Monthly Archives: October 2020

Macro-Criticality: The International Monetary Fund’s Black Box

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Back in 2018, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) promised to tackle corruption within its member states when that corruption is “macro-critical”—that is, when corruption “affects, or has the potential to affect, domestic or external [macroeconomic] stability.” The IMF’s declaration that corruption is, or at least can be, “macro-critical” was an important development, one that anticorruption professionals applauded as a “major step forward.” For those less familiar with the IMF, though, the significance of the “macro-criticality” finding may not be immediately obvious. To understand this particular piece of IMF jargon, and why it’s so important for when and how the IMF engages in anticorruption work, it’s necessary to understand a bit more about how the IMF operates.

First and foremost, the IMF is a “monetary agency, not a development agency.” In contrast to a development agency like the World Bank, the IMF does not finance specific projects, nor is its mandate to promote economic development and poverty reduction as a general matter. Rather, the IMF helps protect global macroeconomic stability by lending funds to governments in dire straits. Furthermore, the IMF often requires, as a condition for receiving these emergency loans, that the recipient governments adopt institutional or policy reforms—a controversial practice known as “conditionality.” The IMF has also sometimes forgiven loans for particularly debt-burdened countries. And in recent years, the IMF has expanded its capacity development apparatus by providing advice to countries on a wide range of issues related to a country’s macroeconomic management, including central banking, monetary and exchange rate policy, tax policy and administration, and official statistics. All these services function to protect the international monetary system from potential risks, which is the IMF’s primary task.

But although the IMF’s mission is, at least in principle, narrowly focused on macroeconomic stability, the IMF has consistently faced the question of how to distinguish economic policy (which the IMF may influence) from social or political matters that are outside the IMF’s mandate (see, e.g., here, here, and here). Recognizing that there can be a porous boundary between economic and political matters, the IMF developed the concept of “macro-criticality.” So long as an issue—even a political or social issue—affects, or has the potential to affect, the macro-economy in a significant way, the IMF may treat the topic as it would any other issue traditionally recognized to be the IMF’s bread and butter.

And that’s why it was so important that the IMF has declared that corruption is a “macro-critical” issue. Once the IMF considers corruption in a given country to be macro-critical, the IMF may place anticorruption conditions on IMF loans to that country. The macro-criticality finding also validates data collection and capacity building measures related to corruption and anticorruption—measures that would otherwise seem to fall outside the IMF’s jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, confusion persists about when the IMF will consider corruption to be a “macro-critical” issue, and what exactly the IMF promised to do in its 2018 statement. One reason it’s hard to understand what the IMF actually committed to is because there are many ways for an issue to affect domestic or external macroeconomic stability. Perhaps most importantly, it’s important to distinguish a finding that an issue, such as corruption, is globally macro-critical—in the sense that there is robust evidence that this issue can have significant effects on macro-economic stability—from a finding that this issue is macro-critical in a particular country. Even a globally macro-critical issue may not by macro-critical in a specific country, either because the country in question already has adequate safeguards in place to address the issue, or because the macroeconomic risks associated with this particular issue are minimal in comparison to other country-specific threats.

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Guest Post: What Can Reformers Learn from the Populists?

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Today’s guest post is from Michael Johnston, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Colgate University.

Few recent political trends have attracted as much concern as the rise of populism and illiberal democracy. Figures like Orbán (in Hungary), Duterte (in the Philippines), Bolsonaro (in Brazil), and Trump (in the U.S.), along with their enablers and sycophants, have disrupted democratic norms and processes in their home countries and encouraged similar movements elsewhere. They have emboldened corrupt and self-dealing actors while weakening and intimidating countervailing political forces. While populists frequently rail against a corrupt and decadent old order, promising to restore citizens to a position of power and sovereignty that in most instances they never actually enjoyed, these leaders seem to have little concern for those citizens after winning their votes. Indeed, perhaps we shouldn’t call these figures “populist” at all, given their tendency to abuse and mislead the very citizens they claim to represent. “Authoritarian nationalist” might be a more accurate label. But whatever we call them, they seem determined to undermine checks and balances and meaningful accountability, as well as the political trust and informal norms on which well-functioning governments depend.

This is bad news for those working to check corruption, as these populist/authoritarian nationalists’ undermining of accountability and institutional checks fosters a pervasive atmosphere of impunity. But might there also be important lessons that the anticorruption community can learn from these movements? I suggest that there are. Indeed, populist followings are telling us something important, something directly relevant to reform, if we listen closely. Continue reading →

Review of Gemma Aiolfi’s Anticorruption Compliance for Small and Mid-Sized Organizations

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For almost two decades the Basel Institute on Governance has advised corporations large and small, first in Europe and now around the globe, on how to develop a robust anticorruption compliance program. One that will prevent the company from becoming entangled in a corruption scandal while at the same time neither compromising its ability to compete nor dampening its entrepreneurial energy. Gemma Aiolfi, who has headed the Institute’s corporate compliance work for the last seven years, presents the Institute’s collective experiences in a new volume from Elgar, Anti-Corruption Compliance for Small and Mid-Sized Organizations.

