Welcome to Part Two in our series of 10 Strange Facts About Corruption. In Part One we started our exploration into the murky world of corruption by uncovering a number of examples of just how bizarre it can be. From the world’s most expensive gas station and a fictitious Antarctic state, to a modern-day kleptocracy that reads like a Hollywood script, it demonstrated the strange and often unexpected twists and turns corruption can take. With this in mind, it’s time to buckle-up again and join me as we uncover four further bizarre revelations, from ghostly employees and animals behaving badly, to rogue diplomats and bridges to nowhere, all demonstrating that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
(4) ‘Ghost Employees’ and ‘Phantom Payrolls’
Coming in at number four on our list is a particularly spooky form of corruption: the use of ghost employees and phantom payrolls. In this scheme, corrupt officials or employees “pad” payrolls with non-existent staff and then pocket their salaries. It’s a little bit like paying Casper the Friendly Ghost, except in in this case Casper never seems to show up for work.
In 2015, just a year after launching a high-profile national campaign against corruption and the misuse of government funds, Chinese authorities identified and exorcised 162,629 ‘phantom’ employees from government payrolls. While this may sound extraordinary, such cases are more common than you might think. “Ghost” beneficiaries regularly haunt governments payrolls all around the world, with notable examples including:
- Kenya: Despite the country’s Auditor General uncovering 12,000 false names on the state payroll in 2015, seven years later, the Public Service Commission identified a further 20,000 “ghosts” happily draining government coffers. All of these “employees” were over and above the approved staffing levels, maybe not to much of a surprise given that the staff members didn’t actually exist.
- Nigeria: In 2022, 22,500 ghost workers – including a newborn baby with a diploma (who was earning around US$150 a month) – were caught collecting salaries that had been costing the state ₦420 million (about US$1 million) a month.
- Zambia: where in 2016, 10,000 “ghost” beneficiaries were found to have been receiving salaries totalling US$2 million per month.
One of the largest and most widespread cases unearthed was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2023. Auditors uncovered a massive fraud involving fabricated identification numbers issued to 145,604 ‘ghost’ civil servants who were floating around in government payrolls. Of these: 53,328 had been issued with two or more IDs, allowing multiple salaries to be paid to the same phantom worker; and, 43,725 ghosts were being paid despite not appearing on the staff list of the ministries that had ’employed’ them.
The fraud was costing the DRC more than US$800 million annually, almost 8% of the country’s national budget. Investigations revealed that the fraud had been orchestrated by 961 payroll officers, many of whom had been collecting salaries from up to 15 different government departments.
This “supernatural” problem though, isn’t just limited to payrolls. Pensions payments also aren’t safe. aren’t safe either.
Take Pakistan. In 2015, the introduction of biometric ID checks for ATM-based pension payments led the National Bank of Pakistan uncovering 600,000 “ghost” pensioners within its first six months of operation. Totalling around Rs43 billion (roughly US$415 million) a year – nearly one-fifth of the country’s pension budget – had been going to the … dearly departed.
Kenya suffered a similarly eerie case. In 2019, a review by the country’s Pension Department revealed that despite being deceased, around 40,000 retired civil servants were still receiving their monthly pension payments. It seems, in some systems at least, retirement isn’t the end of a person’s career!
Closer to home, a quick review shows that the development sector is also haunted by its own share of poltergeists. In March 2022, India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development cancelled a programme for girls who had dropped out of school after discovering that 2.4 million (around 96 per cent) of beneficiaries didn’t actually exist. Similarly, in the Philippines (in 2024), auditors found 19,000 “ghost” students had been included in a senior high school voucher program. A planned expansion of the scheme was swiftly buried.
And if all that isn’t unsettling enough, there’s a newer apparition to contend with: ghost jobs. These are roles advertised by organisations where the position doesn’t really exist, or have already been filled. An investigation by Resume Genius (in the United States) identified as many as 1.7 million potential ghost jobs listed on Linkedin, while in the UK (StandOut CV) reported that more than a third of 2023 job postings were actually fake.
