Anyone who is polite knows that one should not talk about money in front of others; today I will write about the money of others, because I do not have enough myself to complete this column. That was just an anecdote, to get readers away from the vagaries of Arab politics. In an abridged version from the New York Times, published with The Observer, I found the headline "On the trail of dictators' assets: Obstacles mar hunt for Mideast fortunes." The article mentioned $30 million, and also $70 million, in Swiss banks in the name of Zein al-Abidin bin Ali, the deposed Tunisian president; it mentioned the death of former Libyan Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem, who drowned in the Danube in Vienna, which was likely an attempt to keep him quiet, the $7 billion of Muammar Gaddafi in African projects, and the $160 billion in the Libyan Central Bank which has disappeared in Europe. It mentioned the Egyptian businessman Hussein Salem, who fled to Spain and was arrested; it is said that he owned billions, but Spanish courts seized only $45 million. The article also spoke of $135 billion in Swiss banks in the names of 19 people who formed the inner circle around Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Arab and international financial circles knew the declared Libyan annual budget was $10-20 billion less than the country's known annual oil revenues. If someone tells me that $400 billion belonging to the Libyan people was lost in the banks of the west, I would believe it. In Tunisia and Egypt these amounts did not exist. There was certainly corruption and those involved in it are well-known. What I have heard about Egypt all comes from the last six or seven years, or when Mubarak returned from his first operation in Germany. He had changed, and his mental faculties had become diminished; he was no longer able to work. The news about Mubarak's having $60 billion or more in Swiss banks was offensive and deliberate. When others and I checked the source of the item, I found it was Algeria's Al-Khabar newspaper, published during a famous dispute over a controversial football match between Algeria and Egypt. Nonetheless, this Algerian paper, with its well-known objective, became a source n the money of Hosni Mubarak. I say, shame on you. Since readers and I are not accused of corruption or of hiding billions of dollars in Swiss banks (I wish), we can find something funny in this. I read about a man who tells his wife about the meaning of "inflation." He says, for example, when I married you, you weighed 50 kilos, and you're now 80. Your size has increased but your value has diminished. In any case, corruption has a positive side that is missed by those who complain about the corruption of politicians. Corrupt politicians, both American senator or Egyptian MP alike, recycle money into the national economy, by having illicit relationships with women in their car, for example, doing drugs, and spending on dishonest election campaigns. We used to hear about bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of individuals. Now, we usually hear about the bankruptcy of countries. We all know that America's national death is more than $15 trillion, but no one knows who the creditor is. Perhaps the problem is that indebted countries' economies are run by financial experts who claim they know more about money than people who actually have it. The expert and the rich person end up without money, but with financial expertise. This reminds me of the elderly woman who was at a theatrical play by the Rahbanis of Lebanon, and said, "My money... My money is gone..." She was asked, "Do you have money?" to which she responded, "Are you kidding?" Today, former Arab presidents and their aides deny accusations of corruption, and I fear that foreign banks will conspire with them to steal this money, with these people in prison. I will end with a boy whose rich parents taught him to deny that the family was wealthy. He swore to his classmates that his father was poor, and that his mom was poor, and that the housekeepers they had were are poor, and that their chef was poor, and their gardener was poor, and that they were all poor. That's the best kind of poverty. [email protected]