What sets Aiolfi’s book apart from the many fine volumes already on the market (examples here, here, and here) is that it is leavened with literally dozens of examples drawn from the Institute’s work. How should a company establishing a compliance program handle personnel used to doing business “the old way”?  What should a manager do if she discovers police in a developing country are threatening to shut down critical operations if the company’s low-level frontline personnel don’t pay them off? How should a company deal with senior government officials’ requests for lavish travel and entertainment allowances when visiting a company’s operations? Discussions of how to handle each, with suitably anonymized case studies explaining how management actually dealt with them, is what makes the volume so useful.

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Trump’s New Executive Order on the Civil Service Poses a Grave Corruption Threat

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Last week, President Trump issued a new Executive Order that, if implemented, could dramatically change the U.S. federal civil service—and in so doing threatens to subvert one of the most important bulwarks against corruption in all of U.S. law.

First, a quick synopsis of what the order does: Federal civil service laws are complex, but simplifying a bit, the bulk of U.S. civil service positions fall under something called the “competitive service” (also known as the “merit system”), in which hiring is based on competitive examinations administered by the Office of Personnel Management. Furthermore, those holding competitive service positions can only be removed for good cause (that is, they can’t be fired at will), and removals of such officials are reviewable by an independent commission called the Merit Systems Protection Board. Also importantly, those in the competitive service are entitled to union representation. Not all federal positions have these protections; the most senior civil servants are part of a different system (the “Senior Executive Service”), and there are a number of other relatively narrowly drawn exemptions for particular classes of jobs, typically those for which hiring by competitive examination is not practical (the “excepted service”). President Trump’s new Executive Order would shift from the competitive service to the excepted service any position that has “a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” If that sounds very broad, it’s because it is. The Executive Order, if implemented, could shift tens of thousands, or possibly hundreds of thousands, of federal civil service positions out of the competitive service, thus giving the President the authority to fire the holders of those positions at will, as well as the authority to replace them with political appointees.

It’s not entirely clear whether the new order is legal. The relevant statute does contain a provision that allows the President to create “necessary exceptions” from the merit system insofar as “conditions of good government warrant.” Past presidents have exercised this authority, though to the best of my (limited) knowledge, President Trump’s Executive Order is unprecedented in both the breadth of its coverage and the thinness of its proffered justifications. That might matter, because there are a handful of prior court opinions (though none at the Supreme Court level) that suggest that the President’s authority to exempt positions from the merit system is not unlimited. It’s also not certain whether the Executive Order will ever go into effect. If Joe Biden wins next week’s election, he could reverse the order as soon as he’s inaugurated, and it’s unclear whether the Trump Administration will be able effect any actual reclassifications under the order prior to inauguration day. (The order itself calls on all agencies to prepare a preliminary list of affected positions by inauguration day, but it’s possible that agencies might move faster and reclassify some positions before then.)

For purposes of the present post, I want to put those issues aside. I also will put aside, for now, broader questions of whether the Executive Order would worsen the politicization of federal agencies or undermine their overall quality (themes I’ve explored in other work). Instead, my objective here is to elaborate on why this Executive Order, if implemented, poses such a significant corruption threat. To do that, let’s consider three forms of corruption (or corruption-facilitating practices) that the civil service merit system is meant to constrain, and the impact that this Executive Order would have on each: Continue reading →

Corruption and the COVID-19 Vaccine: The Looming Problem of Distribution

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From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, activists and analysts have called attention to the significant corruption risks associated with the response to both the public health crisis itself and the economic disruption it has caused. Anticorruption advocates have highlighted, for example, the corruption risks associated with the distribution of relief funds and personal protective equipment, and have emphasized the need for reforms like enhancing transparency, requiring audits, and ensuring protections for whistleblowers. (For samples of the discussion of the need for anticorruption measures in coronavirus response, see here, here, here, and here.) Yet there has been surprisingly little sustained discussion or planning concerning a specific issue which, while still prospective, is of pressing global importance: the inevitable corruption risks that will be associated with the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, if and when such a vaccine becomes available.

This is not to say that there has been no exploration of the subject. Commentators have discussed the difficulties of ensuring that a vaccine is distributed equitably, as opposed to simply being given to the most affluent, and have called attention to the problems of black markets and price gouging that are likely to emerge once vaccines are available. There has also been some general, abstract discussion of the fact that the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine, once one exists, has significant potential for both grand and petty corruption. Absent from the discussion, though, has been the development of concrete plans for incorporating anticorruption measures in vaccine distribution—plans that take into account the inherent logistical challenges. The World Health Organization (WHO), to its credit, has released a seventeen-page plan for fair allocation of a COVID vaccine, which discusses detailed measures to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly. However, the WHO plan devotes little more than a page to promises of “strong accountability mechanisms” in the governing bodies to “ensure protection against undue influence.” The WHO does note that the primary role of its own Independent Allocation Validation Group is to ensure that proposals from the vaccine Allocation Taskforce remain “transparent and free from conflicts of interest,” but while this sort of internal monitoring is laudable, the WHO plan conspicuously lacks any further guidance or recommendations on appropriate anticorruption measures once the vaccines are handed over to their allocated countries.