But why advertise jobs that don’t exist? The explanations for this range from some organisations attempting to project growth and success, to others building databases of potential candidates or keeping a pipeline warm for future vacancies. Whatever the rationale, the scale of the phenomenon suggests one thing: the spectre of ghost jobs isn’t going to disappear anytime soon with ghost jobs to continue to haunt the labour market for years to come.
So next time you read about payrolls, pensions, beneficiaries, or job ads, don’t be too quick to assume there are real people on the other side. Sometimes, it’s just apparitions.
(5) The Return of ‘Animal Farm’
And now for something the same, but completely different!
There has been something decidedly odd afoot in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, and it’s not your usual suspect. For those who think corruption is just part of human nature, Nigeria’s burgeoning – and seemingly out-of-control – corruption spree might make you stop, reflect, and perhaps even reconsider just how far it has spread. The twist? The culprits, while still part of the animal kingdom, aren’t human!
The phenomenon first slithered into the spotlight in February 2018, when a giant snake sneaked into the Makurdi office of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Nigeria’s university exam body. Undetected, it broke into the office safe, where it helped itself to ₦36 million (US$100,000) in cash. The losses only came to light during a routine audit, where accountants usually expect to find sloppy paperwork, not missing millions eaten by reptiles.
When questioned, the sales clerk in charge of collecting – Philomena Chieshe – explained that her housemaid had conspired with another JAMB staff member to use the serpent as their inside man. The explanation was caught on video:
“Whenever I was taking the money to the bank, I was not able to account for what I got until my house-help … she started confessing she is the one behind what is happening to me at the office, that there is a snake that comes mysteriously whenever I open the safe and takes the cash. Mysteriously nothing was amounting to what I was having!”
While the type, size, or gender of the snake was never confirmed, social media commentators were quick to point out that, unless it was the anaconda from a Hollywood blockbuster of the same name, it was unlikely to have been capable of swallowing that amount of cash (let alone digesting it). Some even suggested it was not a reptile at all, but a human in disguise, raising the possibility that witchcraft or some form of sorcery was involved. The incident became so topical that Nigeria’s Pulse Vox Pop took to the streets of Lagos to ask Nigerians for their opinion on the mysterious snake.
A few months later, non-human offenders struck again. This time, a troop of monkeys in Northern Nigeria raided a farm and made off with ₦70 million (US$192,950) in cash. The money – collected to establish the country’s 8th Northern Senators’ Forum – had been entrusted to Senator Abdullahi Adamu who, in a plot twist worthy of Fawlty Towers, decided to store it in his farmhouse. Quite how the monkeys knew the money was there, or how many were involved, remains a mystery. But one thing was clear.
The crime spree escalated further when, in 2019, a gorilla at Kano Zoological Gardens swallowed ₦6.8 million (US$18,700). A finance officer claimed that it had crept into his office, carried away the zoo’s gate takings, and promptly wolfed them down. While creative as an alibi, “the gorilla ate it” is as believable as the “the dog ate my homework”.
And it’s just reptiles and primates that have developed an appetite for fraud. In 2022, termites marched into the storeroom of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) and devoured payment vouchers worth ₦17.1 billion (US$105.3 million). By remarkable coincidence, the vouchers “eaten” specifically related to unauthorised – and seemingly illegal – payments that had been sent to untraceable bank accounts. Without the vouchers, the missing billions couldn’t be tracked down. NSITF’s management explained to a Senate committee that the vouchers had been kept in a container already damaged by rain, before becoming termite tapas. A subsequent audit revealed that the missing money was part of a larger ₦58 billion (US$356.8 million) fraud that had been misappropriated from the NSITF over a three-year period.
Just in case you thought this was an exclusively Nigerian problem, similar antics have cropped up elsewhere around the world. The same year the giant safe-cracking snake appeared, bank technicians in India were called out to an ATM in Guwahati that had stopped working. On opening it, they found 1.2 million rupees (US$17,662) worth of shredded notes – and one dead rat. The rodent – in what turned out to be its last supper – had somehow slipped past the machine’s security system and tried to eat the cash. Unfortunately (for the rat at least), its eyes were bigger than its stomach.
