it is now bankrupt.
This isn’t pretty reading. But the notion that Wallace now belongs in the same league as “the rest of them,” that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Michael Lowry and Liam Lawlor and Ray Burke and Insert Name Here, is simply absurd. And the idea that those who aren’t so concerned by Wallace’s fiddling are, somehow, legitimising Ireland’s long history of parish-pump corruption is similarly deluded. Corruption is about power, and Wallace had none.
Ireland should know what “corruption” looks like better than anyone. The country has, in the last five years, been the victim of entirely legal dealings by the very powerful that are unimaginably corrupt. The last three decades have seen a culture of cronyism so normalised as to be conducted in plain view; a power so entrenched that it need not make any pretence at rectitude.
That disapproval should be heaped on someone with no power, someone clumsily and stupidly trying to keep their business going as their world collapsed, is ridiculous. To call it corruption is moronic and counterproductive and wrong. It ensures that we never bother to understand, really, what power and corruption really mean. Those with power will smile benignly and pronounce on morality, just as Christine Lagarde recently told the Greeks to pay their taxes with such breathtaking moral hypocrisy. As Wallace is held up as a universal symbol of “corruption” you will hear, beneath the fervour, the sound of rotten privilege doing a giddy dance of joy.
June 11th, 2012 at 11:20 am
Well worth saying.
Two quibbles:
There is a legal definition of “corruption”. I’ll post it presently. Perhaps the definition is too narrow, but it is better than none. As used in common discourse, the word is so vague as to be little more than another term of abuse.
Another word which the law defines is “fraud”. I will also post that soon. A mere failure to pay a tax on time is not, without more, a fraud.
June 11th, 2012 at 11:38 am
In fairness, I can see you are trying to defend the man, but your arguments are largely red herrings.
For one thing, this is the first place I have seen anyone mention ‘corruption’ in relation to Mick Wallace, and you have not provided a link to one. No one has mentioned it – it’s been tax fraud, plain and simple.
For another, few have mentioned Michael Lowry either – it’s simply not relevant.
The only substantive point in any of this, which you have neatly skipped around, is whether or not someone who has knowingly and admittedly committed the crime of tax fraud, is fit to continue to serve in the Dáil.
June 11th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
A fair point about links Ciarán, I was aware of this when posting. I was really referring to blogs and social media and felt it was unfair to single people out. If you search (say) “Mick Wallace corrupt” on google you will find plenty of these links. I’ve also seen some tabloid papers referring to him as “corrupt TD” or similar, but as I don’t buy the damn things I can’t accurately cite them.
Lowry is used here as a counter-example, I’m not suggesting he has been mentioned.
It may be a case of loose language, but there has been little contextualising of his actions and I don’t think it’s particularly helpful.
June 11th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17320460
Maybe a better comparison?
I suppose corruption for me is putting personal gain ahead of the general good?
June 11th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Well, I also think Paul Begley got pretty rough treatment at the hands of the state. 6 years for garlic-smuggling is a bit on the punitive side.
However, if we run with the comparison: there is a difference between entering into a predetermined tax evasion scheme during an economic boom because you don’t like the law, and underdeclaring your VAT to enable you to pay off your staff and subbies when your business is on the skids. Again, it’s about power-dynamics. This isn’t to excuse what Wallace has done, just to say he’s a different fish from Paul Begley.
Your definition of corruption makes pretty much every business corrupt. Self-interest and all that. I’m happy to run with that, personally, but it’s a kind of broad church!
June 11th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
As an accountant if I had done what he did I’d be thrown out of my profession. The excuse that he was trying to save jobs is nonsense, he could have declared the correct VAT & then talked with the revenue about payment terms on a bill that big. He knowingly misstated a payment to the state who he is now supposed to represent! He has a case to answer and nothing he has said so far in any way excuses what he did. The fact he isn’t one of the worst is irrelevant.
June 11th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
He isn’t an accountant. If you want to bar him from ever becoming one, go ahead. As a developer he’s probably built things not entirely in accordance with Technical Guidance Documents, which would get me thrown out of my profession, but that doesn’t prevent him from being a TD and nor should it (not least because everyone else was doing so too).
Nobody is arguing he doesn’t have a case to answer, just that much of the coverage is OTT and shorn of any context.
June 13th, 2012 at 11:33 am
I am afraid that the self-imposed task of supplying legal definitions of “corruption” and “fraud” is beyond me at the present.
I wish to say this: in a legal sense (there are others e.g. corruption of data) “corruption” refers to public officials acting contrary to their duty in return for money or favours. Wallace is not corrupt in this sense.
Is he ” corrupt” in any other sense ? Not any that is in common use, as far as I can see. “Corrupt” is not a synonym for “selfish” “greedy” or “imperfect”.
As to fraud, again this is not a synonym for “theft” or “dishonesty” and a false declaration is not necessarily fraudulent. Failure to pay a debt on time is not necessarily dishonest, never mind fraudulent.
As more details emerge – as distinct from speculative interpretations – these labels may become more relevant, of course. But such facts as we now have are pretty much exclusively from Wallace’s mouth. It is true that it is not easy to make everything he has said consistent with itself, but not all conclusions drawn from that are necessarily correct. In the case of some such conclusions, they display an ignorance of business and of life.
June 21st, 2012 at 1:47 pm
In light of the tax issues, and moral accusations, in England maybe we should adapt a loose definition as fodder for journalists.
I’ll give you a few and then maybe we can decide on some way of distinguishing the types of corruption.
My newspeak one is “Ethically unsounds” or perhaps “ethical reservation”?
A business which conducts itself to the detriment of the society in which it operates could it be an example of “private capital corruption”? Since the state is not an individual it’s easier to see how corruption can take place. Offices being elected not bought, although in some countries this is the case. I would therefore think of this as “public capital corruption”, with “captial” in both cases referring to what material has been used to carry out the corruption, and it involves the use of publicly owned goods being used to enrich the temporary holder of those said goods.
Private capital is so vast and varied that I believe many people do not realise the damage that businesses do to their lives. If the business puts its own aims ahead of the society in which it lives then it may become a threat to that society. Laws are put in place and they may engage in public and private corruption in order to maintain their profits. Other businesses, who themselves know that they live in the very same society, engage in business in a sustainable manner that hopefully enriches that said society instead of bleeding it of its resources.
Sorry for the long winded comment, I don’t do it very often but I just think corruption is so bad in Ireland that most people see it as a fact of life.