You wanna talk corruption, you should look at NY state and NYC politics. In the past 10 years, there's been about 10 NY politicians that's been convicted in federal court for different crimes related to their position. Most recently, the most powerful Democrat and Republic in the state legislature was convicted within weeks of each other. And now the federal prosecutor has set his sights on the mayor of NY. He is so anti-cop that the guy he appointed to run the Civilian Complaint Board (the agency that investigates complaints against the police) is an attorney whose law firm represents clients suing the police. The feds are currently looking into the mayor's PAC, because it looks like he was using it to circumvent political donation limits. Several people that does business with the city, and has gotten favorable treatment from the mayor, has donated upwards of $500,000 to his PAC. The problem is the mayor controls the PAC and decides where the money is spent. And as a PAC, they don't need to disclose who they got their contributions from and how much.
And then you have the Speaker of the Assembly (the Democrat), who was convicted last year for pay-for-play. As the speaker, he awarded research grants for mesothelioma to a doctor at Columbia. In return, that doctor referred patients to a law firm that specialized in mesothelioma lawsuits. That law firm in return has paid over $5 million in referral fees to the speaker. And the speaker also controlled the court appointments, so that law firm got preferential treatment in court and had all their lawsuits scheduled first. Upon conviction he lost his seat, but he still gets to collect his pension for being a legislator. The feds now wants him sentenced to 15 years in prison (he's in his 70's), but he is claiming that he has prostate cancer so he wants leniency from the court and just be sentenced to probation. The feds also wants to seize his "profits" from his crimes and are going after him for over $5 million, but he is disputing the amount of his profits. They held the special election this past Tuesday for his replacement, and the person who won was hand-picked by him to replace him.
The President of the Assembly (the Republican), was convicted for getting his son a highly-paid no show job and a highly-paid no show consulting gig at two companies who he "helped". His son was caught on a wiretap complaining about his supervisor at the job who questioned why he was an employee there since he never showed up for work. He was screaming at that guy's boss that his supervisor should be fired, or else his dad will take care of it.
There has been over 10 highly ranked police officials that have been demoted and put on modified duty for doing "favors" for two individuals who are heavy donors to the mayor and his PAC in return for trips and gifts such as diamonds.
And the feds are also investigating the sale of a city-owned nursing home. They sold the home for $28 million under the "verbal" promise that the new owners would maintain it as a nursing home. The zoning for the building also had restrictions that required it to be used as a nursing home. A lobbyist for the new owners, a big donor to the mayor and his PAC, got the city to remove the restriction in exchange for $16 million. Days later, the new owners flipped the building to a condo developer for $116 million, a $72 million profit. And evidence suggests that they had actually made the deal to sell the building before they got the restriction lifted, provided that they could get the restriction lifted.
They're just following the old NY traditions of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.