Khalaf Al-Harbi Okaz newspaper I do not know what happened to my mind when I believed Saudi Aramco would not be able to ignore the nature of the great changes witnessed by society after we were blessed by the bounties of the Internet and social communication tools. I expected the company's uncovering of the minute details of the Tyco bribe scandal to be only a matter of time. What happened was exactly the opposite. In the beginning, the giant company kept quiet over all that was being said about the tumultuous scandal. When it, however, noted that the press reports were persisting, the company issued a weak statement not worth the ink with which it was written. The summary of the statement was that what happened was due to the mistake of an employee who was fired in 2009 for reasons not connected to the case. In that statement, Aramco said it was conducting an internal investigation on the issue. The pretext of “internal investigation” was previously used by the Saudi Railway Organization when its trains started to have accidents. Of course, you know that nothing in this world is more beautiful or entertaining than someone investigating himself. The difference between the two investigations was that in the case of the railway company, the National Anti-Corruption Commission conducted its own independent investigations and published its results. In the case of Aramco, it is difficult for the commission to investigate even the car parks of the employees. Aramco is a shielded fortress and nobody will know what is going on inside. All that we know is that it is a mega company that is exerting strenuous efforts for our benefit. Therefore we should not trouble it with questions. Throughout the decades, Aramco painted an exceptional picture in the public mind as a company with very strict rules and regulations that are difficult to surpass or penetrate. Many of its employees are brought in to be educated and brought up by Aramco. But it seems that age has its own rules. Aramco's education is no longer enough to prevent corruption. The biggest proof of this is the dismissed employee who was made the scapegoat for the entire case, with Aramco apparently ignoring the loopholes in its rules and regulations that enabled him to receive bribes without being discovered. Also, the employee was dismissed for reasons not related to the bribes. Before this statement I was, as a citizen and a journalist, curious about the mechanisms Aramco was using to combat corruption. Aramco is one of the largest companies in the world, if not the single largest ever. Therefore it is supposed to use advanced work systems that could not be easily overcome. However, after this feeble statement, it is obvious that whatever is said about Aramco's professionalism is not accurate. It is a haven of traditional bureaucracy that is more backward than many of the departments you are aware of. No senior official from Aramco dared to step up to face the media, answer the queries of journalists and explain the facts. Aramco did nothing more than issue an ambiguous statement about a mysterious employee and an ambiguous promise to conduct an internal investigation, whose results nobody will know. If Aramco had a drop of transparency, it would have known the violations for which the employee was fired was nothing compared to the violations of other employees who nobody would think of firing. No smoke without fire and no fire without oil.
