The New Anatolian, the Turkish English-language daily, carries a story today about agribusiness giant Cargill. Since the 1990s, Cargill has been operating in the Orghazi district illegally. Its ties with the government have helped it to win, from a court in Bursa, a ruling that would give them an amnesty and a mild fine for unpermitted activity. Cargill’s not out of the woods yet – President Sezer might still veto the amnesty.
But Cargill’s got a solid history of managing the law, adopting a tactic of build-first-worry-about-the-legality-later. In Brazil, it has built an entire, and entirely illegal, port complex while waiting for appropriate permits to be issued, and then howled when Greenpeace pointed this out to the media.