Massive bribery, masquerading as Christmas gifts

Oh, Christmas giving, how many crimes are being committed in your name? This Christmas season is traditionally an opportune time for the bribe givers to turn over to the bribe takers some very expensive gifts and bags and bags of money, all disguised as simple Christmas gifts.

I would imagine a joint team of operatives coming from the Ombudsman, the DOJ, the NBI, the PNP, the Malacañan anti-graft office, as well as the Office of the Court Administrator, to conduct close-in covert operations doing intensive surveillance of the movements of Cabinet members and their undersecretaries, regional directors, justices, judges and prosecutors, police officials and personnel and commissioners, arbiters and all decision makers. The Central Bank, the DOF, and the AMLA must be monitoring movements of money, especially those of considerable amounts.

Local government unit executives who are signing multi-billion contracts are also being watched. Taipans and tycoons may be transferring huge amounts of money through the banking systems to facilitate the consummation of multi-billion transactions. Contractors of highways and buildings and other government infrastructures must have already transferred huge amounts to the contract signatories' foreign accounts in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Kuala Lumpur. Suppliers of goods and services must have already delivered the moola to the accounts of agency heads and members of the bids and awards committees.

Expensive cars, even condo units, large chunks of shares of stocks, expensive foreign travels, and even young girls or boys or even both (depending upon the inclinations of the takers) usually change hands during Christmas seasons. Most of the time a minor agency official or a minor corporate manager checks into a luxurious five-star hotel or casino and then the delivery is done inside the privacy of a room there. The people do not know that their future had been mortgaged already by corrupt officials who enter into onerous deals with contractors and concessionaires.

Even judges and fiscals or prosecutors, I would imagine, would surreptitiously go to some expensive motels to meet the young girls or the hunks gifted by the accused of a major crime. Then, together with the starlet and the young actor is a bag filled with bills. Then the promulgation of judgment follows by January. Cases are being fixed by giant law firms dealing with decision makers who are their fraternity brothers. These are the subjects of talks in the grapevine and I am totally outraged, even assuming that only half of them are true.

I am terribly angry and sad that Christmas, the birth of the innocent child, Jesus, is being bastardized by the scoundrels in our society, the rascals in government, and the scalawags in the business community who are masquerading as Melchors, Gaspars, and Baltazars.

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