Category Archives: Guest Commentary

Guest Post: Watching Watch Wearers: More on Thailand’s Watchgate Case

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GAB welcome back Craig R. Arndt, an American lawyer now living in Bangkok. Craig has advised a variety of clients on corruption-related matters and represented corruption victims in damage actions. Below he offers a coda to Government Leaders Should Watch Who Watches Them Wearing Their Pricey Watches

In 2018 the Thai public was mesmerized by a photo showing retired General and then Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan wearing a luxury watch. Activists soon found other photos of him sporting a variety of watches together worth $1.5 million. General Prawit was widely mocked for his explanation that they had been loaned to him by a wealthy now deceased friend and that he was not required to report them on his asset declaration form (here and here).

Thailand’s National Anticorruption Commission (NACC) did investigate the non-disclosure claim, it found nothing wrong. Prawit continued his political career, unfazed and unaffected by what had been short-lived damage to his reputation (here). He was the candidate for Prime Minister for the current ruling party in the recent election. Although that party split, his party still gained 40 seats in the face of a resounding defeat of the generals and their allies (here).

Although the NACC concluded that Prawit failure to report the watch collection did violated the asset disclosure law lot violated the law requriwas willing The agency, however, offered no justification for letting Prawit off the hook (here). Thailand’s increasingly assertive civil society was not ready to let the matter drop.

Political Activist Veera Somkwamkid asked the Administrative Court to order NACC to disclose its findings in the Prawit case. The first level administrative court agreed, and April 2023 the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) upheld the decision and ordered full disclosure of the NACC Prawit files (here).

The SAC’s decision in the Prawit case does not set a precedent under Thai law. The NACC can thus refuse to disclose its reasoning in future cases, meaning those seeking their disclosure will have to tread the path Veera took in Prawit’s. It may a be a slow and treacherous one, but the NACC and Thai officials are on notice it’s a path determined civil society activists are willing to take.

Prawit may still find it easy to find the time of day given his glitzy watch collection, but in Thailand time may be running short on politicians of his ilk

Gibraltar Government on Trial for Corruption

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Today’s Guest Post is by Robert Barrington, Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex (UK); and formerly the Chair of Transparency International’s International Council.

With a population of a mere 34,000 and a parliament of 17 elected members, Gibraltar seldom attracts the world’s attention, except in the periodic spats between Britain and Spain as to its territorial status.  One of Britain’s Overseas Territories, like the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands, it’s part of the remnants of the Empire which never became independent.  Like those other territories, Gibraltar has become a financial centre – particularly known for online gambling – and is officially ruled by a hands-off Governor on behalf of the British crown.

Small states have a very mixed record when it comes to corruption.  Some, like Singapore and Hong Kong (prior to the recent ‘Chinafication’), have in the past successfully led crackdowns on corruption, backed up by powerful and effective anti-corruption agencies.  But small states can all too easily be captured by vested interests and go in the opposite direction – see, for example, Wouter Veenendaal’s article on ‘How smallness fosters clientelism; a case study of Malta.’

The picture in Britain’s Overseas Territories is relatively obscure.  They are so small that they do not generally feature  on global indices of corruption. There is usually a non-existent, or at best government-friendly local media and civil society; independence – in the judiciary, police, or other pillars of the state – is hard to achieve when everyone knows everyone.  Ideal conditions for state capture.

Many of the Overseas Territories dance on the edges of the FATF greylist, periodically creeping on and off. Gibraltar was added to the list in June 2022 and removed in February 2024.  The British Virgin Islands, Turks & Caicos and Cayman Islands have all had corruption scandals at the heart of government, often related to dirty money.  In fact, it is thanks to those scandals and the subsequent attention they garner (via the international media, public enquiries, and occasionally prosecutions) that we have at least a partial picture of what is going on.

So what is happening in Gibraltar? 

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Model Open Government Partnership Commitments for Fighting Kleptocracy

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Today’s guest post is from Jodi Vittori, Professor of Practice at Georgetown University:

This past January, I authored a report, co-sponsored by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the National Democratic Institute, entitled “Committing to Combat Kleptocracy: A Guide for Open Government Partnership Members.” The report explains how various kleptocrats and their “enablers” move illicit assets from the country where they were stolen to the locations where they will be stored and enjoyed. The report also discusses how kleptocracy undermines not only the countries where the assets were stolen, but also the transit or destination points for kleptocratic money, people, and other resources.  While it might seem like an infusion of money, assets, and rich people into a given country might be a benefit for that country (putting aside the moral issues), it turns out that these inflows have real drawbacks for the host state, contributing to governance backsliding, facilitating real estate manipulation and industrial asset stripping, exacerbating migration challenges, and undermining national security. The role of Russia’s kleptocracy in election interference in the West, as well as the corruption associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, have helped put the role kleptocratic inflows play in receiving states in the spotlight.

