Author Archives: Matthew Stephenson

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About Matthew Stephenson

Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Guest Post: Measures To Counter Corruption in the Coronavirus Pandemic Response

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Today’s guest post is from Sarah Steingrüber, an independent global health expert and Global Health Lead for CurbingCorruption.

The coronavirus pandemic is a global health challenge the likes of which has not been seen in over a century. The outbreak demands swift and bold action not only in the direct response to the pandemic, but also in ensuring that monies are correctly spent, that companies do not profit unfairly from misfortune, and that power is not abused by our leaders.

Two weeks ago, I published a commentary on this blog that identified some of the critical corruption risks associated with the response to the coronavirus pandemic. In today’s post, I turn from a diagnosis of the risks to some possible solutions. In particular, I want to highlight four types of measures that will help to mitigate some of the corruption risks that were identified in my previous post. Continue reading →

Tracking Corruption and Conflicts of Interest in the Trump Administration–April 2020 Update

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As regular readers of this blog are aware, since May 2017 we’ve been tracking and cataloguing credible allegations that President Trump, and his family members and close associates, have been corruptly, and possibly illegally, leveraging the power of the presidency to enrich themselves. The newest update is now available here.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most significant updates this month concern the ways in which the financial interests of the Trump Organization may intersect with the Trump Administration’s response to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic In particular:

  • There is some suspicion that the Trump administration’s slow and equivoval response to the pandemic may have been influenced by President Trump’s desire to avoid hurting the hospitality industry, one of the Trump Organization’s major lines of business. Media reports suggest that President Trump pushed for an end to social distancing by mid-April in part because of the adverse effect social distancing has had on his own hotels and resorts.
  • Critics also highlighted the fact that the 30-day ban on travel from Europe that President Trump announced on March 11 initially excluded the United Kingdom and Ireland, where Trump owns hotels and golf courses, though a few days later the Administration extended the travel restrictions to cover both countries.
  • President Trump’s financial interests may also have influenced the administration’s response to the pandemic’s economic costs. In early March, President Trump mentioned the possibility of a bailout for the hotel industry, and later that month, as Congress and the administration were negotiating an economic relief package, President Trump refused to rule out the possibility that his personal properties would accept relief funds under this package. The stimulus as passed, however, banned President Trump’s properties from receiving government support.
  • The Trump Organization has substantial outstanding loans from Deutche Bank (estimated to be in the neighborhood of $350 million). The Organization has asked Deutsche Bank to delay payments on those loans given the economic distress caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Critics have noted that this creates an inherent and troubling conflict of interest, given the power that the President has to affect Deutsche Bank’s interests (especially since a number of federal investigations of Deutsche Bank are ongoing.

A previously noted, while we try to include only those allegations that appear credible, many of the allegations that we discuss are speculative and/or contested. We also do not attempt a full analysis of the laws and regulations that may or may not have been broken if the allegations are true. (For an overview of some of the relevant federal laws and regulations that might apply to some of the alleged problematic conduct, see here.)

New Podcast, Featuring Taryn Vian

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This episode is particularly timely, as it features an interview with Taryn Vian, a professor at the University of San Francisco whose research focuses on the links between corruption and public health. Unsurprisingly, much of our discussion revolves around the current coronavirus pandemic, and how to address and manage the corruption challenges associated with the current health emergency. But our broad-ranging conversation also covers the corruption-health connection in more normal times (including issues like informal payments to doctors and embezzlement or misappropriation of medical supplies), as well as lessons learned from corruption in previous public health emergencies, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2013-2016.

You can find this episode here. 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–March 2020 Update

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Sorry for the delay in last month’s bibliography update! It’s been an unusual couple of weeks. But I’m happy to say that thanks to my tremendous administrative and library staff support, I’m able to keep the regular updates going, at least for now. The newest version of the anticorruption bibliography is now available on my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added last month is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

More Commentaries on Corruption and the Coronavirus Pandemic

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, folks in the anticorruption community have started to generate a fair amount of commentary on the links between the coronavirus pandemic and corruption/anticorruption; these pieces approach the connection from various angles, including how corruption might have contributed to the outbreak and deficiencies in the response, the importance of ensuring adequate anticorruption safeguards in the various emergency measures being implemented to address both the public health crisis and the associated economic crisis, and concerns about the longer term impact on institutional integrity and checks and balances. Last week I posted links to four such commentaries. Since then, we’ve had two commentaries on the corruption-coronavirus relationship here on GAB (yesterday’s post from Sarah Steingrüber, and last week’s post from Shruti Shah and Alex Amico). Since then, I’ve come across some more, and I thought it would be useful to provide those additional links, and perhaps to try to start collecting in one place a list of commentaries on corruption and coronavirus. The new sources I’ve come across are as follows:

In case it’s helpful to readers, I may start to compile and regularly update a list of corruption-coronavirus resources. The ones I’ve got so far (including those noted above):

I’m sure there are more useful commentaries, and many more to come over the coming weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep a comprehensive list, but I’ll do my best to provide links to the resources I’m aware of, so if you know of useful pieces on the corruption-coronavirus link, please send me a note.

Thanks everyone, and stay safe.

Guest Post: Coronavirus and the Corruption Outbreak

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Today’s guest post is from Sarah Steingrüber, an independent global health expert and Global Health Lead for CurbingCorruption.

It was never a question of if, but when, and now here we are. What’s worse is that we were warned. We are in the midst of a major global pandemic with nations all over the world declaring national emergencies, health systems struggling to cope or bracing themselves for the onslaught, and ordinary people trying to make sense of a barrage of sometimes conflicting information. The World Health Organization and national governments around the world recognize that slowing the spread of the coronavirus (more accurately, the SARS-CoV-2 virus) and helping those who are already suffering—both physically and economically—will require swift and bold action.

