I have a friend who was a union electrician on the Big Dig. He often observed that he could retire very comfortably on just 1/100th of 1% of the crooked money on that job.
Why any city would want to have the Olympics is beyond me. Huge debt, infrastructure stress, overmatched police forces and thousands of strangers.
I knew a union electrician who worked on the Indian Point power plant here in NY. The stories he told of the outright theft and corruption were astounding.
I’m willing to bet in the 10’s of millions easily.
One such story was the carpenters on the job had a full fledged cabinet shop on the premises making the cabinetry for other jobs the company had and also doing there own projects.
The electricians had a pickup truck for onsite hauling of materials. The Teamsters demanded that one of their drivers be the only one allowed to drive the truck when needed on site.
He said a supply house truck would drive onto the site and stuff was literally pulled of it and stolen by the time it got to where it was going.
Another Steamfitter I knew of had a virtual supply house at his home from stolen equipment and fittings. When he died, his wife had to hire a removal service to haul all of it away in straight bodied box trucks. TWO OF THEM loaded to the gills. Stainless fittings were the bulk of it.
The companies, officials, inspectors and workers were all trying to outdo one another as to who could clip the most.