Category Archives: Commentary

Fighting Procurement Corruption: the Essential Role of Bid Challenge Systems

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Ensuring firms that loose the competition for a government contract can challenge the result is a critical part of the fight against corruption in public procurement.  A losing bidder will have lost the chance to make a profit and will have invested time and money in preparing its bid.  It thus has not only a strong motive for contesting a decision it believes tainted by corruption but the expertise to do so.  Bid challenge systems complement procurement oversight by civil society.  Indeed, they may even be a more powerful tool.  Whereas civil society monitoring typically relies on public-spirited volunteers unfamiliar with the technical aspects of the procurement, bid challenge systems harness firms’ self-interest and technical knowledge in service of ferreting out procurement corruption.

Transparency International’s 2014 volume on combating procurement corruption and the OECD’s 2016 procurement integrity handbook both note the importance of bid challenge systems but offer little guidance on what makes for an effective system.  Here are five questions anticorruption advocates can ask to assess the effectiveness of their nation’s bid challenge system: Continue reading →

What Might We Learn from the (Predicted) Walmart Settlement?

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My post two weeks ago discussed reports that Walmart is on the verge of reaching a settlement with the U.S. government regarding allegations that several of Walmart’s foreign subsidiaries violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and that the total penalties that Walmart would pay would be around $300 million. That may sound like a big number, but it’s much smaller than the $1 billion penalty some commentators predicted when the investigation got under way, and only half of the $600 million the U.S. government was reportedly demanding as recently as last October.

As I write this, a settlement still hasn’t been formally announced, though it’s possible it will have been by the time this post is published. (I’m traveling this week, so I wrote this post a several days in advance and wasn’t able to update it to reflect any developments that may have occurred in the last 72 hours or so.) But let’s assume for the moment that the media reports are accurate, and that sometime this year – approximately six years after Walmart first disclosed to the SEC and DOJ that it might have an FCPA problem – the case settles for around $300 million. What would we learn from that?

Or perhaps I should frame the question more starkly, at the risk of oversimplification:

  • There are a bunch of folks out there (the “FCPA Reform” crowd) who argue that the U.S. government’s approach to FCPA enforcement is out of control, with the government imposing enormous and unjustified costs on companies for relatively minor and/or unproven infractions. The government can do this, the argument goes, because the government has corporations over a barrel: most corporations can’t risk being indicted for FCPA violations, and so (the FCPA Reform crowd asserts) the government can and does extract exorbitant settlements with little regard to whether the government’s legal theories have an adequate basis in law and fact.
  • Then there are a bunch of folks (lat’s call them the “FCPA, A-OK” crowd) who think that the aforementioned concerns are grossly exaggerated, and that in fact the U.S. government’s FCPA enforcement posture is reasonable, grounded in a plausible view of the law, and that allegations of overreaching don’t withstand critical scrutiny. (And then of course there are those who think that the government isn’t nearly aggressive enough in enforcing the FCPA, and that in fact both the resources devoted to investigation and enforcement, as well as the penalties, should be increased dramatically.)

If the Walmart settlement resembles what the most recent media reports predict, I think that both the “FCPA Reform” crowd and the “FCPA, A-OK” crowd can and will find material to support their positions. Continue reading →

The Toll Corruption Takes on Afghan Security Force Capacity

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Corruption in Afghanistan and its role in the ongoing instability of the country has been discussed on this blog before (see, for example, here, here, and here), but for the most part in fairly general, strategic-level terms. In this post, I’m going to zoom in and explain in greater detail two particularly insidious types of corruption that plague the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF): 1) the problem of “ghost” soldiers, and 2) the pilfering of fuel, weapons, and other supplies intended for security force personnel. These forms of corruption leave Afghan security forces hollow and ill-equipped to accomplish the missions assigned to them. As long as pervasive corruption continues to undermine force capacity, readiness, and morale, the prospect of Afghan government forces gaining the upper hand on the Taliban and other insurgents remains slim.

“Ghost soldiers” are fictitious troops added to personnel rosters by corrupt officials who then collect the extra pay allocated for these (in some cases deceased, in some cases no longer active, and in some cases totally made-up) soldiers. To give a sense of the scale of the problem, consider the 215th Corps of the Afghan National Army. In 2015, local officials suggested that up to 40 percent of names on the books did not correspond to actively-serving soldiers. For the 215th Corps, with an authorized strength of 18,000, that would mean fewer than 11,000 soldiers were actually available to fight. Earlier this year, US Army Major General Richard Kaiser, commander of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CTSC-A), told the Wall Street Journal that the US had removed from the Afghan military payrolls more than 30,000 suspected ghost soldiers. That group of names amounted to over one-sixth of the Afghan army, significantly less than 40 percent but nevertheless a staggering figure. For reference, 30,000 is the same number of additional US troops President Obama sent to Afghanistan in December 2009 in a surge deemed necessary to turn the tide in the conflict.

