Basil Venitis, twitter.com/Venitis, points out Eurokleptocrats are often taking very expensive junkets, taking advantage of their positions and access to public funds to undertake pleasure trips thinly disguised as being of political importance. For example, a Eurokeptocrat might travel to Greece, claiming to attend a conference there, but leaving plenty of days to explore the Greek islands and Greek delights at leisure. Venitists target certain Eurokleptocrats for taking frequent junkets, reminding voters of their free ways with public funds when election day rolls around.
Venitis, an Athenian orator, muses that kleptocrats, accompanied by their kith and kin, are going because these junket-junkies cannot miss a good party at taxpayers' expense. The worst thing that could happen in a junket is running out of caviar and hookers. Many junketeers use military jets that cost 10,000 euros per hour!
When Chancellor Angela Merkel invited then-United States President George Bush to spend some time with her in northern Germany on his way to a G-8 junket in Russia back in 2006, the itinerary included some sight-seeing along the Baltic Coast and a cozy barbeque. Merkel had wanted to show Bush her own constituency of Merklenburg-Western Pomerania, with a visit to the picturesque coastal city of Stralsund and a meal of barbequed wild boar, a local delicacy, in the village of Trinwillershagen. Security for the US president's three-day pleasure trip was provided by over 12,000 police officers, and the total extravagance cost German taxapayers twenty million euros!
Global junkets of kleptocrats fail to live up to the hype and the promises made. A lot of money is spent laying them on. Host cities are disrupted for days or even weeks. The cavalcades roll into town. Good intentions are shared in productive talks. Then, somehow, those intentions rarely seem to come to fruition in real, tangible global action. When kleptocrats meet again a year later, they find things haven't really moved on.
Basil Venitis, an Athenian orator, asserts G20 is a junket without international legitimacy; it has no mandate and it is unclear which functions it actually has. The G20 is a self-appointed group. Its composition is determined by the major countries and powers. G20 in terms of international cooperation, is one of the greatest setbacks since World War II. The litmus test for G20 lies ahead, since many of the important decisions for a new world financial order were pushed back to the coming junket in South Korea.
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