Author Archives: Richard Messick

Raising the Ethics Bar: Namibia’s President Voluntarily Discloses His Income and Assets

Posted on by
5

Namibia is not the first country that comes to mind when looking for international trend setters.  Roughly the size of Turkey but with a population of only 2.1 million, it has been an independent state for just 25 years.  Yet thanks to a recent initiative by its newly installed President, Hage Geingob, the country could become a leader in the worldwide struggle to combat corruption.  On May 21 the President voluntarily disclosed his income and assets and those of his spouse.  The disclosure is an effort to prod Namibia’s public servants to follow his example, but if President Geingob’s precedent setting move prompts other heads of state, in Africa and elsewhere, to voluntarily disclose details of their personal finances, the country may long be remembered for its contribution to the international movement to curb corruption.

As important as the disclosure are the actions the President took in connection with it, actions other heads of state seeking to emulate him should take as well.  Continue reading →

Alert: Director General of Zambian Anti-Corruption Commission Under Pressure to Resign

Posted on by
2

Rosewin Mutina Wandi, Director General of the Zambian Anti-Corruption Commission, is under pressure to resign. Upon returning from an overseas trip last week she was greeted by a demand from the leader of a political party that she quit. Since then others have joined in, and threats are being made to organize countrywide demonstrations to have her removed from office. All this follows the Commission’s investigation of a Presidential Aide and an alleged leak to the media of a letter she wrote to the President about that investigation.

Fortunately, the Commission is standing by her. Its Board has issued a statement condemning attempts to intimidate her and supporting the professional way she has conducted herself as Director General. The statement makes it clear that the Board considers the attacks against her to be attacks against the Board and the Commission as an institution.

It is not clear yet why the sudden effort to remove the Director General. Is it her candor in acknowledging that outside pressure can sometimes be of value in fighting corruption? Or the Commission’s effectiveness in combating corruption? Continue reading →

The Use of Social Media to Combat Corruption: The “I Paid a Bribe” Web Site in India

Posted on by
1

The initial success of the Indian web site “I Paid a Bribe” fed hopes social media offered a way to curb petty corruption.  Launched in August 2010, the site invited citizens of Bangalore to file an online report if they were asked for a bribe, stating where the demander worked, the amount demanded, and whether they had paid or not.  The Bangalorese responded to this invitation with gusto.  One told of having to bribe a clerk 12,000 rupees, or about $200, to register a flat.  Another angrily recalled having to pay 700 rupees, around $10, to verify an address for a passport application: “When I asked him why should I pay for this, he ridiculed and threatened me that lot of details are missing and I won’t get my passport. The same happened to some of my friends.”   Within six months the site had received more than 5,000 reports of bribery and had become a media sensation, featured in stories the New York Times, the BBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous Indian papers.

But two years after launch, web site traffic had fallen dramatically and site sponsors had begun questioning its utility.  One told authors of a Harvard Business School case study, “Not too many people are now coming on to our site, and whatever limited activity that occurs there is linked with fresh media reports. I think there is a feeling of ennui . . . at the moment.”  Transparency International’s Dieter Zinnbauer reports traffic has declined at similar web sites in Pakistan, Columbia, and elsewhere and that some have even folded.

While disappointing, these failures are not surprising given the hurdles such sites face to achieve results. Continue reading →

Death by Corruption: The Nepal Earthquake

Posted on by
5

Although press reports attribute the growing death toll in Nepal to the April 25 earthquake, earthquakes were in fact the proximate cause of very few fatalities.  Nepalese did not die from shaking ground but, as news footage shows, because they were crushed by falling buildings.  The link between earthquakes, collapsing buildings and fatalities has been known for centuries if not millennia as has the solution: codes setting standards that ensure all structures can withstand the shock of a quake.  Since 1994, Nepal’s building code has contained several provisions requiring buildings to be earthquake proof, but as the New Zealand consultant who helped develop the ’94 code told Bloomberg News, drafting a quakeproof code is easy, “the hard thing is to get implementation.”

