Telecom
Telecom remains the only TNC to have been a finalist every year since the Roger Award started in 1997 (although it’s only actually won it twice). Its crimes in 2011 include being fined a record $12 million for breaches of the Commerce Act and for being subsidised by the Government as the preferred supplier of the ultra fast broadband (UFB) scheme). The nominator wrote: “Telecom has made mega profits out of NZ for two decades now and has shamefully reinvested very little of that back into its NZ telecommunications business, preferring to enrich its foreign owners and biggest shareholders with dividends instead. With the money it has made out of this country it could have paid for the UFB scheme several times over out of its own profits, without any taxpayers’ money having to be involved. It is an indictment of Telecom - past and present - that it instead chooses to rely on a Government subsidy to fund such an essential part of any modern country’s telecommunications infrastructure”. And the Government was nominated for the Accomplice Award “for hypocritically subsidising Telecom whilst simultaneously proclaiming the virtues of the market (where is the Government subsidy for the tens of thousands of Canterbury earthquake victims who can’t get any cover from the insurance market?). The UFB scheme is simply massive corporate welfare for a recidivist transnational bludger”.
