Monthly Archives: February 2025

Road Quality Guarantees in Nigeria: An Anticorruption Approach Off the Beaten Path

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To say it is hard to get around in Nigeria is an understatement. Only about 30% of Nigeria’s roads are paved. And even the paved roads are in terrible condition, with crater-sized potholes, stagnant pools of water, floods of waste, and disintegrating tarmac. Everyday commuters, who often sit in traffic for up to five hours daily, regard Nigeria’s roads as “death traps,” “deplorable,” and “dilapidated.” The low quality of Nigeria’s roads not only increases insecurity but also poses a major impediment to economic progress.

The poor quality of roads is not the result of insufficient funding allocated for road construction. Indeed, the Nigerian government has spent enormous amounts of money on road construction projects (approximately $922.2 million just last year). If this money was going where it was supposed to go, Nigeria’s roads should at least be decent. But the money is not going where it’s supposed to go. Very often construction firms bribe public officials to secure road contracts, and then the firms recoup the loss of the bribe by using low quality materials and substandard construction methods, resulting in roads that do not last even up to seven years. In some cases, contractors simply pocket the government money and disappear, abandoning their projects but simply pocket the government money and disappear. To take an especially high profile example of how massive road projects can be tainted by suspicions of corruption, a recent $13 billion highway project, commenced by President Tinubu in May 2024, was awarded—with no regard for a public bidding process—to a company of whose subsidiary Tinubu’s son is a director. In fact, Tinubu’s son owned an offshore company with the son of the tycoon who received the contract. (In 2000, that tycoon was convicted of money laundering and helping the Abacha regime siphon at least $120 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria.) This road project has been criticized for its lack of transparency, alleged fraud, and risk of noncompletion.

In short, corruption is one of the most significant reasons for Nigeria’s terrible road system. But the most effective way to improve road quality in Nigeria is to focus not directly on the corruption—even though that is the root cause of the problem. Of course, corrupt acts, in this context and others, should be caught and punished. But, rather than relying primarily on detecting and punishing corruption, the more effective way to address this problem would be to establish effective mechanisms to hold contractors and public officials accountable for the quality of the roads that are ultimately built. Enforcing performance standards will reduce incentives to engage in corruption—at least the sorts of corruption that have a significant adverse impact on quality.

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Guest Post: Getting into the Weeds of Victim Compensation in Foreign Bribery Cases

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Today’s guest post is from Sam Hickey, a lawyer and former regular GAB contributor:

Given the Trump Administration’s decision to pause FCPA enforcement and disband the DOJ’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, the United Kingdom has become an even more important actor in international efforts to remediate those most impacted by foreign bribery, and the global fight against corruption more generally.

Together with the Basel Institute on Governance, I have written a report on the UK’s use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) to compensate the victims of foreign bribery. Given the inherent difficulties in seizing, forfeiting, and repatriating illicit wealth through traditional asset recovery frameworks, DPAs possess immense potential to remediate the victims of corruption in low-income countries. But this practice also raises a number of questions and challenges, which the report seeks to address. Here are some of the more serious ones: Continue reading →

The UK’s Failure-to-Prevent-Bribery Offense Has Succeeded in Preventing Bribery

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The UK Bribery Act 2010 has been widely heralded as “the gold standard” of anti-bribery laws, an “exemplary” statute that is “a lodestar for other countries.” That the UK is now seen as a “world leader” in the fight against foreign bribery, after years of being seen as a laggard, is due in no small part to UK Bribery Act’s most innovative aspect: the failure to prevent bribery offense under section 7. This section makes commercial organizations doing business in the UK criminally liable if they fail to prevent a person associated with their organization from bribing another for the purpose of obtaining or retaining an advantage for the organization. “Associated” persons are defined broadly as including anyone who performs services on behalf of the organization, including employees, contractors and agents. But companies can avoid liability for failure to prevent bribery if they can show that they had adopted “adequate procedures” to prevent such wrongdoing. This feature of the Act has received growing international endorsement. Numerous jurisdictions have adopted similar provisions (e.g. Australia, Kenya, Bermuda, Ireland, South Africa) or are considering doing so (New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong). Moreover, within the UK itself, this failure to prevent framework has been expanded to contexts such as tax evasion and fraud offenses, and is also being considered for tackling human rights harms, mistreatment of vulnerable persons and computer misuse offenses.

