Category Archives: Commentary

A Role for the Courts in Limiting Philippine Political Dynasties

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In an earlier post I wrote about Philippine political dynasties, I argued for the adoption of an anti-dynasty law that would bring into effect Article II, Section 26 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which states that “[t]he State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” Since the Philippines gained its independence, political dynasties have dominated national and local government—70% of the last Congress, for example, belonged to a political dynasty. Because these families have maintained an effective oligarchy over the country for decades, they can easily abuse their discretion and commit corrupt acts without consequence.

While the Framers of the 1987 Constitution recognized the danger these elite families posed to fair governance and their propensity to engage in corruption, the Supreme Court has found that the constitutional ban on dynasties is not a self-executing provision. In May 2014, for the first time in history, an anti-dynasty bill made it out of committee and was sponsored before the House plenary. In his final State of the Nation Address, President Noynoy Aquino urged Congress to finally pass an anti-dynasty law. Politicians in Congress, however, have since blocked efforts to pass such a law. By October 2015, the Senate President publicly announced that no anti-dynasty law would be approved before the May 2016 election. Despite my hope that the recent bill would result in a new law at last, this outcome is not surprising. Political dynasties have controlled the majority of Congress for decades, and numerous politicians seeking office in this year’s election would have been prohibited from running if the law had passed.

Now the results of the May election are in, it looks as though Congress will continue to be dominated by dynastic politicians. President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s stance on political dynasties is currently unclear, although he himself belongs to a political dynasty. Given this, legislative action may simply be out of reach for the time being. One interesting question is whether the courts could intervene to bring the constitutional ban into effect. Doing so would be a radical departure from past practice, and would require rethinking certain core judicial doctrines, but might be nonetheless be legitimate under the circumstances. Continue reading →

TNI’s Gold Mine: Corruption and Military-Owned Businesses in Indonesia

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The Grasberg Mine, located close to the highest mountain in West Papua, Indonesia, is the world’s largest gold mine and third-largest copper mine. The mine, owned by the corporation Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, has been the site of strings of grave human rights abuses, linked to Indonesia’s own National Armed Forces (Tentara National Indonesia/TNI). TNI’s presence in the territory is ostensibly to protect the mine, and Freeport’s Indonesian subsidiary acknowledges having made payments of as much as US$4.7 million in 2001 and US$5.6 million in 2002 for such government-provided security. A report by Global Witness, however, revealed numerous other payments ranging from US$200 to US$60,000 that Freeport Indonesia allegedly made to individual military officers.

The TNI’s sale of security services to companies like Freeport is only one of the many business ventures conducted by the TNI and its officers. As Human Rights Watch has reported, the Indonesian military has been supplementing its income through both its formally established companies, and through informal and often illicit businesses such as black market dealing. Moreover, the military’s business activities (both lawful and unlawful) are largely shielded from public scrutiny: budgeting for military purposes is generally kept secret, and TNI members generally refuse to answer questions about institutional spending.

Military-owned business in Indonesia are problematic, not only because this private-sector activity impedes military professionalism and distorts the function of the military, but also because it also contributes to crime, human rights abuses, and especially corruption. This problem is greatly compounded by the fact that TNI officers generally enjoy immunity from corruption charges brought by civilian institutions. In fact, the Transparency International’s Defense and Security Program has deemed Indonesia one of the countries most prone to corruption in its defense and security institutions. It is therefore appalling that this issue has not been addressed more seriously by the Indonesian government. Although a 2004 law mandated the transfer of control over TNI businesses to the civilian government within five years, the law did not clearly specify which types of business activities were covered, and this legal loophole enabled the TNI to preserve many of its moneymaking ventures, including TNI’s infamous security services—to say nothing of already-illegal criminal enterprises and illicit corporations. Moreover, despite the five-year timetable in the law, the government has been notably reluctant to enforce the transfer of ownership, making repeated excuses alluding vaguely to the need for the TNI to compensate for the lack of budgeting for security purposes. As a result, despite some efforts to reform the way the TNI is allowed to handle its businesses, military-owned businesses in Indonesia continues to flourish, with the Indonesian people of Indonesia having to pay the price.