Unfortunately, that urgency significantly increases the risk that the response to the coronavirus pandemic will unleash a wave of corruption, one that not only threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the response thus ensuring greater loss of life, but could persist much longer than the outbreak itself, debilitating health systems long term.

In emergency situations, when lives are at stake, it is all too easy to rationalize the subordination of concerns about things like accountability and transparency, and to disregard or ignore any anticorruption infrastructure that may currently be in place. It’s hard to focus on holding leaders accountable when government action is desperately needed to save lives. But ignoring the risks of abuse of power during a crisis would be a grave mistake, and in the context of the current coronavirus pandemic, at least three such risks are especially serious: Continue reading →

New Podcast, Featuring Mushtaq Khan and Paul Heywood

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In all the chaos of last week’s COVID-19 developments, I neglected to announce that a new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is was published back on March 22. In this episode, the first in a two-part series, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke, sit down with Professor Mushtaq Khan and Professor Paul Heywood to discuss a variety of topics, including the complexities of the relationship between corruption and development and the “Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme” (ACE), an initiative sponsored by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to strengthen the knowledge base for anticorruption initiatives. Professors Khan and Heywood are both ACE programme directors, and they describe the philosophy and core themes of the ACE project, and some of its work so far. The conversation also discusses more generally critiques of traditional approaches to anticorruption in developing countries, and alternative approaches and perspectives.

You can find this episode here. 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.

Why Hasn’t the IACC Meeting Been Postponed Yet?!?!

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As many readers of this blog are likely aware, one of the biggest international anticorruption conferences, aptly named the International Anti-Corruption Conference, scheduled its 2020 meeting for June 2-5 in Seoul, South Korea. It should be patently obvious to anybody that’s been paying attention that this conference absolutely must be postponed in light of the COVID-19 situation. Even if, three months from now, most of the hardest-hit countries have succeeded in “flattening the curve” to some degree, hosting a major international conference–one that will bring together people from all over the world, to meet and interact at close quarters for four days in a country that’s been a COVID-19 hotspot (albeit one that has done a good job getting the outbreak under control) before dispersing back to their countries of origin–is the height of irresponsibility.

So it came to me as a something of a shock that the IACC meeting has not (yet) been postponed. Indeed, just yesterday the IACC sent around an announcement encouraging young journalists to apply for the conference’s Young Journalist Program (offering those selected air travel and accommodations for the Seoul meeting). On the IACC website, the most recent COVID-19 update is from March 11 (over two weeks ago), and says:

We are very mindful of the current situation regarding the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and we understand that many of you are concerned on how it will affect the 19th International Anti-corruption Conference (IACC) in Seoul, Korea, from 2-5 June.

While our strong wish is to get together in early June for the IACC2020 in Seoul to learn from each other and join forces to be more effective in our efforts to end corruption in the coming years, our priority is the safety of all the participants and our staff.

The IACC team is regularly monitoring the global health situation and is in dialogue with the IACC Council and our partners in Korea. A decision to hold the conference, postpone to a later date or any other decision will be made in coming weeks. In the meantime, we will continue our planning.

We appreciate your understanding and recommend caution when making any financial commitments, like purchasing non-refundable flight tickets, until a final decision is reached. We will be updating you as soon as an informed and collectively [sic] decision is taken.

That’s all fine and good, but I think by now and informed decision to postpone the conference can and should be taken (and at the very least, the IACC shouldn’t be posting announcements encouraging people to apply). Come on guys! If the IOC can finally get its act together and postpone the Tokyo Olympics until 2021, surely the IACC can reach a similar decision without further deliberations. After all, shouldn’t the anticorruption community be at the forefront of emphasizing the importance of prioritizing the public welfare over other concerns?

Guest Announcement: Special Issue on Fighting Corruption in the Health Sector

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Continuing this week’s theme of highlighting resources on the links between corruption/anticorruption and the coronavirus pandemic, in today’s guest post Sarah Steingrüber, an independent global health expert and Global Health Lead for CurbingCorruption, announces the following new resource on fighting corruption in the health sector:

Last week, the open-source academic journal Global Health Action, published a special issue on anticorruption, transparency, and accountability in the health sector. Although not about the COVID-19 situation specifically, this special issue—a joint undertaking with the World Health Organization—addresses crucial and highly relevant issues related to the health sector’s ability to prevent, detect, and sanction corruption, in order to address the threats that corruption poses to the health system’s ability to perform effectively during both crises and normal times.

After an introductory overview by Theadora Koller, David Clarke, and Taryn Vian, the special issue includes seven articles:

Guest Post: Ensuring Adequate Anticorruption, Accountability, and Transparency Measures During the Pandemic

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Today’s guest post is from Shruti Shah and Alex Amico from the Coalition for Integrity:

We are living through an emergency more severe than anything in recent memory. The COVID-19 public health crisis has triggered an associated economic crisis, and both will require a dramatic government response. But the fact that we are dealing with an emergency situation—in which swift and drastic government action is essential—does not mean that we should put aside our concerns about government corruption, or relax our vigilance about demands for transparency and accountability in government programs. Quite the opposite: In order to respond effectively, and to demonstrate that they can be trusted, governments other institutions need to demonstrate that they are committed to honest oversight of the extraordinary actions necessary to combat this pandemic. The need to act swiftly does not abrogate the government’s responsibility to adhere to principles of anticorruption, accountability, and transparency.

There is no better illustration of this than the stimulus package being negotiated (at the time of writing) in the U.S. Congress. This stimulus will result in a flow of an enormous amount of money, and the risks of corruption, fraud, and misappropriation or diversion are extremely high. It is therefore essential that the stimulus bill incorporate meaningful transparency, oversight, and anticorruption provisions. For example: Continue reading →