Birds of a feather

We had recently posted about one greasy till downside of the new prosperous Republic of Ireland -- the unfair treatment of overseas workers on big construction projects in Ireland, and the willing participation of Irish companies in dubious overseas transactions. Over the last fortnight, the local news has featured continuing revelations about the employment practices of Gama Construction, a Turkish firm that has done very well out of the government's tendering process for road and power projects.

What began as a fairly straightforward allegation of wage law violations became more complex when it was discovered that the company, for reasons still unclear, had been dumping a portion of the wages for their Turkish workers into bank accounts in the Netherlands -- without telling the workers. A likely possibility was that the firm was using the tactic to show full payment of wages to Dublin's somnolent regulators, yet would later reclaim the money on the grounds that it was either unclaimed or to cover unspecified "expenses."

Since we live in the age of Google, it's interesting to see what pops up in a search for the company's background -- although we wonder if this simple step was ever considered by the Irish government before embracing the company so completely. It's not hard to see a picture of a would-be Turkish Halliburton:

A 1996 announcement about a joint venture power plant in Turkey: An Enron Corp. affiliate holds a 50 percent interest in the Trakya Electrik power project. Affiliates of the following companies own the remaining percentages of the Trakya project: Midlands Electricity of the United Kingdom, 31 percent; GAMA Endustri of Turkey, 10 percent; and Wing International, Ltd. of the United States, 9 percent.

Enron Engineering and Construction affiliates and a GAMA affiliate have formed a consortium that is acting as the turnkey construction contractor. Another Enron affiliate is expected to be the plant’s operation and maintenance contractor.

The company is keen to do business in Iraq.

And, inevitably: a Houston-Halliburton-Iraq connection.

We suppose that the most charitable thing to say is that globalisation is a messy business.

UPDATE 15 April: Let's hope that the relevant minister during much of Gama's shenanigans, Mary Harney, has her story straight on how she never directly solicited the company to enter the Irish market. Because there are certainly some tempting trails to be found on the web about how she might have had the opportunity to do so.