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If Voters Hate Corruption, Why Do Elected Politicians Resist Anticorruption Reform? Lessons from South Dakota

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If U.S. voters dislike corruption so much, why don’t U.S. politicians see anticorruption as a winning issue—or at the very least feel more pressure to act aggressively against the corruption that voters claim to hate? This question, which has been explored on this blog before, is interesting to consider in the context of recent developments in South Dakota. South Dakota is considered to be one of the most corrupt states in the U.S., and in recent years has suffered through several major public corruption scandals, including massive misappropriations after the state privatized its EB-5 visa program, and the theft of over a million dollars earmarked for scholastic grants for the state’s American Indian population. In the past, although some Democratic state representatives had introduced bills to crack down on corruption, these measures failed in largely party-line votes in South Dakota’s Republican-dominated state legislature. Yet South Dakota, like many U.S. states, has a ballot initiative process that empowers voters to approve new laws by popular referendum. Last November, South Dakota voters used this process to approve Initiated Measure 22 (IM-22), also known as the “South Dakota Anti-Corruption Act.” While IM-22, despite its title, is not a direct anticorruption bill—its focus was on reforming campaign finance and lobbying—the message from the South Dakota voters was clear: they saw corruption as a problem and wanted to take measures to combat it.

Yet after the referendum passed, Republican lawmakers immediately took steps to halt the new rule. Within two weeks, 25 Republican South Dakota lawmakers brought suit against the state, arguing that the ethics commission created by the referendum violated the state’s constitution, and they succeeded in getting a temporary injunction against the new rules. Ultimately, the South Dakota State Senate struck down the law, using a provision of state law that allows the state legislature that repeals a referendum. Thus elected stood in direct opposition to an attempt to combat corruption enacted through a popular democratic initiative. Moreover, events in South Dakota reveal that some of the more conventional explanations that have been offered—including by previous analyses on this blog—are at best incomplete.

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Jared Kushner May Have Violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

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Recent media reports – which would be even more sensational if we weren’t getting so desensitized to Trump-related scandals – indicate that prior to Trump’s inauguration, his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner had private meetings with Russian government officials, including both Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russian state-owned bank (and a close associate of Vladamir Putin). We still don’t know (and may never know) the precise contents of the meeting, but based on circumstantial evidence, several of the media reports discuss speculations Kushner and his Russian government contacts discussed the possibility of extending financing to business ventures owned by Kushner or his family (including, most notably, a financially struggling office building at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan), if Kushner would help to persuade his father-in-law, the President-Elect of the United States, to lift the sanctions that the U.S. had imposed on Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine.

Again, we don’t yet know whether this is true. But let’s suppose for a moment that some version of that story is approximately correct: that during conversations with Russian government officials, Jared Kushner proposed or endorsed the idea that he would try to persuade his father-in-law to lift the Russia sanctions, and that Kushner did so because he believed (or was told) that if he did, a Russian state-owned development bank would provide valuable financing for his family’s business.

If that’s what occurred, then even nothing further came of these discussions, then there’s a very good argument that Jared Kushner committed a criminal violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Though there’s been quite a bit of discussion in the reports so far about various federal laws that Kushner may or may not have been broken in connection with these meetings (such as the little-used Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering with U.S. diplomacy). But I haven’t seem much discussion of the FCPA angle. So even though it might still seem unrealistic to imagine that FCPA charges will be brought, let me elaborate a bit on why I think there’s a plausible case for an FCPA violation here, if the evidence supports the characterization of the meetings sketched above: Continue reading →

China Should Go After Bribe Takers in FCPA Cases

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As other contributors to this blog have noted (see here, here, here, here, and here), in transnational corruption prosecutions there is a huge disparity in the enforcement of corruption laws against bribe-givers (the “supply side”) and bribe-takers (the “demand side”). For example, corporations have been penalized under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for bribes they allegedly paid to foreign officials, but the foreign officials implicated in these enforcement actions have largely remained untouched under their respective countries’ legal and political regimes. The reasons why demand-side governments have not stepped up and investigated officials who have been implicated in FCPA cases may include the lack of political will, the lack of capacity, and lack of inter-governmental cooperation. The particular reasons likely vary from country to country.