That is where corruption makes its appearance.  Builders can find many ways to bribe around building codes, and judging from New York Times correspondent Chris Buckley’s May 1 story, Nepalese builders found them all.  The collapsed buildings in Katmandu “exposed not only flaky concrete and brittle pillars, but also a system of government enforcement rotted by corruption and indifference. . . . Residents and building experts say the corruption is an open secret . . . .  The developers and landlords who slap up the buildings . . . know they will rarely be punished by officials, who are often happy to look the other way for a price.”

The earthquake – corruption – death nexus is a predictable part of post-quake reporting.  Stories similar to Buckley’s appeared following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2008 one in China’s Sichuan province, the 2001 quake in the Indian state of Gujarat, and the 1999 one in the Marmara region of Turkey.  But as with the Nepal story, they were based on anecdotes and impressions.  Is corruption really why so many buildings become coffins once a quake strikes?  And if it is, what can be done to curb it? Continue reading →

Anticorruption Enforcement Policy: Insights from the Deterrence Scholarship

Posted on by
4

Over the past three decades much empirical work has appeared on the effect of the criminal law on crime rates.  Usefully summarized in review articles by, among others, Professors Daniel Nagin of Carnegie Mellon University and Michael Tonry of the University of Minnesota (click here and here for examples), this research offers several insights for those engaged in the fight against corruption.

The first is that the criminal justice system can make a difference.  Save for acts committed in the heat of the moment, crime is a cost-benefit proposition.  Would-be criminals tote up the (usually) monetary gains of violating the law against the risks of being caught and punished and, when the benefits exceed the costs, commit an offense.  Thus policies that drive up the cost of crime by increasing the chances an offender will be caught, prosecuted, and appropriately punished reduce the crime rate.  Recent studies confirm that corruption crimes are no exception.  Putting more resources into to prosecuting corruption in the United States and ensuring corruption in the construction of roads is detected both reduced corruption.

But if the good news from the deterrence literature is that the criminal law can make a difference, the bad news is that that the difference is not easy to realize and that the logic of deterrence can lead policymakers astray.  One of the more striking findings is that what would seem to be the easiest way to enhance deterrence, sharp increases in the penalties for corruption crimes, may actually lead to more corruption.  Continue reading →

April 23 – 25 Conference: Global Cities — Joining Forces Against Corruption

Posted on by
Reply
As previously noted on this blog, the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity will be hosting an exciting conference at Columbia Law School next week, Global Cities: Joining Forces Against Corruption. Featuring Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera Espinosa, and Athens Mayor Georgios Kaminis the April 23-25 conference will bring together high-level integrity officials from 14 cities across six continents to discuss the challenges of fighting corruption and to share successful strategies and best practices. Other speakers  include a senior member of the Ukrainian parliament, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, and the Comptroller General of Peru. Followers of this blog may be interested to know that this writer will speak on a panel Saturday morning, called “Bridging Political Boundaries: Partnering with National and State Government.”
The conference is free and open to the public and eligible for CLE credit for New York lawyers. A copy of the agenda, and a registration link, are available here. I hope to see some of you there!

The OECD Report on Corruption in Sectors: Will it Hurt the Brand?

Posted on by
3

Consequences of Corruption at the Sector Level and Implications for Economic Growth and Development is the OECD’s latest report on corruption. Released March 25, it was written at the request of G-20 governments and follows an earlier one the organization did for the G-20’s September 2013 meeting.  Whereas that report examined the impact of corruption on rates of economic growth and levels of development, this one adopts a micro perspective, analyzing the effect of corruption and suggesting ways to fight it for four sectors of national economies: i) extractive industries, ii) utilities and infrastructure, iii) health, and iv) education. Among its more striking conclusions:

  • ”independent, competent and better regulatory and law enforcement systems” are critical for combating corruption;
  • “transparency should be an integral component of all anti-corruption strategies;” and
  • “anti-corruption measures must . . . be targeted and tailored.”