The government’s weak response towards the military’s non-compliance with the 2004 law is merely one of the many indicators of how impervious the TNI’s power and seeming impunity. There are factors that contribute to this impunity, along with the corresponding corruption and abuse of power in the operations of military-owned businesses: Continue reading →

Fraud and Corruption Risks in Procurement: A Thumbnail Sketch

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Public procurement is the government activity perhaps most vulnerable to fraud and corruption.  Not only are the sums involved enormous, $9.5 trillion a year by one estimate, but at every point in the process decision-makers enjoy great discretion.  They must first decide if government needs to buy a good or service.  If the decision is to make a purchase, government personnel must determine how government should make it: through a sole source contract or by competitive bid.  If they choose the former, they must decide from whom to buy; if the decision is to use competitive bidding, decisions about where to advertise the request, for how long, what personnel should select the winning bidder, and what criteria they should use are also required.

Because there are so many places where fraud and corruption can creep into the process, it is hardly surprising that the internet is brimming with books, articles, and brochures of all sorts on how to combat fraud and corruption at each stage in the procurement cycle, and indeed a Google search for material on “government procurement corruption” returns 15 million documents in less than half a second.  This wealth of material is itself part of the problem.  Those tasked to participate in a procurement who want a summary of what to watch for may be so overwhelmed by what’s available that they give up their search and hope their “gut” or a better trained colleague will pick up any irregularity.

For those looking for a short description of the areas where fraud and corruption is most likely to seep into the procurement cycle, a place to begin a search for more detailed material on a particular point, I offer a thumbnail sketch of procurement risks.  I thank colleagues at the Millennium Challenge Corporation and elsewhere who have helped in compiling and simplifying the list.  Suggestions for areas missed — or better (but still succinct!) ways to express the risks — warmly welcomed.   Continue reading →

What Might U.S. Officials Think of Demands that the U.S. Transfer FCPA Settlement Proceeds to Demand-Side Governments? An Imaginary Rant

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As the United States continues to settle Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) cases with corporate defendants for large sums, the issue of whether the U.S. and other “supply-side” enforcers should transfer a portion of these settlement proceeds to the countries where the bribery took place has continued to attract attention and discussion. (This question is often framed as whether the U.S. should “return” some of these settlement proceeds to the “victim countries,” but that formulation is highly misleading, both because criminal fines were never the property of another government, and so cannot be “returned,” and because in many cases referring to these countries as “victims” is problematic, to put it mildly. So I’ll refer to this as “transferring settlement proceeds to demand-side countries.”) The push for transferring settlement proceeds to demand-side countries has gotten a bit more traction over the past year, and has become something of a talking point for certain demand-side governments, especially those in Africa, along with supporting NGOs. So, for example, a Nigeria-sponsored resolution at last year’s UN Convention Against Corruption Conference of States Parties (Resolution 6/2) called for “urgent attention” to the (utterly bogus and misleading) statistic that although US$6.2 billion has been recovered through settlements in foreign bribery cases, only 3% of this amount “has been returned to States whose officials were bribed and where corrupt transactions took place, which is a key aim of chapter V of the contention,” and further called on states that use settlements to conclude foreign bribery cases to “give due consideration to the involvement of the jurisdictions … where foreign officials were bribed.” (The original proposed language was far stronger, “noting with concern the prevailing narrow interpretation of the terms ‘proceeds of crime’ in settlements … that excludes … fines in order to avoid such proceeds from being returned to States and, by so doing, using settlements to create an artificial category of victims of corruption, thereby reducing the potency of chapter V of the Convention.”) One sees this push in several of the country statements coming out of last month’s London Anticorruption Summit, especially those of Nigeria and Tanzania.

Unsurprisingly, the United States has resisted these calls. Generally, U.S. officials have done so (at least in public) tactfully and diplomatically, emphasizing the U.S. government’s commitment to helping the victims of cooperation, its willingness to work with other countries to cooperate in ongoing investigations and improve the mutual legal assistance process, etc. But I’m beginning to sense a growing undercurrent of frustration on the U.S. side, as an increasing number of demand-side countries and NGOs are making the call for transfer of settlement proceeds to demand-side governments (which, again, they often characterize as “returning assets to victim countries”) a central theme of their presentations and diplomatic efforts. (And perhaps, I should acknowledge, some of the frustration I’m sensing is a reflection of my own skepticism – see here, here, and here.) Now, when I say I sense growing frustration or irritation on the U.S. side, I should be clear that I’m speculating. Though I’ve met a few officials from the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, and Treasury who work on corruption issues, I’m certainly no insider, and nothing in the rest of this post should be interpreted is reflecting any actual conversations or statements from current or former U.S. government officials, because it doesn’t. Nor should this be taken as fully reflecting my own views, even though part of what I’m going to write below is generated by introspection.

