Photo Credit: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
There is a moment of increasing political will by wealthy democratic nations to address global corruption, especially in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With potential leadership from the US, and emerging interest from countries like Canada and the Netherlands, it is critical that this political will for anti-corruption focus domestically as well as internationally.
Grand Corruption’s Wake Up Call
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of the year put into stark reality the need for democratic nations to take fighting grand corruption and global kleptocrats seriously. For too long democratic nations watched corruption cause destabilization, smuggling, economic inequality and environmental degradation. Wealthy nations turned a blind eye – sometimes willfully - to the money coming into their economies from kleptocrats and barely made any effort to stop it or their own citizens and companies contributing to corruption overseas.
When Canada, European nations, the US, and others tried to use powerful sanctions to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they found it harder than planned to enforce those sanctions on Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin himself. Much of the wealth these nations were trying to sanction is hid in their own countries’ banks, businesses, real estate, and luxury goods.
Half-Hearted Attempts and Glimmers of Hope
In the fight against corruption, one has to remember that Transparency International, the leading global civil society movement working against corruption was only founded in 1994. There has been much work to do in that time convincing people around the world that fighting corruption is even the right thing to do. Remember, paying a bribe was still tax deductible in countries like France and Germany until the late 90s.
Since TI’s founding, multiple treaties and conventions have been signed including the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and the Financial Action Task Force recommendations against money laundering and terrorist financing. Countries like Canada have translated the guidance from these treaties and conventions into domestic law. They and others have also funded anti-corruption programs as part of international aid programs.
However, in spite of this, kleptocrats still plunder their countries and hide their wealth in financial hubs and secrecy jurisdictions around the world. In the face of this, it is easy to give into cynicism and say nothing works and corruption is just the way of things.
As this year has demonstrated, we do not have the luxury to give in to complacency. And thankfully some new initiatives were already in the works to reinvigorate political will to fight grand corruption. In 2021, the US held the Summit for Democracy. Earlier in December, the US hosted the International Anti-Corruption Conference, re-asserting a commitment towards anti-corruption particularly though highlighting the new USAID Dekleptification guide, and having President Biden’s National Security Advisory, Jake Sullivan outline the importance of fighting corruption in the opening plenary.
Building off of the Summit for Democracy, Canada committed to holding high-level panels to examine the international architecture of anti-corruption and seeing how it can be strengthened. At the same time, The Canadian International Council (CIC) and Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAF) also developed a program called Restoring Our Democratic Alliance (RODA) with anti-corruption as a key pillar.
Western democracies need to ensure that anti-corruption efforts from these forums are not only externally focused, pigeon-holed into foreign aid programs, but as noted, factor their own roles in the global grand corruption system.
Using the Current Window of Political Will Wisely
TI Canada was contracted by CIC to work on the anti-corruption pillar of the RODA program, and emphasized this exact perspective in a report. The TI movement also recently passed a resolution around this theme at the Annual Member Meeting.
As a starting point to this systems perspective, democratic nations need to actually implement the treaties they already signed up to and allow them to be monitored properly.
Implementing conventions requires increasing enforcement and bringing in new laws to close gaps. Examples of new laws and tools includes increasing beneficial ownership transparency for corporations and trusts, creating asset registries and sharing information across national borders. Governments also need to bring forward laws and penalties that will dissuade the enablers of corruption. National governments also need to prioritize funding for law enforcement and prosecutorial bodies to actually convict kleptocrats and their enablers, as well as seize their dirty assets.
Next, anti-corruption needs to be integrated across government policies. Corruption is too often compartmentalized for specialists in foreign affairs ministries. Governments need to see anti-corruption as the cross-cutting issue that it is. Foreign, trade, international aid, and even defence and environmental policies need to be evaluated for their impact on fighting or contributing to global corruption. Staff in all of these departments need training on how to integrate anti-corruption as a cross-cutting issue in their work.
In amongst the new initiatives for addressing grand corruption has also been discussions among governments and experts about a global anti-corruption court. There are a number of countries that still of course face challenges with their judiciary being able to actually hold powerful kleptocrats accountable. To this end, the champions of a global court should consider regional judicial bodies, transitional justice, and other ad hoc solutions. For example, a regional body that could be empowered to address kleptocracy is the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights.
For ad hoc solutions, closer attention should be paid to examples like Eurojust in the Western Balkans, the process of judge selection for the High Anti-Corruption Court in Ukraine, and the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Bodies like these are flexible and can work for a specific challenge.
There is no one silver bullet to fighting corruption, particularly global grand corruption, which thrives in cracks - and even in the open - of the complexities of international systems. Some anti-corruption measures have worked, but in large part governments have implemented anti-corruption in half-measures. To address a systemic problem, you need a systemic approach that recognizes and addresses the role of wealthy established democratic nations. The dangerous impact of letting corruption fester can no longer be ignored. It is time to take serious smart anti-corruption action.