Candid Indonesia bribery story shows value of looking beneath the surface

Reuters uncovered a startling tale of parliamentary graft in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. The Aug 26 story illustrated the value of going beyond statistics to get the real story of how a country functions, and how hard it can be for foreign investors to navigate. When news broke that the anti-graft agency was looking into reports that some legislators had received about $55,000 each to elect the deputy central bank governor the bureau followed up by getting one of those named to spill the beans in a phone interview. “As a politician, I’m not that clean,” Agus Condro Prayitno told Reuters in a telephone interview. It was a revealing glimpse into how corruption thrives, meeting the need of clients for the inside track, the “ah, so that’s how it works in that country” stories.