One finds this nugget more than halfway through longish TFA. This really buries the lede. Without a competitive bid process, a public organization is at the mercy of its stupidest and most corrupt officials. When a tiny town in the middle of nowhere wants an abandoned building torn down, they don't call the mayor's cousin. They open an RFP, and the only way the mayor's cousin gets the job is if her bid is the least expensive for the town. Perhaps developing nations can't be expected to have any officials who know how such things should work (!), but every McKinsey employee damn well ought to have known that a giant secret contract is necessarily corrupt.