Category Archives: Guest Commentary

Guest Post: Trump’s Pledge To Enforce the Global Magnitsky Act–A Skeptical View

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Ilya Zaslavskiy, a research expert with the Free Russia Foundation, contributes today’s guest post:

Earlier this month the White House sent a letter to Congress pledging a commitment to the “robust and thorough enforcement” of the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act (GMA). The GMA, which grew out of a similar 2012 law that focused only on Russia, allows the executive branch to impose certain sanctions—including visa bans and freezing of U.S. assets—on any foreign citizen who commits gross human rights violations or who retaliates against whistleblowers who expose corruption. After Trump won the election, many feared that his administration would shelve meaningful enforcement of the GMA. (After all, the Obama Administration had also been reluctant to implement the original Magnitsky Act aggressively, and did so only under pressure from Congress.) In light of those low expectations, the White House’s statement was taken by many as an encouraging sign.

But many activists and NGOs fighting corruption, in Putin’s Russia and elsewhere, remain rightly skeptical. After all, Trump’s praise and upbeat rhetoric about corrupt authoritarian leaders—not only Putin, but President Erdogan or Turkey and President Duterte of the Philippines—naturally call into question the Administration’s seriousness about aggressive GMA enforcement. Consider further the fact that, despite the overwhelming evidence coming out of Chechnya that its president Ramzan Kadyrov has authorized massive abuses against the LGBT community and opened what is amounting to prisons for gays, there are no signs that the Trump Administration is considering adding Kadyrov to any open sanctions lists, despite not only recent events, but his long track record of corruption and human rights abuses.

Moreover, the White House’s statement in support of the GMA might be an attempt to create the appearance of taking a firm stand against corruption and human rights abuses, to diminish political momentum for more consequential actions. Specifically in regard to Russia, the latest statement about the GMA should also be understood in the context of the broader scandal regarding the Trump team’s ties to Russia. This scandal has, if anything, intensified anti-Russian sentiment in Congress. Not only have leading Senators and Representatives come out in strong support of sustaining existing sanctions against Russia, but there are now a half-dozen initiatives under consideration in Congress that would both codify and expand these sanctions. In such context, it might actually be useful to Trump (and arguably his Russian friends) to appear to be taking firm measures against Russia and other kleptocrats, while resisting adoption or implementation of more meaningful responses. The recent White House statement pledging robust enforcement of the GMA fits that narrative. After all, rhetoric aside, neither the original Magnitsky Act nor the GMA create more than a small headache for Trump and Russians. Only few really high level names have been sanctioned under those initiatives. Financial sanctions (particularly restrictions on long-term loans) are what matters for the Kremlin most. Indeed, Russian leadership might even be happy to have the Magnitsky laws in place if those restrictions are relaxed.

 

Guest Post: A Pending Federal Case Could–and Should–Limit the FCPA’s Extraterritorial Reach

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Frederick Davis, a lawyer in the Paris office of Debevoise & Plimpton, who contributes the following guest post:

Can the U.S. government prosecute an individual for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations if that individual is not a U.S. citizen or resident, and committed no unlawful act in U.S. territory? An important case posing that question is now before a U.S. appeals court. The decision may have important implications on the territorial reach of the FCPA.

The facts and relevant statutory provisions are straightforward, although the analysis is not. The defendant, Lawrence Hoskins, is a British national who at all relevant times was an officer of a British subsidiary of French manufacturing giant Alstom. Alstom and several of its subsidiaries were investigated by the US Department of Justice for alleged illicit payments in Indonesia, and ultimately reached a global corporate settlement that included several corporate guilty pleas and Deferred Prosecution Agreements, pursuant to which the corporate entities paid US fines of over US$750 million. The DOJ also pursued several individuals, including Mr. Hoskins, who was ultimately arrested when he arrived in the United States on vacation. His attorneys moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the US prosecutor lacked power to prosecute him. After energetic procedural activity by both sides, the District Court granted his motion in significant part. Unusually, the prosecutor appealed, and oral argument was heard on March 2, 2017.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Did the London Summit Make a Difference to Open Contracting? Does Open Contracting Make a Difference for Tackling Procurement Corruption?

