Tuomioja turns a quick profit
The toady socialist, Erkki Tuomioja, Finland’s foreign minister, has decided to sell his shares in UPM, ostensibly to protest the massive job cuts there. What makes The Toad of Finland such a hypocrite is that he bought the stocks just a month ago, right after UPM warned about job cuts.
According to a declaration of financial interests made by Mr Tuomioja in mid-February, the minister owns more than 6,500 shares in UPM-Kymmene. The shares were worth about 128,000 euros on Monday, some 10,000 euros more than before the job cut news broke last week.
Mr Tuomioja had substantially increased his UPM holding in early February. Jussi Pesonen, the chief executive of UPM, warned about mill closures and job cuts already in late January.
http://virtual.finland.fi/stt/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=12034&group=Politics
So is The Toad really protesting? Or is that just for public consumption: a cover for the real reason, which is that he’s profiteering from the layoffs? Furthermore, as a government official, was he in a better position to understand that UPM was not just warning about job cuts, but actually planning to do so? In that case, Tuomioja engaged in insider trading.
Now, I don’t have any problems with profiteering, but when an avowed socialist like Tuomioja does it, and then blames the corporation that made it possible for him to make his profit, then that is simply hypocrisy. But when it comes to insider trading, in America at least, even the suggestion of such actions by a government official would end a political career, not to mention bring about severe criminal indictments.
If Tuomioja is really protesting against UPM, then the least he should do is donate the profits from his stock sale to charity. So far, I haven’t seen any news regarding that, at least not on Tuomioja’s own website.
http://www.tuomioja.org/index.php?mainAction=showPage&id=1
The fact that Finns tolerate this kind of behavior either points to Finnish naivete, or – simply – that Finns are totally comfortable with elitist corruption. Perhaps that’s why Finns score so high in those corruption-perception polls. When you don’t see it, it simply isn’t happening.

@ 4:40 am 


