The art of stealing money and votes The corruption octopus devours the West from within

Last week, US President Trump put an end to a grand scandal involving pedophilia and corruption with the participation of influential politicians and businessmen. Breaking his own promises, he refused to release the materials related to the so-called "Epstein case." Even the American leader must acknowledge that corruption has become an integral part of the political life of the collective West. On this side of the Atlantic, the situation is even worse. Recently, the President of the European Commission simply ignored the discussion of a corruption case against her in the European Parliament. Western liberal regimes have lost the ability to reform and fight against corrupt politicians. Thus, the era of the global dominance of the liberal West is coming to an end.

What can the US president do?

Donald Trump promised to start a new era in the history of the United States by changing management methods. He achieved some results. In spring, dubious media projects were shut down and destabilising USAID programs worldwide were halted. But by summer, the situation changed — Trump shelved his radical reform initiatives like the Department of Government Efficiency and fired Elon Musk. At the same time, he began to act more like his predecessors. For example, in foreign policy, instead of reorienting toward confrontation with China, he got involved in conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Something similar happened in domestic politics as well. In recent weeks, many of Trump’s supporters have been puzzled by decisions related to the so-called Epstein case.

In short, the essence of the case can be described as follows: financier Jeffrey Epstein, connected to the American elite establishment, for several years organised pedophilic entertainments for influential politicians and businessmen in monitored and surveilled premises.

That is, in addition to all this depravity, the case also involves plain corruption (obvious from how the whole scheme functioned for many years), and even possible information gathering on individuals involved in the most important decisions in the US, in the interests of certain external actors.

Epstein, once under investigation, allegedly hanged himself.

Trump, both during his election campaign and after taking office, promised to publish the list of Epstein’s pedophiles. According to him, the primary victims would be his opponents from the Democratic Party.

Such a publication would have dealt a crushing blow to the entire American establishment. One can imagine what measures the figures on the list might take—of whom it can be said with confidence that they have the means to retaliate. This, in fact, is the so-called “deep state” — tightly intertwined networks of corrupt politicians, businessmen, and the criminal world, which Trump has spoken about.

In general, it is not surprising that in the past couple of months Trump tried to step away from the topic of the “Epstein list.” But his voters and key allies were expecting the list.

Last week, the US president drew a line under these expectations — stating that there is nothing new in the case and that it’s time to stop fussing over these “Epstein hoaxes.” This caused outrage even within the Republican camp. Key allies in Congress did not hide their disappointment with the president’s actions, not to mention Elon Musk, who had already clashed with Trump earlier in part over this issue.

There was no less anger among the public: according to an Economist/YouGov poll, 79% of Americans demand the full disclosure of these materials.

It turned out that the risk of facing the wrath of his allies and voters, even for the American leader, took a backseat to the dangers associated with exposing a case tangled in corruption, pedophilia, espionage involving influential American political and economic circles, and their foreign partners.

It turned out that corruption is too deeply entrenched, and even the danger that external forces might manipulate Epstein’s materials or that corrupt and morally decayed elites could simply tear the country apart did not lead to decisive action.

The European Parliament shows no interest in corruption

However, in the US, this scandal is at least being discussed at a serious level. In the European Union, the situation is far more colourful. Recently, a vote of confidence in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was raised in the European Parliament in connection with a billion-dollar corruption scandal in which she is implicated. Every detail there shines with the full spectrum of vice and degradation.

To begin with, despite the corruption investigation, a real threat of impeachment did not arise for Ursula because all the major forces in the European Parliament supported her!

Besides the European People’s Party, with which the President of the European Commission herself is affiliated, she was immediately supported by the right-liberals from “Renew Europe” and the left-liberals of the “Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.” The “European Conservatives and Reformists” faction, whose member initiated the impeachment motion, distanced itself from the initiative. The impeachment had no chance. As a result, out of 553 parliamentarians present, 360 expressed their confidence in Ursula. Only 175 voted for impeachment. The European Parliament showed that it is not interested in such corruption cases.

Moreover, even knowing that she faced no real threat, the suspect did not appear at the impeachment session to provide explanations. Instead, she ostentatiously left Brussels for Rome to attend yet another conference on Ukraine.

It goes without saying that this news and the preceding corruption scandal receive minimal coverage in EU media. The story about the huge vaccine procurement during the pandemic, arranged through SMS exchanges between von der Leyen and the head of Pfizer, was revealed only by the American New York Times.

It was the Americans who interviewed Pfizer’s CEO in 2021, in which he admitted that “deep trust” was established via SMS correspondence with von der Leyen, resulting in a gigantic deal.

The EU leadership signed a contract with Pfizer to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine. The level of transparency is illustrated by the fact that even the total sum of the deal is unknown, with estimates ranging from 20 billion to 71 billion euros.

Ursula ordered a vaccine that had not yet been fully tested at the time. Moreover, she bought an amount that exceeded all reasonable expectations, creating an opportunity for the global pharmaceutical giant to make a fortune from mass production.

By the end of 2023, EU countries had discarded no less than 215 million doses of this vaccine worth at least 4 billion euros due to expiry. Since then, this figure has grown, but the public does not need to know the scale.