With those caveats, I’d like to try to imagine what’s going on in the heads of U.S. government officials as they smile politely while listening to the sorts of criticisms I noted above, and when they express, in measured language, their reservations about the proposals that the U.S. transfer FCPA settlement proceeds to demand-side countries. Just for fun, and to be a bit provocative, I’ll present this as a kind of unhinged rant – the sort of thing I imagine that a hypothetical U.S. official’s id might be screaming internally, behind the polite smiles and diplomatic language imposed by her superego. The imaginary rant, in response to demands that the U.S. transfer FCPA settlement proceeds to demand-side countries, might run something like this: Continue reading →

Due Process and its Discontents: Nigeria’s Case Against Sambo Dasuki Encounters an Unwelcome (but Necessary) Hurdle

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Just over a year ago, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari took office. He had run on a platform of anticorruption and military reform and, while I wanted to be hopeful, I expressed measured skepticism that he would be able to make substantial headway on either issue. For all he has received his fair share of criticism over the past year, President Buhari has made considerable efforts to tackle corruption, including graft in the military. In addition to advancing somewhat controversial legal reforms aimed at whistleblower protection and anti-money laundering, among other things, the Buhari administration has stepped up prosecution of high-level officials for corruption-related crimes.

The most prominent case is that of Colonel Mohammed Sambo Dasuki, who served as former President Goodluck Jonathan’s National Security Adviser from 2012 to 2015. Following an investigation into arms procurement under the Jonathan administration, authorities arrested Dasuki in late 2015 and indicted him on numerous counts of fraud and money laundering. The initial investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), one of Nigeria’s anticorruption units, uncovered evidence that Dasuki had orchestrated a fraudulent $2 billion arms deal and had engaged in other criminally corrupt activity. The charging documents accuse Dasuki of funneling state funds to politicians of the former ruling party, real estate developers, consultants, and religious leaders. The money had been intended to purchase helicopters and military planes for the fight against Boko Haram, the terrorist group responsible for the death of thousands and the displacement of millions in northern Nigeria. The purported criminal conduct involved high-profile co-conspirators, including former Minister of Finance Bashir Yuguda and former governor of Sokoto State Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa. If the alleged facts are true, Dasuki and his accomplices are guilty of heinous crimes.

Given the severity – and plausibility – of the purported misconduct, I was not shocked to see that the case had reached the ECOWAS Court of Justice – a regional body with jurisdiction over human rights abuses committed by Member States. I was shocked to see that Dasuki was the complainant, and that the Court of Justice had issued a preliminary ruling in his favor. Upon taking a step back, though, I realized that the Court of Justice ruling is not outrageous; in fact, it has sent a critically important message to the Nigerian government that respecting the rule of law is just as important as convicting corrupt officials.

Continue reading →

Chill Out: Fine-Tuning Anticorruption Initiatives to Decrease Their Chilling Effect

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Who is “harmed” by aggressive anticorruption crackdowns? The most obvious answer is corrupt bureaucrats, shady contractors, and those who benefit from illicit flows of money. And while there are concerns about political bias and other forms of discrimination in the selection of targets, in general most of us rightly shed few tears for corrupt public officials and those who benefit from their illicit acts. But aggressive anticorruption crackdowns may have an important indirect cost: they may have a chilling effect on legitimate, socially beneficial behavior, such as public and private investment in economically productive activities. Although chilling effects are often discussed in other areas, such as with First Amendment rights in the United States, there is little discussion of it in the anticorruption context. That should change.

For example, in Indonesia, recent efforts to crack down on corruption appear to have stunted simultaneous measures to grow the economy through fiscal stimulus. As this Reuters article relates, “Indonesian bureaucrats are holding off spending billions of dollars on everything from schools and clinics to garbage trucks and parking meters, fearful that any major expenditure could come under the scanner of fervent anti-corruption fighters.” Nor is Indonesia the only example. In April 2014, Bank of America estimated that China’s corruption crackdown would cost the Chinese economy approximately $100 billion that year. One can challenge that estimate (as Matthew has discussed with respect to other figures used in reports on the cost of China’s anticorruption drive), but the more general notion that aggressive anticorruption enforcement can have a chilling effect on both public and private investment, which in turn can have negative macroeconomic impacts, is harder to rebut.