The People’s Republic of China is one of the demand-side countries that has demonstrated such a disparity. In 2016, for example, the SEC concluded 26 FCPA-related enforcement actions, 14 of which were related to corruption in China. In the same year, the DOJ published 24 FCPA-related enforcement actions as well as five declinations under its pilot program, and ten of these cases involved China. (Note that there were some overlap between the DOJ and the SEC’s enforcement actions.) Yet there has been no report about China initiating investigations into any of the officials implicated in these cases. This suggests a failure, or missed opportunity, in China’s otherwise aggressive and wide-ranging anticorruption campaign. If the government officials who take bribes can escape without any consequences, even as the bribe-paying firms are penalized, it will be very hard to effect fundamental changes to corrupt business and cultural norms, which eventually will become roadblocks to the Chinese economy’s healthy and sustainable development. Furthermore, unlike other countries, China does not seem to face significant structural obstacles that prevent it from acting on these FCPA cases. It has the political will and capacity, and it has been collaborating with the U.S. government on other matters, such as bringing back corrupt fugitives from the U.S. It seems to be just a matter of awareness or choice. This post urges the Chinese government to take a look into the government officials implicated in the FCPA cases.

Continue reading →

Venezuelans Out Kleptocrats’ Kids

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Those cursed to live in a country where leaders are stealing the nation’s resources wholesale are rarely able to stop them.  Calling the police, complaining to the prosecutor, or appealing to the legislature is pointless: in a kleptocracy the thieves control the machinery of the state.  Speaking out is futile.  Those who do are quickly silenced — imprisoned if they not become the victim of state-sponsored assassination.

So it is particularly welcome to report that the citizens of Venezuela, the latest nation to become victim of massive, “grand” corruption by its leaders, recently hit upon a way to strike back. Even better is how they are doing it: using the social media posts of the kleptocrats’ kids. The Twitter account VVsincensura (“Venezuelans uncensored”) scours the internet collecting posts by the children of Venezuela’s kleptocrats showing them living the high life in Paris, Hong Kong, Sydney, and the like while the nation sinks ever deeper into a state of penury.  From videos of the Caracas mayor’s daughter surfing in Australia to pictures of a former state official’s offspring helicoptering around the Middle East, VVsincensura regularly, indeed sometimes hourly, tweets out evidence of how well one’s kids can vacation, dine, and tour when the government picks up the tab.  Particularly galling are photos of an ex-Minister of Health’s children sightseeing in China while the country experiences a medical emergency because it has no money to pay for basic medicines and hospital supplies.

Venezuela’s kleptocrats are yelping over the outing of their kids (example here).  More significantly, the steady stream of snapshots showing them, drink in hand, languishing by a fancy pool or on white sands beach while the mass of Venezuelans scrounge for life’s basic necessities is starting to have an impact — both in Venezuela and abroad.

Within in Venezuela VVsincensura has stripped the last shred of legitimacy from the thieves ruling the country.  Their claim to power is that they speak for Venezuela’s poor.  But as more and more pictures of their kids in private jets, on luxurious beaches, or in five star restaurants circulate, that claim has become a dark national joke.  It has also pumped new life to Venezuela’s beleaguered domestic opposition.  The only thing now keeping the kleptocrats in power is the security forces, and one has to ask how many pictures of generals’ sons and daughters living it up in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo will it take before front-line soldiers begin deserting en masse.

Outside Venezuela the vulgar display of wealth by kids of kleptocrats has become so revolting that it has begun to spark action. At this writing some 30,000 Australians have signed a petition demanding that their government revoke the student visa of Lucía Rodríguez, daughter of Caracas’ mayor and niece of the Foreign Minister.  Rodríguez, ostensibly a student at a pricey Sydney University (tuition $18,000), is shown riding the waves off a Sydney beach in one VVSincensura post and enjoying a lifestyle far removed from that of an ordinary student in others. In the meantime, her father earns less than a $1,000 a year as mayor while preaching the virtues of an austere life to his constituents.

The Australian government should heed its citizens’ plea and send Rodríguez home, and that civil society in other nations hosting the kids of Venezuela’s kleptocrats should file similar petitions.  Denying kleptocrats the ability to send their kids abroad would remove one incentive for them to rob their nation blind.  More importantly, perhaps if the kids are penned up in Venezuela they will begin to realize just how hard life is for the great majority and how much responsibility their parents bear for making it so. Who knows, a few uncomfortable conversations around the family dinner table might prompt some of the thieves to go straight? For if a parent craves anything, it is their child’s love and respect.

While a single Twitter account might seem a feeble weapon to fight kleptocracy, VVSincensura shows that this is not so.  That when aimed at the right target, it can be a powerful weapon for combatting grand corruption. The ostentatious, revolting display of wealth by kleptocrats’ kids VVSincensura features reveals in a dramatic way the evil of grand corruption.  It is a tactic deserves widespread emulation — by citizens of other kleptocracies and anticorruption activists everywhere.