Although the timeline for a vaccine remains uncertain—and there’s no guarantee that a vaccine will be available any time soon—it would make sense for both international organizations and national governments to identify the most likely corruption risks associated with vaccine distribution and to begin developing safeguards to mitigate those risks. While there are many possible corruption risks associated with vaccine distribution, the two most significant are diversion of vaccines and extortion. Let’s examine each in turn:

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FACTI Background Paper: Analysis of the Different Peer Review Mechanisms for Ensuring Compliance with Anticorruption and Financial Integrity Norms

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For two decades governments have been signing agreements where they promise to curb corruption and halt the international flow of illicit funds. A promise, however, is only as good as the method for enforcing it, and in the case of international conventions and treaties the only method available is the peer review.  Experts from neighboring or similarly situated nations review how well the government is keeping its promises, recommending ways it can do better and sometimes chastising it for breaking its promises. The theory is that threat of a bad review will put pressure on a government to live up to its commitments.

Peer reviews come in various shapes and sizes, and experience with ones has shown that some are more effective than others.  At the request of High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda Financing for Sustainable Development (FACTI), Valentina Carraro, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Groningen, and Hortense Jongen, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, reviewed the effectiveness of the peer review mechanisms of six of the most important anticorruption and financial integrity agreements:

  • the Implementation Review Mechanism of the United Nations Convention against Corruption,
  • the Follow-Up Mechanism for the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC),
  • the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Working Group on Bribery (OECD Antibribery Convention),
  • the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes,
  • the Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting,
  • the Financial Action Task Force and the Financial Action Task Force-Style Regional Bodies.

Their summary of their findings and recommendations is below. and their paper here.  (Background on the FACTI and a link to its interim report recommending changes in international and domestic laws to combat corruption and stem  illicit financial flows is here.)

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New Podcast Episode, Featuring James Wasserstrom (Part 2)

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, James Wasserstrom, with whom I did a podcast episode last month, returns for a second interview. In our first conversation, Mr. Wasserstrom and I talked about his experience as a whistleblower exposing corruption at the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in 2007, and the aftermath. In this week’s episode, Mr. Wasserstrom discusses his work as a special advisor on anticorruption issues at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, where he served from 2009 to 2014. He talks about the importance of anticorruption work in ensuring stability and security, the challenges he faced in convincing senior military and diplomatic officials of the need to take corruption seriously, and why it’s important, in situations like Afghanistan, to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to corruption and to use strict conditionalities on aid to compel governments to adopt meaningful improvements in transparency, accountability, and integrity. He also compares his experiences in Afghanistan with his prior work in Kosovo, as well as work he’s done since on promoting anticorruption and good governance in Ukraine.

You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

Anticorruption Bibliography–October 2020 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

FACTI Background Paper: Beneficial Ownership

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The United Nations High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda Financing for Sustainable Development (FACTI) is developing reforms to tax and anticorruption laws, asset recovery rules, beneficial ownership disclosure requirements, and other international norms to staunch the outflow of illicit funds from developing nations and speed the return of corrupt monies held abroad (preliminary report here).

A critical issue the panel will address is the reforms necessary to ensure corrupt officials cannot use a corporation, trust, or other legally created entity – a “legal person” in lawyer-speak — to hide their wrongdoing.  Those investigating corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crimes must be able to identify the real, natural person – the beneficial owner – behind a legal person if we are to curb the massive theft of assets from poor nations. In his background paper for the panel, Andres Knobel of the Tax Justice Network explains how criminals use legal persons to shield their wrongdoing and the measures required to end these abuses.  Most importantly, his condemnation of the injustice of the current laws governing legal persons serves as a powerful prod to action. His summary of the paper is below and the full text here.

Beneficial ownership: more than transparency, it’s about justice

The Panama Papers revealed the involvement of many public figures in offshore legal vehicles causing turmoil all over the world. But the real scandal wasn’t the data that was revealed. Rather, the scandal was the fact that we needed a leak to obtain data that should have been available in the first place.

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Interview on the History of Corruption in the U.S. (and Corruption in the Trump Administration)

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As regular readers likely know, a little while back I did a post on a new working paper of mine, jointly authored with Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, on corruption and anticorruption in U.S. history. A few weeks ago, Harvard Law Today (the alumni magazine put out by my employer and alma mater) published a short interview I did about what we learned from this research project. In addition to discussing the history, the interviewer also asked some questions regarding the current situation in the U.S. with respect to corruption, especially in connection with the evidence this blog has been collecting of the Trump Administration’s conflicts of interest and efforts to monetize the presidency for personal financial gain. It’s a brief interview, and there may not be much in here that will be news to those who read the working paper or follow these issues closely, but I figured I’d share the interview in case some folks out there might find it of interest. The interview also includes a link to a lecture I delivered a year ago on broad themes related to corruption and anticorruption.