Even man’s best friend isn’t immune. In early 2024, Cecil – a Goldendoodle from Pittsburgh (in the United States) – swallowed US$4,000 in cash. The money, meant for paying workers who were building a new fence for Cecil’s owners, had been left in an envelope on the coffee table. Within half an hour, Cecil had opened the envelope and devoured most of its contents. Unlike the Nigerian thefts, however, this heist had a happy ending, with the owner able to recover about US$3,500. While not pleasant, the recovery operation involved following Cecil around the garden until he “returned” the banknotes, which were then carefully washed, dried, and taped back together. It’s unclear whether the workers were aware of this when they were given the cash as payment for the work carried out.
(6) Diplomatic Immunity and the ‘Get out of Jail free’ card
For most of us, the word diplomat conjures up the image of a polite, soft-spoken individual, diligently representing their country with calm restraint. To do this, these selfless consular envoys rely on diplomatic immunity, a long-standing privilege that guarantees their safe conduct while serving abroad. While most use it for its intended purpose, others treat it as though it’s a game of Monopoly, presenting it as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card whenever the law comes knocking.
Take Canada, for example. CityNews dug into a year’s worth of classified reports and unearthed an eye-watering list of diplomatic misdemeanours. Charges included intimidation and assault; robbery with a weapon; attacking police officers; speeding, careless driving, and driving with a suspended licence; illegal passport scams; dodging property tax; and even whispers of human trafficking. The total number of potential charges? Endless. The number of diplomats, their staff, and families appearing before a Canadian court? Zero. Why? Diplomatic immunity.
And if you think this is just a Canadian quirk, think again. Just over the border in New York City, United Nations diplomats have managed to transform Manhattan into one giant free car park, clocking up more than US$16 million in unpaid parking fines. Egyptian diplomats led the pack, managing to rack up 17,499 violations worth nearly US$2 million.
Nor is it just a North American issue. Just over the pond, foreign embassies in London owe a mouth-watering £150 million in unpaid congestion charges, with the US embassy leading the way, having “forgotten”’ to pay £14 million in back charges. Again, all in the name of diplomatic immunity.
While unpaid parking tickets are a relatively minor infringement, diplomatic immunity has also been leveraged for darker pursuits. In 2021, one of Zimbabwe’s most influential diplomats was caught on film offering to smuggle more than US$1 billion in dirty cash into the country, using diplomatic bags and a handy gold-smuggling network.
If professional diplomats acting poorly isn’t bad enough, there is also the shadowy world of honorary consuls. Unlike career diplomats, honorary consuls work from their home countries, drawing on local connections and fixers to promote the interests of the foreign government that has appointed them. In exchange, they receive many of the same protections and diplomatic privileges afforded to career diplomats. Sounds innocent enough… until you realise that more than 150 honorary consuls have been accused – or convicted – of fraud, bribery, tax evasion, and money laundering. Not exactly what the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) had in mind when it created the position.
If you’re not lucky enough to land a real diplomatic gig (or its honorary counterpart), don’t worry, there is another option. For the right price (anywhere from US$250,000 to US$1 million) you can have the next best thing: your own diplomatic passport. In 2019, a number of smaller Caribbean island states like Dominica and Grenada were involved in “cash-for-diplomatic-passport” schemes. Some of the more colourful characters that these schemes supported included:
- Diezani Alison-Madueke: The first woman to serve as Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Resources and a former President of OPEC, Forbes magazine dubbed Alison-Madueke the “Queen of Black Gold”. Unfortunately, the crown came with a rather murky shine. In 2015, Dominica issued her with a diplomatic passport and appointed her Trade and Investment Commissioner, effectively shielding her from prosecution. At the time, she was already implicated in multiple bribery, fraud, and money-laundering cases in Nigeria, Britain, Italy, and the United States. Nigeria’s Federal Court had seized US$21 million in cash and US$44 million in property linked to her alleged corruption, and ordered the forfeiture of an additional 56 properties worth a further US$9 million. In addition, UK authorities handed evidence to the US Department of Justice, enabling them to recover and return US$54 million in assets. Currently in the UK, where she’s facing bribery charges, Alison-Madueke is also fighting a Nigerian extradition request tied to yet another alleged fraud, this one involving US$2.5 billion.