Wake Me Up When the Walmart Case Actually Settles

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Big news in the world of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement! According to a report earlier this month in Bloomberg, the U.S. government’s investigation into allegations that Walmart’s subsidiaries abroad (particularly in Mexico, India, Brazil, and China) engaged in extensive bribery of public officials, is about to wrap up! “People familiar with the matter” report that the settlement is nearing finalization, and that Walmart will end up paying penalties that are much smaller than the U.S. government originally sought. All of us FCPA nerds should be on pins and needles awaiting the imminent announcement of the settlement, which should come out any day now…

… or maybe not. Maybe this time the news is for real, and we’re about to see a settlement announcement, in which case there will certainly be something important to write about. But at the moment, what I find more interesting is the succession of stories, spread out over a nearly two-year period, that suggested that a Walmart settlement was just around the corner. To recap:

  • In October 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to unnamed “people familiar with the probe,” the Walmart matter was about to be wrapped up–and the fine was going to be much smaller than originally predicted, because it turned out (according to the WSJ’s sources) that the FCPA violations were not as serious or widespread as had been previously reported.
  • Almost exactly one year later, in October 2016, Bloomberg reported (on the basis of conversations with “three people familiar with the matter”) that, contrary to the previous WSJ report, although the US government encountered difficulties making out the FCPA violations in Mexico (not so much because of lack of evidence of misconduct, but rather because the most egregious conduct was outside of the statute of limitations), the government had evidence of misconduct elsewhere, and was seeking a penalty of around $600 million. According to that report, Walmart was still resisting, but the report nonetheless indicated that the administration was “working to wrap up an agreement before a new administration takes over in January [2017].”
  • Approximately nine months later, Bloomberg’s latest report states that, “according to people familiar with the matter,” Walmart is preparing to settle the case for $300 million – about half of what the government sought.

Now, though my initial reaction, given this history, is to take reports of imminent settlement with a grain of salt, I hasten to add that none of these reports are inconsistent with each other, or with the claim in the most recent report that a settlement announcement is imminent. Indeed, one could reconstruct roughly the following timeline of events, which I think is probably the best way to understand what’s going on: Continue reading →

Entrepreneurs Care About Corruption – Here’s How to Help Them Fight It.

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A friend of mine has been trying to start an artisanal liquor business in a small Latin American country. He learned to ferment fruit, crafted a logo, scrounged for and sanitized several hundred glass bottles, registered his corporation with all the various agencies, and paid all of his initial taxes. After producing his first batch and selling it to a number of small shops, he decided it was time to expand. Unfortunately, when he began to negotiate sales to larger restaurants and grocery stores he ran into a major complication: liquor taxes. The high level of liquor taxation made his business model completely unprofitable. Trying to understand how any other liquor business stayed afloat, he discovered that one liquor manufacturer and importer dominated the market, and didn’t pay any taxes. How? Corruption. In order to stay in business, my friend had a choice: (A) he could stay small, fly under the radar, and avoid paying taxes, or (B) he could navigate the perilous and uncertain process of bribing his way out of paying taxes. He ended up choosing a third option: he closed up shop and went back to his day job.

Ultimately, the fate of one small liquor business is not that important. But my friend’s experience illustrates a much more general phenomenon, one that is likely familiar to readers with experience in countries where corruption is widespread: corruption protects incumbent firms, undermines entrepreneurship, and constrains growth and job creation—particularly by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are often the primary drivers of economic growth, employment, and innovation. Corruption can be a critical roadblock to entrepreneurs and small business owners who can’t bribe their way out of regulation. In fact, pervasive corruption can shift business incentives to such a significant extent that it can impact the shape of an economy dramatically. Continue reading →

Nigeria’s Whistleblowing Policy: A Good Start, But Not Enough

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On December 21, 2016, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Finance approved a whistleblowing program as part of the Nigerian government’s continued efforts to fight corruption. Key features of the program include the launch of an online portal for submission of tips and the establishment of a reward for “information that directly leads to the voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets” (the reward is 2.5 to 5% of the amount recovered, with the percentage decreasing as the amounts recovered increases). As over $176 million in stolen funds was recovered within the first two months of the program, the whistleblowing policy appears to be an overnight success story. Nevertheless, although stolen funds are indeed being recovered, the existing policy does not do enough to offset the risks that whistleblowers face when they come forward with information, and this deficiency may limit the long-term effectiveness of the program. In particular, there are three aspects of the program that the government ought to reform in order to encourage individuals to assume the risks associated with becoming a whistleblower, and consequently to ensure the policy’s continued success. Continue reading →