Yet despite such widespread praise, section 7, and the UK Bribery Act more generally, have their detractors. The main criticisms tend to fall into two categories. First, some have argued that section 7 has not been as effective in changing corporate behavior as might have reasonably been expected. Second, some have argued that section 7’s “adequate procedures” defense is too vague. Both of these criticisms are overstated. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Likely to Ok Trump’s Firing of Whistleblower Protection Agency Head — But

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Anticorruption activists will almost certainly soon awake to more bad news about the Trump Administration and corruption: A Supreme Court decision upholding the sacking of the official responsible for protecting government whistleblowers.

A Trump win at the Supreme Court is bad news, both in legal and public relations terms. But the anticorruption community and those worried about Trump’s abuse of executive power should temper their laments. Especially because their lamentations will amplify the PR value of the win.

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U.S. Prosecutors Resign Rather Than Obey Order to Drop Corruption Charges

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Corruption fighters around the world are surely appalled at the Trump Administration’ s latest strike against the rule of law. And certainly heartened by the refusal of both politically-appointed and career prosecutors to be complicit.

On February 10 Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Bove ordered federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon to dismiss bribery charges pending against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Sassoon, a Trump appointee, resigned in protest.  Bove then went down a list of career prosecutors hunting for someone who would obey his order. At last count seven had also resigned rather than carry out the order. Details on the still developing story from open sources are here, here, and here.

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Judicial Elections Will Worsen, Not Alleviate, Mexico’s Judicial Corruption Problem

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Mexico recently passed sweeping judicial reforms. These reforms, which are to be phased in between 2025 and 2027, include various elements including a relaxation of the required qualifications for judicial service, shorter tenures, reduced salaries, and new oversight bodies. But by far the most consequential change is the introduction of judicial elections, which will make Mexico the first country to directly elect almost all its judges. (The elections will not be fully open, however, as the slate of candidates for each judicial position will be determined by evaluation committees, subject to veto of particular candidates by the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.) Although proponents advanced many arguments in favor of this “high-stakes experiment,” anticorruption featured prominently. Indeed, the introduction of judicial elections was championed by former President López Obrador and his Morena party as a way to rid the Mexican judiciary of corruption by making judges responsive to the people, rather than big business or organized crime.

Judicial corruption is indeed a serious problem in Mexico. Bribery is commonplace in local and state courts, and also occurs, though not as frequently, in federal courts. Reportedly, large tax cases “get decided with a phone call or bag of money,” while the outcomes of criminal cases are often manipulated through “a combination of both fear and bribery.” But introducing judicial elections is unlikely to ”cleanse the judicial system of corruption”, and may actually make the corruption problem worse: Continue reading →

TI USA: Attorney General’s Memorandum Redirecting U.S. Anti-Corruption Efforts Raises Questions and Concerns

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Below is the statement TI US released today in response to Attorney General Bondi’s Memorandum directing federal prosecutors “to shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations that do not involve” criminal cartels and transnational crime and disbanding DoJ’s KleptoCapture Task Force and Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Congress passed the Federal Extortion Prevention Act by a wide margin and has regularly approved funding for the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. GAB shares TI USA’s concerns about the Attorney General’s Memorandum and hopes she will reconsider it as supporters in Congress, the business community, and the anticorruption community make their concerns known.

Washington, DC—On February 5, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi circulated a Memorandum to U.S. Justice Department employees with the subject heading “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations.”

The Memorandum explains the outlined changes as a step toward implementing President Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order entitled “Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

Among the changes are directives to (1) eliminate the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative (KARI); (2) prioritize Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) investigations that are related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs); (3) shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection; and (3) remove the “bureaucratic impediment” requiring that investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA or FEPA regarding foreign bribery associated with cartels and TCOs first be authorized by, as well as conducted solely by, the Criminal Division and the Fraud Section, respectively, of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Transparency International U.S Executive Director Gary Kalman issued the following statement:

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The Age of Opacity: Reviving India’s Right to Information Act

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Nearly five years ago, Inayat Sabhikhi’s post on this blog praised India’s Right to Information Act (RTIA) —which mandates public authorities to respond in a timely fashion to citizen requests for information—as a “remarkably effective anticorruption tool.” In contrast, last year the Supreme Court of India warned that the Act was “fast becoming a ‘dead letter law.’” What can be done to revitalize the RTIA? An important part of the answer lies in centering the rural poor—increasing awareness, affordability, and accessibility to the RTIA in India’s villages.

