And our own captains of commerce need equivalent qualifications especially when dealing with the crÿme

And our own captains of commerce need equivalent qualifications, especially when dealing with the crÿme de la crÿme of Saudi officials, often closely connected to their royal family, who deal in defence contracts.It's a bad, bad, bad, bad world, and everyone is a part of it. Even in Africa, the West is a huge cog in the corruption machine. The civil war in Angola has brought decades of suffering to millions, but serves the interests of the two protagonists, President Eduardo dos Santos and the enemy he cannot do without, Jonas Savimbi of Unita. Western oil companies pay billions of dollars to the government for the right to explore and exploit Angola's waters.

And the government spends it on weapons, or stashes it in overseas accounts.The Nigerians have long been Africa's professors of corruption, but there is a strange whiff of fresh air blowing across the land. The televised hearings of Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission have had the nation glued to their TV sets long into the night. The cast of stars in this "soap" - started by President Olusegun Obasanjo and intended to bring closure to the era of the villainous dictator Sani Abacha - has shown feared former generals weeping in court and hugging their accusers. But one MP cautioned against reading too much into the exercise. "This time we had The Generals Also Cry," he said, in a reference to the popular soap The Rich Also Cry. "But there will not be any psychological relief because you know the person in the courtroom is lying."To most Chinese people, the Mandelson scandal would be incomprehensible or ludicrous.

Like the whole of Chinese society, the bureaucracy operates on a basis of favours given and favours owed among individuals. The generous Hinduja brothers were very familiar with such concepts. In China, this client-and-patron network of personal and institutional relationships is highly complex - and rotten to the core. Some Chinese economists estimate that in the two decades since China opened its doors to capitalism, government officials have embezzled up to US$3,600bn in government funds and public assets.In much of Latin America, if you scratch a government bureaucracy, you'll often find some sort of kleptocracy.