Additional examples of focused, cutting edge policy recommendations can be found by clicking “Continue reading.” Continue reading →

Disclosure Rules and Political Corruption: The Lessons of the Menendez Case

Posted on by
5

On April 1, 2015, the United States Department of Justice issued a 68 page indictment charging U.S. Senator Robert Menendez and Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist, with 22 separate violations of American federal criminal law arising from their long running relationship.  The Department alleges that Dr. Melgen provided Senator Menendez “domestic and international flights on private jets, first-class domestic airfare, use of a Caribbean villa, access to an exclusive Dominican resort, a stay at a luxury hotel in Paris, expensive meals, golf outings, and tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to a legal defense fund.” In return the Department claims that Senator Menendez used his position as a member of the U.S. Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests.

If both Dr. Melgen and Senator Menendez stand by their initial responses to the indictment, prosecutors will find it very hard to prove that Melgen bribed Menendez.  The doctor and the Senator are not disputing the facts; what they say is that they are friends and what each did for the other was motivated by friendship.  To overcome this “gifts from a friend” defense, prosecutors must prove that what was in the minds of the two men when the gifts passed was not friendship but corruption.  Showing what was in a defendant’s mind is always difficult and is even more difficult when the defendant offers a plausible, benign alternative. So unless the Department intends to call a mind reader as a witness, proving the 21 charges of bribery or acts relating to bribery in the indictment will be a challenge.

That’s what makes the 22nd charge so important.

Continue reading →

Fighting Corruption:  Lessons from Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Posted on by
1

Over the last few years a number of studies have appeared analyzing the lessons learned from the first decade of anticorruption policies.  The most recent is  Why Corruption Matters: Understanding Causes, Effects and How to Address Them reviewed March 18 on this blog.  Others are: the U4 Anticorruption Resource Center’s Mapping Evidence Gaps in Anticorruption; Kennedy School Professor Rema Hanna and colleagues’ The Effectiveness of Anticorruption Policy: What has Worked, What Hasn’t, and What We Know; The Norwegian Aid Agency’s Joint Evaluation of Support to Anticorruption Efforts, 2002 – 2009; Contextual Choices in Fighting Corruption: Lessons Learned by Hertie School Professor Alina Mungiu-Pipidi and associates; the report by GRECO, or the Group of States against Corruption, Lessons Learnt from the Three Evaluation Rounds (2000 – 2010): Thematic Articles; and the analysis by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, A Review of World Bank Support for Accountability Institutions in the Context of Governance and Anticorruption. While each merits study, I thought it useful to highlight some of the important findings of each in a series of posts over the coming weeks.

Today’s entry summarizes a valuable contribution to this “lessons learned” literature by the Anticorruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a regional outreach program of the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery whose members include the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and OECD member states.  As part of the network’s activities eight countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan – volunteered to have their anticorruption policies judged by their peers against the standards in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, other international conventions, and international best practice.  Anticorruption Reforms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Progress and Challenges, 2009 -2013 sums up the lessons from the latest round of review of these eight countries efforts to combat corruption. Continue reading →

Is Going Local the Answer? OxFam America’s New Report: “To Fight Corruption, Localize Aid”

Posted on by
15

In a new report on U.S. foreign assistance, To Fight Corruption, Localize Aid, OxFam America urges radical changes in the way the United States helps developing nations combat corruption.  Providing funds to strengthen anticorruption agencies, write new laws, and other traditional “top-down, donor-driven methods of fighting corruption” have had little impact on corruption the American member of the international Oxfam confederation asserts.  U.S. aid should thus be redirected to “locally driven approaches” to fighting corruption.  By this the report means U.S. assistance would go directly to “local change agents” so that they could “tackle institutional challenges, including corruption, in their towns, cities, and countries.”

The rhetoric of a community-based, “bottom up” approach to fighting corruption has an appealing ring, and the report showcases successful efforts to combat corruption at the local level in Guatemala, Liberia, and the Philippines to support its claims.  But a closer reading of these stories, and of the report itself, shows that the rhetoric outstrips the reality.

Continue reading →