- Ali Reza Monfared: An Iranian businessman and notorious oil sanctions evader, Monfared was granted a Dominican diplomatic passport and named the country’s Ambassador to Malaysia. In 2019, a Tehran court convicted him in absentia, sentencing him to 20 years in prison and ordering him to repay US$1.3 billion for embezzling state oil revenues. While Dominica revoked his passport shortly after this, the family trade continued. In 2022, Monfared’s son, Mehdi, leveraged his own Dominican citizenship to set up a passport-selling business in Turkey, specialising in Caribbean documents, including those from Dominica.
Liberia, the Central African Republic (CAR) have also been caught handing out diplomatic passports like party favours. As with Dominica, the CAR found itself entangled with issuing diplomatic passports to a number of questionable individuals including:
- Ilyas Khrapunov: The UK High Court found that Khrapunov had conspired with his father-in-law – the former chairman of Kazakh bank BTA – to defraud and siphon off more than US$6 billion of the bank’s funds. Despite this, his name (and that of his wife) appeared on page 222 of the Central African Republic’s list of diplomats at its permanent UN mission in Geneva. A helpful source claimed the appointment had been made years earlier by CAR’s former ruler, François Bozizé, before he was ousted and fled the country in 2013. Khrapunov, who was fined US$500,000 in absentia, was found to have laundered stolen funds through large real estate projects in the US and Europe, with court documents suggesting that some of it may have been channelled through President Donald Trump’s real estate empire.
And if you’re wondering whether this was a one-off family mistake, think again. Both Ilyas’s parents – now living in “self-imposed exile” in Switzerland – are also on Kazakhstan’s most-wanted list. His father, Viktor, is accused of US$300 million in fraud, racketeering, and embezzlement from his time as mayor of Almaty.
- Boris Becker: In 2018, the former world No. 1 and six-time Grand Slam champion attempted a rather creative defence to avoid bankruptcy: diplomatic immunity. Becker claimed he had been appointed as the Central African Republic’s sporting, cultural, and humanitarian attaché to the European Union, meaning he was not subject to legal proceedings.
The problem? While his diplomatic passport (issued in Brussels) was technically genuine, CAR officials later claimed that it had come from a batch of passports stolen in 2014. Despite this claim – and adding to the farce – Becker’s photo was proudly displayed on the CAR’s Brussels embassy website with the caption confirming his lofty post. Meanwhile, back in Bangui (the CAR’s capital), a government spokesman confessed he had absolutely no idea such a job even existed. Advantage? … Not Becker.
Diplomatic passports don’t just protect the holder from the law, they open up a whole new world of potential riches. In addition to diplomatic immunity, they confer other benefits such as diplomatic licence plates (yes, the “free parking” perk again), visa-free travel, sovereign inviolable status for homes, and access to diplomatic bags and locked containers, which by law cannot be inspected or seized by authorities at border crossings.
In other words, for those lucky enough to obtain it, the use of diplomatic privilege is limited only by the holder’s imagination.
(7) The Bridge to Nowhere and a Golden Toilet
Given their size and complexity, large-scale public infrastructure projects have always been magnets for irregularities. Corruption can worm its way into every stage, from bribery and backhanders during the tender process to inflated invoices, phantom employees, and dodgy materials in the construction phase. The results are all too familiar: costs balloon, deadlines slip, and quality sinks. Fraudsters however aren’t complaining, with McKinsey estimating that to keep up with global GDP growth, between now and 2030, some US$57 trillion will need to be spent on building and maintaining infrastructure worldwide. That’s a lot of bridges, and plenty of temptation.