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Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership, provides today’s guest post:

Anyone remember the London Anti-Corruption Summit last May? It seems like a long, long time ago now, but it was a big deal for us when 14 countries stepped forward at the Summit to implement the Open Contracting Data Standard to open, share, and track all data and documents coming from the billions of dollars that they are spending on public contracting and procurement each year.

One year later, how well have these countries have followed through on their commitments, and how much of a difference open contracting has made in combating corruption in public procurement? After all, it is government’s number one corruption risk; it’s where money, opacity, and government discretion collide.

The news is generally positive: the Summit commitments appear to have promoted genuine progress toward more open contracting in many of those countries, and the preliminary evidence indicates that such moves help reduce procurement corruption. Continue reading →

Guest Post: An Exercise in Underachievement–The UK’s Half-Hearted Half-Measures To Exclude Corrupt Bidders from Public Procurement

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GAB is delighted to welcome back Susan Hawley, policy director of Corruption Watch, to contribute today’s guest post:

A year ago, in May 2016, the UK government gathered 43 nations around the world together at the London Anti-Corruption Summit to show their commitment to fighting corruption. The resulting declaration made a number of bold promises. One of the most important—though not one that grabbed a lot of headlines—was the announcement that corrupt bidders should not be allowed to bid for government contracts, and the associated pledge by the declaration’s signatories that they would commit to ensuring that information about final convictions would be made available to procurement bodies across borders. Seventeen signatories went further, making specific commitments to exclude corrupt bidders, while six countries pledged to establish a centralized database of convicted companies as a way of ensuring procurement bodies could access relevant information. (Three other countries committed to exploring that possibility.)

The London Anti-Corruption Summit was right to be ambitious about focus on this issue in its declaration. Research shows that the risk of losing business opportunities such as through debarment from public contracts ranks has a powerful deterrent effect—equal to that associated with individual executives facing imprisonment, and much greater than one-off penalties such as fines. Yet debarment of corrupt companies for public contracting is quite rare. The OECD Foreign Bribery report found that while 57% of the 427 foreign bribery cases it looked at spanning 15 years involved bribes to obtain government procurement contracts, only two resulted in debarment. Even the US which has a relatively advanced debarment regime and which debars or suspends around 5000 entities a year from public procurement, appears to debar very few for foreign bribery and corruption. And the UK does not appear to have ever excluded a company from public procurement, despite laws in place since 2006 that require companies convicted of corruption and other serious crimes to be excluded from public contracts.

Did the London Anti-Corruption Summit mark significant turning point in the UK’s approach to this issue? Having persuaded 43 countries to sign a declaration that included a commitment to exclude corrupt bidders, did the UK have its own bold new vision to implement that commitment domestically? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Continue reading →

Guest Post: When It Comes To Attitudes Toward Corruption, Russians Are More Like Americans Than You Think

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Today’s guest post is from Marina Zaloznaya, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa and author of, The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption in Post-Transitional Eastern Europe:

Russia and corruption have been dominating the news recently – with the reporting from Washington and Moscow converging in an unusual way. Ongoing accusations against Trump Administration officials resonate even more strongly when linked to Russia, a country most Americans view as rife with corruption. Indeed, many Americans think that Russian citizens are perfectly comfortable with the systematic corruption of political and business elites.

This is a myth. Yes, it is true beyond doubt that corruption is common in Russia – much more so than in the United States – affecting hundreds of thousands of people. But this is not because Russians are systematically more tolerant of corruption than are Americans. Continue reading →

Guest Post: The U.S. Retreat from Extractive Industry Transparency–What Next?