Taking this chilling effect seriously does not imply the view that corruption is an “efficient grease” or otherwise economically beneficial. The point, rather, is that although corruption is bad, aggressive measures to punish corruption may deter not only corrupt activities (which we want to deter) but also legitimate activities that might entail corruption risks, or be misconstrued as corruption. So, if we think that corruption is bad but that anticorruption enforcement might have an undesirable chilling effect, what should we do? Continue reading →

Contract Administration: A Step-Child of Anticorruption Policy?

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It is hard to imagine a more prosaic-sounding government job title than “contract administration.”  It is equally hard to imagine one more neglected, both by governments and the anticorruption community.  The House of Commons reports that British civil servants consider contract administration “mechanical and unimportant,” and with few exceptions those concerned with controlling corruption have paid the issue little attention.

But for those seeking to curb government corruption, contract administration is anything but prosaic or unimportant.  Once a firm has been awarded a contract to furnish goods, provide services, or build a building there are many ways it can cheat government: by delivering substandard goods, padding invoices or performing unneeded extra work to name but a few.  Zambia’s Auditor General found road construction companies had failed to provide the required cement, concrete, and gravel in all 18 roads projects it audited, meaning the roads will not last as long or carry as much traffic as the government contracted for. An IT firm New York City hired to computerize the city’s payroll system bilked it out of more than $600 million through inflated invoices and phantom extra work.  In India a medical equipment manufacturer supplied neonatal equipment that exposed babies and hospital staff to electrical shocks.

The bad news is that these are just a few examples of the ways government can be cheated during the execution of a public contract.  The good news is there are handful of steps governments can take to reduce if not eliminate corruption during contract performance.  They are: Continue reading →

Should There Be a Public Registry of Politically Exposed Persons?

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Under the “Know Your Customer”-oriented regulatory regime endorsed by organizations like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), financial institutions and similar entities must apply heightened scrutiny to so-called “politically-exposed persons” (PEPs), as well as their family members and close associates. FATF defines PEPs as individuals who are or have been entrusted with prominent public positions (such as heads of state or government, senior politicians, senior government, judicial, or military officials, senior executives of state-owned companies, and important political party officials), as well as their family members and close associates. (For simplicity, here I’ll use the term PEP to include both the PEPs themselves, and their family members and close associates, as the FATF recommendations make clear that the latter should be covered by the same heightened due diligence rules.) The rationale behind FATF’s recommendation of more stringent due diligence for PEPs is the idea that PEPs are higher-risk customers, because they have more opportunities than ordinary citizens to acquire assets through unlawful means like embezzlement and bribe-taking. Thus, FATF’s Recommendation 12 (which many countries have adopted) advises that countries should require financial institutions to employ additional due diligence measures for foreign PEPs in order to establish the source of the PEP’s assets, and to conduct enhanced ongoing monitoring of the business relationship with the PEP.

That all seems like a good idea. But how, exactly, is a bank supposed to determine whether a prospective client is a PEP? Here, the FATF recommendations say only that financial institutions should “have appropriate risk-management systems to determine” whether a prospective customer is a foreign PEP. In practice, financial institutions rely on a relatively small number of private providers—like World Check (Thompson Reuters), World Compliance (Lexis-Nexis), and a handful of others—to screen prospective clients to see if they are in a database (generated and maintained by the private service providers) of known PEPs. Presumably (though I haven’t been able to figure out whether this is true) financial regulators in countries that have adopted the FATF recommendations on PEP screening will treat a bank’s use of one of these reputable services as satisfying the bank’s responsibility to take reasonable measures to determine whether a client is a PEP, even if in fact the service failed to accurately identify a given customer as a foreign PEP—though the bank might still be on the hook for other legal violations in connection with the PEP’s account.

So, keeping track of who’s a PEP has been entrusted to the private market. There is no “official” PEP list maintained by any national government or inter-governmental organization like FATF, nor does any government (to the best of my knowledge) directly monitor or regulate the private providers like World Check and World Compliance to ensure their PEP lists are accurate and up to date. Is this a problem? Should we be happy leaving PEP screening entirely to the private market, or should there be greater government and/or civil society involvement in generating, maintaining, and revising PEP lists?

