By: joep eerlijk
Translator: Tuvok
The everywhere known Central Bureau of Investigation seems to change their course. The bureau that is normally busy with finding illegal ways to obtain money and punishing cheaters has announced to punish much faster then before. Is this a good or a bad thing?
For some rounds it has been quite quiet around the CBI. Sometimes this was different in the past, in the past for example there were some problems with the bureau that committed a coup, these actions took place in front of everybody. Nowadays they are more at the background. Some thanks goes to the persons in charge, the CBI changed to a bureau that is only tracing cheaters instead of a bureau that interfered in all political and/or sensitive issues. It was this way for a long time, but in the meanwhile there was coming some criticism again. On the contrary this criticism was about the punishment of cheaters, they would only get a fine and would not be punished harder. Of course the CBI didn’t react on this kind of criticism, but it seems this has changed.
Many times the CBI used the “benefit of the doubt” rule, which means, if there was some doubt about something that looked like cheating, they did not punish these people most of the time, because you could not be sure if this was cheating. A good example is the surrounding of traders lots by his competitor. The CBI could not be sure if he was trying to get the best lots or that he was trying to surround his competitor, so he could not trade anymore. In these cases the competitor that was surrounding the trader was given the benefit of the doubt, until last round. The CBI was changing their opinion about cheating en the punishment for cheating.
The first case that became public was the 10.000 ISH fine for (the winner of round 53) Bossebol. He was found guilty, in the means of the CBI, because Captain of Industrie bought (excessive?) stone at his shop to expand his own shop. In the second case Joep Eerlijk was the victim, j_plaizier wanted to have the biggest warehouse of the federation en win the TMC so he bought a huge amount of stone at Joep Eerlijk for his warehouse. It is possible to have some doubt in both cases. And besides that why should the seller get a fine which is five times higher then they made as profit of selling those stones? And also because they obviously did not want to cheat or made plans to cheat.
This has everything to do with the new course they are following under the lead of the Federal Coordinator and the Federal Manager, maybe the biggest advocate of this new policy. This new policy means that every suspicious transaction needs to be reported by the trader that has to do with that transaction. If not so, the trader takes the risk of getting punished. Apparently the CBI won’t look anymore if this was planned or just some coincidence, they will only look if there is a report by the trader or not, if not so, the trader had benefit of his ‘mistake’ and should be fined or otherwise punished. They don’t look anymore if this was the intention of this person and so the benefit of the doubt is gone too.
Hereby I want to warn everybody for this new policy, because otherwise you will trade for nothing. Let the CBI know if you have made any suspicious transactions. Maybe you will come threw the (too) strict policy of the CBI.