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Zorka Milin, Senior Legal Advisor at Global Witness, contributes today’s guest post:

The US Department of the Interior recently took steps to halt its work on implementing a global transparency initiative for the resource sector, known as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). This announcement came on the heels of the Congressional action repealing a related rule, adopted by the SEC pursuant to Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, that required oil, gas and mining companies to publish their payments to governments. The two issues are related but distinct. First, 1504 rule required US-listed companies to report payments they make to governments around the world. In contrast, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) applies in those countries whose governments choose to join the initiative (including the US) and requires payments to be disclosed both by the recipient government as well as by all extractives companies that operate in that country. These differences in scope make the two transparency measures necessary complements to each other. EITI produces valuable information from governments about the payments they receive for their natural resources, whereas mandatory legal rules like 1504 are necessary to ensure meaningful and broad reporting from companies, including in those resource-rich countries such as Equatorial Guinea and Angola that are not part of EITI but are in desperate need of more transparency. Indeed, the US EITI experience shows that even in those countries that do commit to implementing EITI, EITI alone might not be enough to compel all companies to report, if it is not backed by domestic legislation.

Officials at Interior appear to be retreating from their ill-advised decision to effectively withdraw from EITI, but these mixed signals, especially when viewed together with the Congressional action, send a troubling message about the US government’s changing stance on anticorruption, and set back a long history of US leadership on these issues. Nonetheless, while these recent US developments are a setback from a US anticorruption perspective, the rest of the world is powering ahead with this much needed transparency. Continue reading →

Guest Post: A Critical Evaluation of National Anticorruption Strategies

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Mark Pyman, Senior Fellow at the London Institute for Statecraft, contributes the following guest post:

Many countries now have official “national anticorruption strategies” or similar plans; indeed some have had them for ten years. So surely there are insights to be had from reviewing the substantive content of a decent sample of them? Unfortunately, most of the existing analysis of national anticorruption strategies focuses not on substance, but only on process (things like stakeholder engagement, the drafting process, the need for realism, cost-benefit analysis, monitoring and evaluation, reporting, etc.) In fact, everything except substance. This is a shame.

In order to remedy this gap, I recently collaborated with the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm on a study of the substantive provisions of national anticorruption strategies in 41 countries that rank between 21 and 130 on Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). (We chose that range because we wanted to look at countries that have a significant corruption problem, but not those that are in the grip of deep, systemic corruption issues.) The report, published earlier this week, is available here. Our objective in conducting this review was to extract lessons that can help country leaders make better strategies in the future

So, what did we find? Continue reading →

Reporting Corruption Easily and Safely: Papua New Guinea’s Phones Against Corruption Initiative — UPDATE

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Nick Brown, head of Global Distribution for Mobimedia International, contributes the following Guest Post. [Ed. note: Data from UNDP on the project’s operation received June 2022 added at end of post.]

 Persuading corruption victims to complain remains one of the great challenges to combating corruption.  Policymakers can’t prioritize prevention efforts or know where to deploy enforcement resources if they don’t know who is demanding bribes where and from whom. But getting citizens to blow the whistle is no mean feat.  Citizens must be convinced it is worth the effort, that something will happen if they do speak up.  Citizens must also be assured they will be safe if they do, that the corrupters will not harm them or their loved ones, financially or physically.

With its “Phones Against Corruption” initiative, the Government of Papua New Guinea has hit upon a way that citizens can easily and safely report corruption complaints, and since its launch in 2014, with technical support from Mobimedia International and financial backing from UNDP and Australia, it has taken off.  Critical to its success is that it makes no technological or financial demands on PNG’s limited capacity.  It requires no more technological sophistication from citizens than the ability to send a text message, a form of communication widely used throughout the country. How does it work? Continue reading →

Guest Post: Rolling Back Anticorruption

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Laurence Cockcroft, a founding board member of, and current advisor to, Transparency International, contributes today’s guest post:

The global campaign against corruption has become a cornerstone of Western foreign and development policy for the last 25 years. This campaign built on a number of earlier measures, most notably the 1977 enactment of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which criminalized foreign bribery by companies under US jurisdiction, but the campaign really accelerated beginning in the late 1990s. For example, while European countries had resisted adopting legislation similar to the FCPA for 20 years, this changed with the adoption of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in 1997, which was followed a few years later by the 2002 UN Convention Against Corruption. International financial institutions like the World Bank have become more aggressive about debarment of contractors found to have behaved corruptly, and we have also seen the proliferation of corporate-level ethical codes, promoted by organizations like the World Economic Forum and UN Global Compact, designed to prevent corrupt behavior.

More recent initiatives have pushed for greater corporate transparency. For example, in the United States, the Dodd-Frank Act ended the aggregation of corporate income across countries; an EU Directive promulgated shortly afterwards imposed similar requirements. More recently, an initiative to disclose the true beneficial owners of corporations and other legal entities, pushed by former British Prime Minister David Cameron, has already taken legislative form in the United Kingdom; beneficial ownership transparency is also the subject of an EU Directive, and was being promoted by the Obama administration. And although the so-called “offshore centers” have yet to embrace similar transparency of beneficial ownership, regulatory systems in these centers have been significantly improved. There have also been a number of important sector-level initiatives, particularly in the resources sector. These include the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—which requires participating governments of mineral and energy exporting countries, as well as companies in the extractive sector, to commit to a process of revenue transparency—as well as national-level laws, such as Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which impose so-called “publish what you pay” obligations on extractive firms.

Even more encouragingly, this gradually improving regulatory environment has been accompanied by growing public opposition to corruption, as reflected in large-scale demonstrations around the world. Crowds on the streets, for example, have recently supported the proposed prosecutions of the current and past Presidents of Brazil, and opposed weakening of anticorruption laws in Romania.

But in spite of public opinion, the forces opposed to anticorruption initiatives have never gone away. The arrival of President Trump has let many of them loose both inside and outside the United States: Continue reading →

Guest Post: A Call for Higher Integrity Standards and Deeper Democratization

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Jeroen Michels, Policy Analyst at the OECD, and Michael Johnston, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, contribute today’s guest post:

Many of the recent woes and challenges of democracies worldwide—such as fading policy consensus, populist discontent, and widening equality gaps—have been fueled, at least in part, by corruption and unethical practices (not all of which are currently illegal). The Panama Papers and similar leaks have dented the reputation of elected politicians, established firms, and respected countries. Soon after their term in office, some public sector leaders have taken up lucrative posts and board memberships in banks, lobbying firms, and multinationals, leaving voters disillusioned about political integrity and the intertwinement of elite networks across sectors in society. Less visible but equally harmful can be the ways in which narrow interests seek to influence public decision-making for their own profit. Inequalities in access to policymaking processes, often reflecting inequalities in wealth and status, often lead to decisions that benefit and further empower those narrow interests, which exacerbates inequalities and fosters the perception of politics as unfair or illegitimate. Against the backdrop of widening income gaps between the rich and poor, the abuse of power leading to a concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer people is a worrisome prospect.

As a result, these legal and illegal forms of influence peddling corrode the meanings and mechanisms of democracy itself. As Professor Mark Warren has argued, corruption can be described as duplicitous exclusion: corruption undermines democracy by excluding people from decisions that affect them and in which they expect to have a voice. When people lose confidence that public decisions are taken for reasons that are publicly available and justifiable, and that those in official positions take citizen views and interests seriously, they often become cynical, expecting duplicity in public speech. This tarnishes all public officials, whether or not they are corrupt. And when people are mistrustful of government, they are also cynical about their own capacities to act in favor of the public good. Elections, for too many citizens, become a way to reject traditional democratic values and practices.

There are no quick fixes or easy remedies to this dilemma, but there are two things that activists and reformers must emphasize: Continue reading →