Given that many of the RTIA’s most lauded exposés have involved urban political corruption (see here, here, and here), it is sometimes forgotten that the law was fundamentally enacted so as to empower marginalized communities in rural India. In fact, the RTIA owes its existence to the collective efforts of activists who, throughout the 1990s, successfully campaigned to uncover local employment records to ensure fair compensation for small farmers. The RTIA’s promise in exposing rural corruption is illustrated in two cases that occurred shortly after the Act’s passage in 2005:

  • In 2007, farmers in the state of Assam leveraged the RTIA to reveal irregularities in the operation of the public system for distributing food to people living below the poverty. A further investigation revealed that local officials had diverted the rice to themselves, selling it on the black market at a sevenfold price increase.
  • In 2008, activists in the state of Punjab submitted RTIA applications to understand why federal money earmarked to build rural housing had not been distributed to the intended beneficiaries. As the requested reports indicated, the grants had been embezzled by village council members, who built houses for themselves. 

While these examples demonstrate that the RTIA’s potential to give rural citizens greater ability to hold local elites accountable, such examples are the exception rather than the rule. Although corruption is rampant in rural India (see here, here, here, and here), RTI requests in villages are all too rare. While 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas, barely 25% of RTI applications come from villages, and in some states that percentage is as low as 11%. In short, the communities with the most to gain from the RTIA are the ones that have used it the least.

Two reforms would help address this problem: 

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Announcement: Academia Against Corruption in the Americas Conference — Call for Papers

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Today’s guest announcement is from Bonnie Jo Palifka, Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Government at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

The Call for Papers for the 2025 Academia against Corruption in the Americas (ACA) Conference is out! We’re excited to be hosted by the Observatorio Fiscal, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, on May 21-23, 2025.

I founded ACA in 2018, inspired by two events. First, in 2016, I attended the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Panama. This was my first anticorruption conference, and I was excited to be surrounded by so many like-minded people. One moment that struck me occurred during a panel session, when Louise Shelley, in the audience, expressed how happy she was to see scholars (not only practitioners) at the conference and how important it is to teach anti-corruption to the new generations. The following year, at a conference on teaching anticorruption at the UNODC in Vienna, Matthew Stephenson (founder of the GAB) and I lamented the fact that most academic anticorruption conferences are held in Europe, Africa, and Asia. With two small children at home, making it difficult for me to travel (the aforementioned conferences notwithstanding), I decided to bring the scholars to me. Matthew and Louise were keynote speakers at the 2018 and 2019 conferences, respectively, in Monterrey, Mexico. Other keynote speakers have included Susan Rose-Ackerman, Michael Johnston, and Stephen Morris, as well as several rising stars. Our peer-reviewed sessions have featured presenters from top universities and important organizations from around the world.

The ACA Conference has three main goals:

  1. to enrich and promote multidisciplinary research on corruption and anticorruption in the Americas.
  2. to promote the inclusion of courses or sub-topics on corruption in university curricula.
  3. to form a research and teaching network in the Americas. (See our group on LinkedIn and our nascent YouTube channel, where we will eventually post the videos from previous ACA conferences and our new online seminar series, the ACA Forum.)

We accept three types of submissions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. (Presentations at the conference may be in English or Spanish):

  1. research on corruption and anticorruption, especially in the Americas
  2. didactic tools and examples of teaching corruption and anticorruption
  3. anticorruption tools and initiatives from civil society

While the ACA is a marriage of my interests—Corruption Studies and Latin American Studies—note that our focus is on the Americas more broadly.  Research on corruption in the United States, for example, would be especially timely.

We invite professors, researchers, and civil society organizations from all disciplines to submit proposals (full papers or reports, at any stage from draft through published) before February 28, 2025.

Please send any queries to anticorruption.academia@gmail.com.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and hope to see you at the conference in person or online.