The very first task of any construction project is ensuring that the structure is built in the right spot. Mexico’s infamous “ghost bridge” failed that test spectacularly. In Cuernavaca (the capital of Morelos state), a bridge costing around 600 million Mexican pesos (US$34 million) was proudly unveiled, only for authorities to discover – to their disbelief – that it connected the city to a lonely hill in the middle of nowhere. In 2023, nearly a decade later, weary taxpayers were promised redemption. The new President of Morelos State announced that he was committed to ensuring the “ghost bridge ceases to be a ghost”. His ingenious fix? Build 2,300 houses on the previously uninhabited hill. Not quite what planners had in mind, but at least the bridge would finally have somewhere to go.
Corruption doesn’t just decide where things get built; it also affects how they are built. India’s “Bridge of Corruption” in Bihar State is a case in point. Construction of the four-lane Sultanganj-Aguwani bridge over the Ganges began in 2014, with a completion date set for 2020. After eight missed deadlines, in mid-2023 – just months before it was finally due to open – a 250-metre section collapsed into the river. The failure, caught on video, was caused by the bridge buckling under its own weight. It was described by India’s Minister of Power as “a living example of corruption”. To make matters worse, this was the second collapse of the same section in just 14 months. Despite its 17 billion Rupee (US$208 million) price tag, a probe found so many design and construction flaws that it recommended demolition and rebuilding. Instead, work continued, and less than a year later, a third collapse followed. For those living there however, the collapse came as no surprise, as Bihar appears to hold the record with 12 bridge collapses in one 17-day period.
The temptation to cut corners with poor-quality materials is a recurring theme. In neighbouring Bangladesh, in mid-2022, the US$4 billion Padma Multipurpose Bridge opened to great fanfare. Within days, TikTok videos began highlighting defects. The Prime Minister described it as “a symbol of our … strength and dignity”, though as it took eight years to complete, maybe the words ‘patience’ and ‘persistence’ might also have qualified. The project was plagued from the start, with the World Bank suspending a US$1.2 billion loan, citing concerns about high-level corruption in the tender process. While the country’s Anti-Corruption Body (ACC) conducted a probe into corruption allegations made in 2012, no finds were made. However, in December 2024 (just 18 months after the bridge finally did open) a new corruption investigation was announced, with the ACC Chairman stating that the previous investigation had been “suppressed”.
Corruption wasn’t the only controversy involving the bridge. Midway through construction rumours spread on social media that children were being kidnapped and sacrificed to help “finish” the bridge. While false, these claims sparked an outburst of vigilante violence that left eight people dead and more than 30 injured. The rumours – predominantly spread via Facebook – claimed that human heads were needed to help finish the project.
At the time, opposition leader Rumeen Farhana called the Padma Bridge a “textbook example of corruption”, comparing it to Lithuania’s “Golden Toilet”. Built in 2009 in Vilnius, at the height of the global financial crisis, the €150,000 public toilet became a symbol of embezzlement and abuse of power.
Fraud and corruption, of course, are not limited to bridge projects. In the United States, experts have warned that fraudsters could divert US$120 billion or more from federal infrastructure funds destined for transportation, energy, and climate infrastructure projects. The irresistible lure is the US$1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. With such vast sums available, it seems inevitable that some of projects ultimately financed will go astray. Whether they end up as ghost bridges, crumbling spans, or the occasional very expensive toilet, time will tell.
Conclusion
From phantom workers and ghost jobs, to cash-eating animals, rogue diplomats, and bridges that literally go nowhere, these stories remind us that corruption often defies logic and stretches beyond the ordinary. What unites them all is the sheer audacity – and sometimes absurdity – of the schemes, proving once again that truth really can be stranger than fiction. But as entertaining (and shocking) as these tales may be, the consequences are very real, costing societies billions and undermining trust in institutions worldwide.
In the third and final part of this series, we’ll turn from the bizarre to the downright outrageous, exploring corruption scandals so extravagant and surreal that they rival the plot lines of the of Hollywood blockbusters. Stay tuned, as, if you think what you’ve read so far is unbelievable, Part Three will push the boundaries even further.
Wish you happiness