full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Peter Eigen: How to expose the corrupt

Unscramble the Blue Letters


The good projects, which we as a donor cmuitonmy would take under our wings, they took years, you know, you had too many studies, and very often they didn't succeed. But these bad prctejos, which were absolutely damaging — for the economy for many generations, for the eeonmrnnivt, for thousands of families who had to be resettled — they were suddenly put together by cioortsna of banks, of supplier agencies, of insurance aniceges — like in Germany, Hermes, and so on — and they came back very, very quickly, driven by an unholy alliance between the powerful elites in the cirtneuos there and the suppliers from the North. Now, these suppliers were our big companies. They were the actors of this global market, which I mneeointd in the beginning. They were the Siemenses of this world, coming from fnrcae, from the UK, from Japan, from Canada, from Germany, and they were systematically driven by systematic, large-scale corruption. We are not talking about 50,000 dollars here, or 100,000 dollars there, or one million dollars there. No, we are talking about 10 mililon, 20 million dollars on the Swiss bank accounts, on the bank accounts of Liechtenstein, of the president's mntersiis, the high officials in the para-statal stoecrs.

Open Cloze


The good projects, which we as a donor _________ would take under our wings, they took years, you know, you had too many studies, and very often they didn't succeed. But these bad ________, which were absolutely damaging — for the economy for many generations, for the ___________, for thousands of families who had to be resettled — they were suddenly put together by _________ of banks, of supplier agencies, of insurance ________ — like in Germany, Hermes, and so on — and they came back very, very quickly, driven by an unholy alliance between the powerful elites in the _________ there and the suppliers from the North. Now, these suppliers were our big companies. They were the actors of this global market, which I _________ in the beginning. They were the Siemenses of this world, coming from ______, from the UK, from Japan, from Canada, from Germany, and they were systematically driven by systematic, large-scale corruption. We are not talking about 50,000 dollars here, or 100,000 dollars there, or one million dollars there. No, we are talking about 10 _______, 20 million dollars on the Swiss bank accounts, on the bank accounts of Liechtenstein, of the president's _________, the high officials in the para-statal _______.

Solution


  1. projects
  2. environment
  3. million
  4. community
  5. mentioned
  6. countries
  7. france
  8. sectors
  9. ministers
  10. consortia
  11. agencies

Original Text


The good projects, which we as a donor community would take under our wings, they took years, you know, you had too many studies, and very often they didn't succeed. But these bad projects, which were absolutely damaging — for the economy for many generations, for the environment, for thousands of families who had to be resettled — they were suddenly put together by consortia of banks, of supplier agencies, of insurance agencies — like in Germany, Hermes, and so on — and they came back very, very quickly, driven by an unholy alliance between the powerful elites in the countries there and the suppliers from the North. Now, these suppliers were our big companies. They were the actors of this global market, which I mentioned in the beginning. They were the Siemenses of this world, coming from France, from the UK, from Japan, from Canada, from Germany, and they were systematically driven by systematic, large-scale corruption. We are not talking about 50,000 dollars here, or 100,000 dollars there, or one million dollars there. No, we are talking about 10 million, 20 million dollars on the Swiss bank accounts, on the bank accounts of Liechtenstein, of the president's ministers, the high officials in the para-statal sectors.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
civil society 13
world bank 5
failing governance 4
foreign bribery 4
billion people 3
large companies 3
society organizations 3
worst projects 2
million dollars 2
grand corruption 2
oecd convention 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
civil society organizations 3

Important Words


  1. absolutely
  2. accounts
  3. actors
  4. agencies
  5. alliance
  6. bad
  7. bank
  8. banks
  9. beginning
  10. big
  11. canada
  12. coming
  13. community
  14. companies
  15. consortia
  16. corruption
  17. countries
  18. damaging
  19. dollars
  20. donor
  21. driven
  22. economy
  23. elites
  24. environment
  25. families
  26. france
  27. generations
  28. germany
  29. global
  30. good
  31. hermes
  32. high
  33. insurance
  34. japan
  35. liechtenstein
  36. market
  37. mentioned
  38. million
  39. ministers
  40. north
  41. officials
  42. powerful
  43. projects
  44. put
  45. quickly
  46. resettled
  47. sectors
  48. siemenses
  49. studies
  50. succeed
  51. suddenly
  52. supplier
  53. suppliers
  54. swiss
  55. systematic
  56. systematically
  57. talking
  58. thousands
  59. uk
  60. unholy
  61. wings
  62. world
  63. years