And it’s not only that, instead of a standard transparent procurement process, there was an informal collusion and a questionable purchase in terms of choice and quantity. The matter also concerns other connections. Her husband has spent his entire career in pharmaceuticals and clinical trials, spending recent years with an American company. Thus, Ursula has family interests in the pharmaceutical sector. But mainstream politics says nothing about this.

A vote of no confidence was recently attempted due to the concealment of correspondence between von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer regarding the vaccine deal. Moreover, this issue long ago went beyond mere speculation. Previously, even the EU Court issued a mild but telling verdict, noting that the EU executive “failed to plausibly explain” the refusal to disclose the correspondence, and that the executive’s decision to publish only redacted contracts was a violation. However, this had no consequences for the Brussels elite.

This ruling helped to “cover up” previous scandalous episodes. After the investigation by American journalists, von der Leyen started lying, initially claiming there was no correspondence. She later admitted to exchanging messages, but about something else.

A couple of years later, the Belgian court nevertheless began proceedings at the initiative of Belgian citizens as well as the governments of Hungary and Poland. But this court was quickly silenced, forced last year to acknowledge the “inadmissibility” of the criminal case against Ursula von der Leyen.

To bury the matter, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office took it up, opening its own investigation, but this too turned out to be a sham — they soon declared the matter was beyond their jurisdiction!

The presidential wedding and millions of respirators

Corruption no longer causes much political turbulence even at the level of individual EU countries, even in “Old Europe.” Last month, Germany successfully quelled a corruption scandal involving Jens Spahn, former health minister and current head of the parliamentary faction of the ruling Christian Democrats.

He was caught embezzling during the pandemic in connection with medical masks. The very same masks that were then mandated to be worn even outdoors, defying all laws of physics and basic logic — it turns out that such widespread use really did serve a purpose.

Not for the public, however, but for specific individuals who procured them. Spahn, for example, was responsible for this, making questionable decisions, as has since become clear, and lobbying the interests of companies with which he had connections. Half of the masks (purchased in 2020 for a total of 5.9 billion euros) ended up at incineration plants due to defects or expiration.

The volume of FFP2 respirator purchases was 22 times greater than actual needs, and surgical masks 20 times greater. Additionally, Spahn arbitrarily raised the price of the masks from the market rate of 2.60–2.90 euros to 4.50 euros each, funneling hundreds of millions of euros in unknown directions.

Moreover, many masks were not delivered on time due to logistical problems, and when the German government later tried to cancel contracts for now unnecessary masks, it faced more than a hundred lawsuits from suppliers.

The German government may have to pay up to 3.5 billion euros on these lawsuits.

A special investigator from the Ministry of Health concluded that this was not just a series of unfortunate decisions. Even after Spahn left his post as Minister of Health, his two successors tried to cover up the scandal. Only recently did the German parliament manage to obtain a redacted version of the investigation. Later, German journalists were fortunate to find part of the full special investigator’s report.

It turned out that parts concerning contracts with companies connected to Spahn were removed from the official version. But the most interesting detail is that Spahn began signing lucrative contracts even without proper authority.

Spahn got away with all this, just as he did with a previous scandal — when in 2021 he clashed with journalists who uncovered that he was living beyond his means while serving as Minister of Health.

The story’s colour is added by the fact that, like Ursula, Spahn is a party nominee. Outside politics, he worked for only about a year and obtained his higher education through correspondence while already building his political career.

Instead of experience and knowledge, what is said about him is so-called coming out and public declaration of his homosexual orientation since 2012.

Military hysteria to maintain power

To understand how widespread corruption has become in the West, one only needs to consider this comparison. Ursula’s predecessor as President of the European Commission, Jacques Santer, resigned in 1999 after a report exposing corruption in his circle was published, even before impeachment proceedings could begin.

That was relatively recent, and ordinary citizens in the West remember and see that the situation is spiralling downward. Thanks to the current political model, liberal elites can afford to ignore popular outrage. Elections in some countries depend on money, in others they are subject to manipulation.

The anger of unorganised millions can build up for years without leading to change. And serious opposition is not allowed to organise. Attempts to do so are labelled extreme right-wing populism and Kremlin conspiracies.

However, even these measures are no longer sufficient, so the liberal elites of the “collective West” increasingly justify their legitimacy by citing a “state of emergency,” some danger that allegedly forces them to act outside previous norms. All kinds of real or imagined threats are invoked — from Russia and China to migrants. The result is the escalation of military hysteria, since this allows the elites to suppress the opposition under the pretext of its links to an alleged enemy and to hand out military contracts, which make peacetime scandals look like petty matters by comparison.

Ursula von der Leyen, by the way, has already taken a leading role in organising military procurement for EU countries based on the vaccine procurement model—through a centralised system.

The global hegemony of the current liberal collective West is fading just as all great empires have faded. Romanticised images of barbarians conquering refined Rome are myths. In reality, the end was marked by filth, decline, and worthlessness.

Today, we are witnessing the beginning of such a decline. People without any competence but with connections come to power not through democratic choice, but through behind-the-scenes collusions.

The result is degradation. The West’s tolerance of corruption signals its twilight as clearly as China’s economic growth figures.