Author Archives: Christoph Nedopil

About Christoph Nedopil

Dr. Christoph Nedopil is currently at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on issues related to corporate governance and corporate integrity for the past 9 years.

“Draining the Swamp” – How President Trump is making true on his promise

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“Drain the swamp” was one of Donald Trump’s battle cries in the election. Many writers on this and many other blogs have expressed deep skepticism that Trump has any interest in fighting corruption, and assert to the contrary that Trump seems poised to preside over one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history. But that’s not how Trump’s core supporters see things. In their view, Trump is making good on his promise and weeding out the deeply connected interests of US government officials, businesses, media, and civil society—what they view as the “corruption” of U.S. institutions. While most readers of this blog probably find that perspective baffling, it is important for all of us to understand how this constituency thinks about the problem of “corruption” and interprets the reporting on President Trump’s administration in light of that perception.

When Trump’s core supporters think about “corruption” in the U.S.—when they think about the “swamp” that Trump promised to drain—they focus on an alleged cabal of elitist, neoconservative, and liberal interests that are fighting a “war against Trump,” the democratically elected President. The term that is increasingly used in these circles to describe the “swamp” is “Deep State.” The Deep State is, according to Breitbart news, “jargon for the semi-hidden army of bureaucrats, officials, retired officials, legislators, contractors and media people who support and defend established government policies.” (The Wikipedia article on Deep State was only published on Jan 7, 2016, showing the novelty and fast rise of this term). In this worldview, the Deep State was, for example, responsible for the dismissal of national security advisor Michael Flynn. Blame for the dismissal, on this account, lies not with the actions of Michael Flynn, but with the “traitors” in government, collaborating with the corrupt mainstream media (“MSM”)—a view shared by the President himself in a tweet on Feb 15, 2016: “The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by “intelligence” like candy. Very un-American!” Indeed, the view that the MSM is a major colluder in the corruption that protects the powerful and wealthy is another important feature of the worldview that seems widely shared by Trump’s ardent supporters. The list of corrupt traitors to the American people who are part of this “Deep State” includes the Democratic Party, various Republicans who criticize Trump (such as Bill Kristol, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and after the unsuccessful attempt to repeal Obamacare Paul Ryan), and the judiciary (see here and here).

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Do People Care More About Corruption Than They Used To? Evidence from the US and Germany

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Sometimes it feels like corruption has become the topic of the year: We’ve heard repeatedly that it is (the perception of) corrupt elites that has fueled the rise of populists, nationalists, and new socialist parties and politicians. The most prominently of these, though not the only one, is Donald Trump, who promised in his campaign to take back power from the corrupt elites (see here and here).

But has the topic of corruption actually become increasingly prominent in popular and media discourse over the last two years? To investigate this question, I did a simple search on the Factiva database within the eight most widely-circulated American newspapers (USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and Newsday) for the term “corruption.” I did a similar search for Germany, using the term “Korruption” and the eight most widely-circulated German newspapers (BILD, BILD am Sonntag, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Rheinische Post, Welt am Sonntag and Rheinische Post). Surprisingly (at least to me), over the last two years there was no growth in U.S. newspaper reporting on corruption. As the following graph shows, reporting on corruption in the U.S. has been rather stable over this period, with between 500 and 750 articles a month. A slightly different picture emerges for Germany, where newspaper reports on corruption, which were substantially less frequent than in the U.S. to begin with, have actually declined over the past two years. (A side note, though perhaps an interesting one: The most reported corruption topic in both countries, with about 2.5 times more stories than the next-most-mentioned topic, was FIFA.): Continue reading →

The Crucial Role of Corporate Boards in Ensuring Corporate Integrity

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Volkswagen’s diesel emissions cheat has cost the company dearly. Last October, Volkswagen reached a US$16.5 billion dollar settlement with the US government, and the value of Volkswagen’s stock today is worth about 50% of what it was before the scandal – a US$60 billion drop in the company’s valuation. Criminal charges against several senior managers, including chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, are still pending. Countless customers are furious, while many employees fear for their jobs as Volkswagen scrambles to cut its costs. (Some background on the scandal, as well as a regularly updated timeline, can be found here.)

What started as a “simple cheat” became a slippery slope for the whole company. Volkswagen failed to create a culture of corporate integrity; the institutional checks and balances that are supposed to prevent something like this from happening were purposefully or ignorantly subverted, and the company created all the wrong incentives. As Alison Taylor has argued on this blog, these are the perfect ingredients for a corrupt corporate culture.

Who to blame for this mess (and, similarly, many other corporate messes)? Just as “a fish rots from the head down,” a company’s board of directors must take responsibility for creating or allowing a toxic corporate culture that permits cheating and other unethical and illegal behavior. Continue reading →

The Road Ahead in Anti-Money-Laundering (AML): Can Blockchain Technology Turn the Tide?

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One of the most exciting developments in financial and information technology in the past decade is the emergence of so-called blockchain technology. A blockchain is a database of information distributed over a network of computers rather than located on a single or multiple servers. The first and most famous practical application of blockchain technology is the electronic currency Bitcoin. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies using blockchain technologies offer users the equivalent of anonymous cash transactions, and have been linked to illicit transactions in drugs, weapons, and prostitution as they. It is therefore no wonder then that blockchain technology is sometimes viewed as a problem, or at least a challenge, for those interested in fighting financial crime and corruption.

But blockchain technologies have other uses, many of which could in fact aid in the fight against these crimes. In an earlier post on this blog, Jeanne Jeong discussed how blockchain technology could be used managing land records. Another use for blockchain that has occasionally been mentioned (see here and here), but not yet sufficiently pursued, is anti-money-laundering (AML). Currently, banks spend about US$10 billion per year on AML measures, yet money laundering continues to take place on a vast scale. The goal of laundering money is to “wash” illegally obtained money (e.g. through corruption) into “clean” money, making the origins of the money untraceable. Blockchain technologies have five features that could make AML efforts both more effective and less costly:

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