This issue came up last month at the “Tackling Corruption Together” conference held the day before the London Anticorruption Summit. David Lewis, the Executive Secretary of FATF, gave a presentation that emphasized (among other things) the importance of due diligence on PEPs. During the Q&A someone from the G20 Research Group (whose name I didn’t catch) asked Mr. Lewis about whether there was the need (and political will) to create public PEP registries, noting both the importance of accurate PEP lists, as well as the inefficiency of individual banks paying private services for screening individual names one at a time. Mr. Lewis replied, quite forcefully, that the creation of public PEP registries would be a “terrible idea.” He knows far more about this issue than I do, and I don’t know nearly enough to come out in favor of public PEP registries, but I have to say, I didn’t really find Mr. Lewis’s reasoning all that persuasive. Continue reading →

To Fight Corruption, the Green Climate Fund Should Improve the Anticorruption Mechanisms in its Accreditation Process

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The Green Climate Fund (GCF), which the UN created in 2010, seeks to marshal pledges of $100 billion per year by 2020 from wealthy nations (which have been disproportionately and primarily responsible for the world’s carbon emissions), as well as other private and public sources, to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation projects in developing nations, which bear the greater share of adverse effects from those emissions. Last March, the United States delivered $500 million to the GCF, the first installment of the $3 billion pledge the United States made as part of the COP 21 UN Climate Summit last December. Climate and development advocates hope that the GCF will support development that is both “low-emission” and “climate-resilient,” helping countries limit greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change. The GCF operates principally through so-called “accredited entities”—private and public sector subnational, national, regional, and international entities, which will implement climate change programs using GCF funds. These entities are selected through an accreditation process (hence the name), which assesses their ability to manage resources against the GCF’s fiduciary principles, environmental and social safeguards, and gender policy. Specific projects are assessed against investment criteria, including impact potential, sustainable development potential, responsiveness to recipients’ needs, promotion of country ownership, and efficiency.

As with many humanitarian or development aid efforts, the GCF is not without corruption risks. Recognizing this, the GCF Board approved an Initial Monitoring & Accountability Framework for the accredited entities that manage and implement GCF projects. Yet the GCF should do more to ensure that its basic accreditation mechanisms themselves rigorously evaluate entities for their capacities not only to disburse climate funds but also to monitor and address corruption. This up front assessment would complement efforts to ensure that entities, once accredited, remain faithful to the Fund’s fiduciary principles. The following aspects of the GCF accreditation process raise potential corruption risks, and the GCF should take steps to address them: Continue reading →

Mandatory Prison Corruption Report Looks for a Cure in Brazil

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In a recent provisional measure (currently only in Spanish), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Brazilian government to take a variety of steps to address human rights violations at the notorious Curado prison complex. Such violations are pervasive: Shockingly, the Curado guards, in exchange for kickbacks or other illicit benefits, essentially handed over control of the prison (and other prisoners) to certain inmates (often the most violent or feared), turned a blind eye to or participated in the complex’s massive drugs and weapons trade, and repeatedly failed to stop prison breaks and riots.

Notably, among the steps in the Court’s order is a demand that the government investigate and report back to the Court on corruption, particularly on weapons and drugs trafficking, among officials at the prison. The Court—like its companion institution, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which investigates and reports to the Court—is not directly tasked with addressing corruption. However, its mandate includes protecting the right to humane treatment. At Curado, the prison guards, as agents of Brazil, affirmatively jeopardized the safety of prisoners with their corruption, and the Brazilian government failed to protect prisoners from abuses stemming from those actions. The Court’s measure, drawing from the Commission’s recommendations, emphasizes that the widespread corruption of the guards and other prison officials was one of the factors that allowed the inhumane conditions in the prison to continue.

The Court’s ruling seems to be one of the first times an international judicial body has ordered a country to undertake a review of corruption within its borders and then be held directly accountable to that international body. Thus, beyond its immediate significance to the Curado situation, the Court’s decision is a milestone in more directly recognizing and addressing corruption as a proximate cause of human rights violations. While this recognition will not by itself resolve the dire situation at Curado, it is an important step forward, and is notable for several reasons:

Continue reading →