In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Well, we had politicians making dozens of millions through organizing deals for medical masks during the pandemic that were billions too expensive.
In ome case the court ruled that this is legal as the corruption laws only cover if the politician is using the power of his mandate, not the power of the contacts he has through his mandate. The court wrote into the decision though that it is unfathomable, why the law does not criminalize such corruption. It is extremy rare that a court would make a suggestion as to what the law should say.
The former longest “serving” mep and minister in multiple ministries including thr ministry of finance Wolfgang Schäuble was involved in a scandal in the 90s where he transported literal suit cases full of cash for an unknown donor to his party.
Germany is a banana republic that has to import its bananas overseas.