I'll give you a simple and real example that happened in Bulgaria that is not bound to any ideology or theory. In 2004 the national state-owned telecommunicati

I'll give you a simple and real example that happened in Bulgaria that is not bound to any ideology or theory. In 2004 the national state-owned telecommunication incumbent company was privatized for a sum which nearly exactly matched the net annual profit in the very same year. (~120 x 10^6 Eur net profit out of ~500 x 10^6 Eur gross revenues; we're not a very big country, btw). So the actual effective acquiring cost was nothing - zero - for the buyers. There were public voices that said this was betrayal of the nation's interest but the then ruling party, full with 30-something MBA-suites from NY/London just babbled cheerfully in corporate-speak about the "free market", the "right price", and the "right timing" in the very same pointless way so much detested here in HN when it's about examples of corporate stupidity. A curious thing - the former chief economist of the World Bank,and Nobel prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz was a star-guest in a popular TV talk show and advised not sell at all at the moment (when was asked to comment on the matter, I happened to watch the show). He wasn't listened to, eventually. But the MBA-boys in a way weren't stupid at all - after around short 3 years the company was resold for ~1.1 x 10^9 Eur. Nothing that much changed, neither was invested in the company that really made some real difference in the market share or company's gross revenues. The deal was formally fully observing the legal regulations - there was nothing that could be pointed out as strictly illegal. In the political aftermath this party was voted out of the parliament into oblivion by the people. But those guys just don't seem to care anymore for the political life - they've "made" the bucks... foreign companies, investors, and top world investment bank consultancies were instrumental in the whole exercise. No doubt for me, similar scenarios on various scale have happened throughout the whole former Soviet block of countries. If this is theft and corruption - foreign western players milked also greatly from it (even if not the most of it).