| Jeez. So many dilemmas here. This story is begging for an illustration...but which one? Yer classic Suprise Meter, Thta awesome Squealing Mole pic, the always reliable Usual Suspects, or the full Nelson Muntz "Ha Ha"? Dammit, I want to run them all! |
A major corruption scandal involving the smuggling tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is making waves throughout the Strip.| A corruption scandal! In Gaza! You don't say. |
The affair began shortly before Israel's incursion into Gaza in December, when tunnel owners affiliated with the ruling Hamas party offered Gazans an offer they couldn't refuse opportunity to invest in the goods smuggled through the tunnels. The owners of the tunnels, which are located in the town of Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border, raised millions of dollars. 
Because the smuggling operations had the approval of Hamas, they proceeded without hindrance, and the scheme initially paid off handsomely.
 The tunnel owners then hired more salesmen to solicit investments, and new investors joined every day. Imams even used their pulpits in the mosques to tell people what a good business proposition this was. Soon, the smuggling profits proved insufficient to pay off all the investors.
 At that point, the tunnel owners began operating a classic Ponzi scheme: They used money from new investors to cover the shortfall in the smuggling profits and enable them to pay off the old ones. What finally put paid to the scheme, however, was Operation Cast Lead. | "And we woulda gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those meddling Juice!" |
Recently, the Hamas government offered to repay all investors a mere 16.5 percent of their original investment, saying this was all the money it had been able to retrieve from the suspected perpetrators. However, the investors refused indignantly.| "It sez my shares are backed by the full faith an' credit of Gazastan! Sez so right here!" |
That led Hamas to promise to try to repay all investors in full. However, it said, this will be possible only if it succeeds in tracking down all the other people involved in the scheme and recovering the missing money from them. | "Don't knot up yer knickers there, Nancy. We'll gitcher money!" (Curly-toed trainers, don't fail us now!) |
| Possibly there are people more deserving of this somewhere in the universe. |
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