Word: graftings
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Before a jury of seven men and five women in Harrisburg, Pa., Special Deputy Attorney General Vincent G. Panati produced a classic capsule example of how much personal prosperity can be skimmed off state highway construction, the nation's booming, graft-prone major public-works project. Witnesses testified that two top members of the Republican-run Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission had teamed up with Manu-Mine Research & Development Co. (initial capitalization: $4,300) in a plan to defraud the commission of turnpike construction funds. With then-Turnpike Commission Chairman Thomas J. Evans' nephew, Charles Stickler, as president, Manu-Mine...
...Castillo steered the country sternly back from left to center, the U.S. sent $50 million to start a highway and building boom that has kept Guatemala prosperous. But graft, always present, kept pace with prosperity. The President alone dispensed $1,000,000 a year through the old and perfectly legal custom of confidenciales-a confidential fund that he could spend as he saw fit. With paternal pride, Castillo launched ambitious health-and-education programs, plastering the country with signs urging peasants to "Wash Your Hands Before Eating." To replace Arbenz' helter-skelter expropriation of rich plantations, he started...
...started in 1946 when business-minded Miguel Aleman became President of Mexico, named Antonio Bermudez, a wealthy whisky distiller, to head Pemex. Bermudez cracked down on graft and featherbedding, stepped up exploration. By 1951, production was twice that of 1938; last year the nation's wells produced 94.1 million bbl. Geologists and oil engineers, trained at the University of Mexico, directed a wildcatting program, using 146 drilling rigs, that brought in 18 new fields out of 84 tries...
Pemex is still inefficient, with 40,000 employees doing work that could be handled by 30,000. Graft and nepotism still creep in. Pemex must import $70 million worth of high-grade petroleum products yearly (but exports $45 million worth of crude oil plus some refined products). Its reinvestment rate is not high enough for any truly spectacular progress. But Bermudez does not propose to sacrifice Pemex welfare trappings in risky gambles on fast development. The success to date, he believes, plentifully fulfills Pemex' motto: "For the service of the nation...
...Graft & Patronage. Not even the efficient behemoths, however, can eliminate all the road builder's problems. He must fight a tight-money market to finance his equipment buying, deal with a welter of conflicting and often obsolete state regulations. Road building has always been blighted by graft, ranging from political kickbacks for contracts to small bribes to persuade local police to let the huge machines move over restricted roads to their job sites. Says Pittsburgh Contractor Max Harrison: "When I started out in this business in 1923 everyone connected with it was a crook." While the crooks have become...