When the mafia or international corruption is involved in business processes, it’s not necessarily true that all such businesses will be successful or, conversely, failures.
For example, in Ukraine, the “mindychi” business on bulletproof vests failed, while on drones it succeeded. And these drones indeed fly and benefit the country. The problem is that without the mafia, someone could have emerged who, under competitive conditions, would have made better and cheaper drones. But the mafia simply did not allow such people into the market due to the monopoly on procurement.
Now, about the lessons from Mindychgate.
If a film company has started manufacturing the best drones here, I turned to the world of cinema.
Martin Scorsese was often accused of his mafia films being financed by the mafia. In reality, no. But he did have connections to corrupt financing.
He had a movie called “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The irony of fate can sometimes be too harsh. While Martin Scorsese was filming an epic drama about Jordan Belfort’s financial machinations, the company Red Granite Pictures itself became embroiled in one of the world’s largest corruption schemes. As it later turned out, the film about a luxurious lifestyle with questionable money was made with funds stolen from Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund. The main architects of this scheme were the company’s co-founder Riza Aziz, who is the stepson of Malaysia’s former Prime Minister, and the scandalous financier Jho Low. It was through their hands that hundreds of millions of state dollars flowed into the accounts of the Hollywood studio. Not only Belfort’s adventures but also the films “Dumb and Dumber To” and “Daddy’s Home” saw the light thanks to this “dirty” money. When the FBI began its investigation, the repercussions were felt by all. In 2018, Red Granite Pictures had to pay the US government a $60 million fine to avoid total asset confiscation. Even Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t left out — the actor had to hand over valuable gifts from the producers to federal authorities, including a Picasso painting worth $3.2 million and the legendary “Oscar” statue that once belonged to Marlon Brando.
The final chord was a lawsuit from Jordan Belfort himself. In 2020, the real “Wolf of Wall Street” demanded $300 million in compensation from the studio. He stated that his reputation had suffered enormous damage, as he would never have sold the rights to his story’s screen adaptation if he had known about the criminal origin of the producers’ capital.
Thus, the film about machinations became part of an even bigger financial scam, leaving a mark that no box office receipts could erase.
Did Scorsese make a good film and is he a talented director? Of course!!! But the investigation was conducted, and the guilty were punished.
In our case, both contracts for bulletproof vests and funds for drones were allocated through the Ministry of Defense’s agencies. What does the state do after scandals? It doesn’t conduct additional investigations or try to understand what happened. On the contrary, it issues a Cabinet decision that now Defense Ministry agencies (which have their own supervisory boards and even some independence from the ministry) will monopolistically decide not only what to procure for the Armed Forces but will also manage these processes for other defense entities. Furthermore, those same structures and even people who concluded contracts for mindychi Chinese bulletproof vests will decide what to buy with donor funds from Western allies!
So what was beneficial, created with the mafia’s involvement, should undoubtedly be preserved. Simply, the mafia needs to be destroyed. 🙂
Pictured: Martin Scorsese
