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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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Roger Warren Evans |
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item0033E 638, 639 638 24 February 2003 Drugs Disaster Storm-clouds are gathering over the World Trade Organisation. The United States is planning to torpedo plans to empower Third World countries to solve their own problems of pandemics and disabling disease. The US pharmaceutical companies, who bankrolled the Republicans with $60,000,000 to win last year’s mid-term Elections, now want their pound of flesh, and the right to maximise their profits from curing the poorest of the world. And George Bush is giving it to them, by blocking concessions in the WTO negotiations at Geneva. This is what is happening. The September Cancun Conference of the World Trade Organisation will be the culmination of the “Doha Round”, the series of negotiations between 145 countries designed to reach agreement on a new international treaty on trade-related intellectual property rights – TRIPS. This treaty is planned to open up the international market for all the great abstract (or "intellectual") property rights - copyright, patents, registered designs, and registered varieties of plants and seeds. The overwhelming majority of member-states - including the UK - are content to confirm and consolidate this international scheme of rights provided that member-states retain the right to over-ride such rights in cases of overwhelming national necessity. The current example is the need to manufacture large quantities of cheap non-branded versions of the more successful AIDS drugs, to counter the misery of so many African states. And of the 145 member-states, 144 have reached agreement over the phrasing of that emergency ride of over-ride. There is just one country, the United States, that is blocking agreement. The US refuses to accept that Third World countries should be entitled to override drugs patents, paying lower licence-fees for the right to produce unbranded versions of successful medicines, for their own impoverished people. The drugs companies fear that, if they allow such production in the Third World, their high-profit markets in their home markets will be undermined. They are insisting on retaining maximum control over the deployment of their “intellectual property rights.” They promise that, in the exercise of their wisdom and discretion, they will act honourably and generously in those circumstances - but they refuse to accept any State's right to over-ride their property rights. Their arguments are backed by the US Government. The impasse continues. And the whole prospect of a consensual settlement of this difficult global trading issue hangs in the balance. This is one of the great wrongs which I seek to address by my proposals for a new Inter State Corporate Compliance treaty... Do you have any experience of "the big pharmaceuticals"? If so, drop me a line. Or contribute to the new JoinWarrenEvans Discussion Group.
639 25 February 2003 Leader, Moscow Times Saturday 22 February 2003 Disingenuous Cant President Putin's meeting last Wednesday with business leaders to discuss the delicate issue of corruption proved an interesting spectacle. Putin wanted to discuss methods of battling corruption, as the presidential administration prepares its plan for the overhaul of the administrative machine and the civil service. It is hard to deny that among those who were gathered in the Kremlin are men with rich experience in the art of graft and presumably, therefore, well qualified to advise the president on how to combat corruption. As Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky put it: "You can say that it all started with us. Well, it started at some point and now it must be ended." Take, for example, two of the three main speakers at the meeting, Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Potanin. Both were intimately involved in some of the most scandalous privatization deals of the 1990s, the loans-for-shares auctions in which Khodorkovsky seized control of Yukos and Potanin of Norilsk Nickel and Sidanco. UES CEO Anatoly Chubais (also present) presided over the loans-for-shares giveaway as First Deputy Prime Minister at the time. And so the list could go on. Many of these business leaders have clearly thrived in the lawless environment of the past decade. So are the concerns voiced about corrupt officials anything more than disingenuous cant? In some respects, the game has genuinely moved on -tycoons are focusing more of their energies on rule-of-law issues (and sprucing up their own images) because they want to secure their ill-gotten gains. However, this does not exclude them from making a grab for more goodies by underhanded means. Last year's Slavneft saga, culminating in a farcical auction, provides a salutary reminder of this. And the upcoming restructuring of UES is already being billed as a re-run of the loans-for-shares auctions. While the oligarchs' know-how may be of value, Putin would be well-advised to proceed by inviting SME representatives to the Kremlin to hear another side of the story. Small businesses disproportionately bear the brunt of red tape and corrupt officialdom. For big business, corruption may be an irritation, but for SMEs it's a matter of life or death. Moreover, a recent study by CEFIR shows a correlation between regions with a high concentration of private ownership and high barriers to entry for businesses, suggesting that big business actively conspires with regional authorities to limit unwelcome competition from below. It is instructive to remember that even when the Oligarchs take up an unimpeachable position – for example, asserting that “corruption is bad” -- they have their own interests at heart. Some things never change. What do you think? Drop me a line Or contribute to the new JoinWarrenEvans Discussion Group.
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