[contingencies]

It's only free from corruption on the indices because financial crime is legalized (the victims are overseas in places like Burma, where their clients extract ill-gotten gains to launder in the Singapore markets) and the government, which came to power on a platform of communism and claims to be a democracy, is in fact a well established, dynastically-held totalitarian state with hopelessly enslaved (believe they are free) citizens.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

That would explain why the same party has won every single election since independence.

[jessaustin]

And it explains the large overlap among executives of large companies, military brass, and government ministers. They are all the same people: literally a guy is a CEO, because he is also a general and last year he was Minister for Whatever.

I still laugh about the interview I saw with Lee Hsien Loong in which the obsequious (although perhaps rather clever) interviewer asked him whether he had been upset when Goh Chok Tong had immediately succeeded Lee Kwan Yew (Hsien Loong's father) as PM. LHL squirmed and laughed nervously, and stammered, "Well, ah, of course not. One cannot have unreasonable expectations." Even he was embarrassed for his country then.

[wilfra]

Can you give some examples of legal financial crimes? Not saying you're wrong, I've just never heard that. I know they are a tax haven and have lax financial controls, but the "victims" of that are the tax man in foreign governments.

[contingencies]

I am talking about, for example, laundering money for the Burmese junta, who routinely censor, enslave, imprison, rape and kill their own citizens.

eg. "In 1991, the Junta laundered $400 million through a Singapore bank as down payment for Chinese weapons." - Jane's Intelligence Review ... or see http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2007/09/singapores-debt-of-h...