That was when Ms. Greco took over Subway, and the company’s store count began to shrink. In the East Bay, Mr. Tripathi was under the jurisdiction of a development agent named Chirayu Patel, known as Akki. He oversaw a huge, choice territory that included most of Northern California and western Nevada. Mr. Patel also owned dozens of Subway stores.
I was curious about this story because when I was in college Subway was my “fast food” of choice. But it was interesting to see that under the surface of a story about corporate malfeasance was another about South Asian (Indian) petty corruption. There are whole entrepreneurial subcultures in the USA which are highly South Asian, and conventional business reporters are probably missing some dynamics.
Here is another about Sikh truckers in California.
It’s business.
How is this story any different from a group of venture capitalists staging a coup, and taking over the control of a startup after kicking out the original founders?
Not denying that this did not happen. Just that there is nothing overtly brown touch to the whole thing. In fact the conduct of the people involved was a bit atypical of brown folks. Brown corruption is more of a collaborative kind (bunch of contractors, government employees and middlemen coming together to swindle the faceless public). Ruthless and destructive corruption like the one mentioned in the story is more of a white thing.
In fact the archetypal desi corruption story was the whole Rajat Gupta – Raj Rajarathanam scandal.
I know many commenters will disagree with me. But in my interaction with americans, I have found them far more hard nosed than desis.
Insider trading is common in Wall Street. The only reason Raj could be prosecuted was because of wiretaps. Wiretaps were permitted because of suspected Terrorist funding. Raj had provided funds to the TRO (Tamil Refugee Org, later designated as a LTTE front.
“”There are two types of plea bargains. One is, you cooperate with the government. You finger 10 other people. The other is a plea bargain without cooperation.” The white defendants all pleaded without cooperating; they did not wear a wire. “The South Asians all did the plea bargain with fingering,” he notes sourly. “The Americans stood their ground. Every bloody Indian cooperated—Goel, Khan, Kumar.” He puts it down to “the insecurity of being an immigrant, lawyers bullying them into that position.””
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-raj-rajaratnam-reveals-why-he-didnt-take-plea-68203
In fact the archetypal desi corruption story was the whole Rajat Gupta – Raj Rajarathanam scandal.
corrupt brown guys seem to get caught. that’s the angle 😉
Speaking of truckers, a Sri Lankan I know since a teenager. Went to a rival school and run into him at what we call the “The Big Match”. Not a Mahinda Relative.
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Zola Rajapakse has been selected to be one of the competitors in the World’s Toughest Trucker competition, which will be shown on the Discovery Channel.
Zola, is an Old Royalist, one of the brothers in Eric Rajapakse Opticians family. Zola currently lives and runs a Trucking company in Arizona .
https://sbarrkum.blogspot.com/2012/02/zola-rajapakse-worlds-toughest-trucker.html
This is not about South Asian corruption. These franchising operations run a very very tight ship. Any shit that happens on their watch is with their blessing if not active instigation.