The OGP’s open government principles—to which all OGP member governments commit—are a set of norms that, if honored and implemented, will help countries fight back against inflows of kleptocratic assets. At the most basic level, the OGP stresses the importance of making relevant, usable, and timely information on governments available to citizens and civil society to hold their governments accountable. This helps ensure that public resources are managed transparently, fairly, and equitably. The report develops this further by outlining a series of model OGP commitments for consideration by governments and citizen activists, including the following: Continue reading →

The Fake News and Corruption Behind the Criminal Investigation of Transparency International

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Transparency International and its Brazilian chapter are now the subject of a criminal investigation in Brazil. As GAB readers know (here), the investigation is part of Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli’s crusade to reverse the convictions handed down in Lava Jato, the landmark Brazilian corruption case. The aim is to ensure defendants escape all punishment in Brazil and are protected from prosecution in the dozen other Latin American and African countries where they paid bribes.

Today’s Guest Post by a Brazilian insider reveals just how groundless the investigation of TI is and Justice Toffoli’s direct conflict of interest in letting one of the Lava Jato defendants off the hook. The author explains that it starts, as the respected Brazilian journal Crusoé explains in the headline to its February 16 issue, with “A HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS AGAINST TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL: How the narrative was planted, leaked, refuted and reheated in the PGR [Federal Attorney General Office] to retaliate the anti-corruption NGO.”

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Does Congress Really Want to Relax Corruption Controls on U.S. Arms Sales?

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Today’s Guest Post is by Colby Goodman, a Senior Researcher with Transparency International US and Defence and Security. His research focuses on corruption risks within the international arms trade and other forms of defense sector corruption. 

That corruption permeates the international arms trade is no surprise to readers of Transparency International reports (here), business executives (here), or investigative reporters (here, here, and here). What is a surprise is that the U.S. House of Representatives is considering weakening the measures the U.S. government has put in place over the past decades to prevent U.S. companies from becoming entangled in corrupt dealings.

This Tuesday, February 6, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will discuss a bill to significantly decrease the number of proposed U.S. arms sales that would require congressional review before proceeding. The bill would increase the dollar threshold that require  the Defense and State Departments to notify Congress of a planned sale. It follows a US defense industry lobbying campaign to speed up the process in delivering U.S. weapons and so make their purchase more commercially attractive. But at the cost of weakening key U.S. government efforts to curb corruption in U.S. arms sales.

To its credit, in early 2023 the Biden Administration  updated the government’s Conventional Arms Transfer policy to “ensure that arms transfers do not fuel corruption or undermine good governance, while incentivizing effective, transparent, and accountable security sector governance.”  This policy followed its Countering Corruption Strategy, where  the U.S. government pledged to start “reviewing and re-evaluating criteria for government-to-government [security] assistance, including around transparency and accountability.”  These actions recognized the significant harm to U.S. national security that comes from pervasive corruption in partner countries and the need to mitigate corruption risks within the U.S. defense industry.  

Detailed below are four key critical corruption checks that would be undermined by the proposed bill.

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Guest Post: How the Azerbaijani Government Corrupts Western Democracies with “Caviar Diplomacy”

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Today’s guest post is from Aram Simonyan, a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Scholar at the University of Sussex.

Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, is an autonomous region primarily populated by ethnic Armenians. (That the region is part of Azerbaijan rather than Armenia is due to a 1921 decision by the USSR central government.) In 2020 Azerbaijan, with outspoken support from Turkey, gained power over notable territory in Nagorno-Karabakh. Then, in December 2022, the Azerbaijani government closed the Lachin corridor (the only land route between Nagornon-Karabakh and Armenia), thereby cutting off 120,000 ethnic Christian Armenians in the contested enclave from the outside world—and from food, medicine, and other primary goods. And in September 2023 Azerbaijani military, with the apparent support of the Turkish president, forces swept into towns and villages, killing, shelling, and bombing civilians—evoking trauma of the Armenian Genocide among the population.

Yet the reaction from the West has been shockingly muted. It’s hard to ignore the striking contrast between the round-the-clock media coverage of the Gaza conflict and the scarcity of news on Nagorno-Karabakh even when Azerbaijan was bombing Armenian hospitals, schools and beheading people. Critics have also pointed out how European institutions and Western companies have continued to do business as usual with Azerbaijan, notwithstanding its aggression.

Part of the justification for this may be that Azerbaijan helps meet the EU’s need for natural gas. (In July 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referred to Aliyev as a “trustworthy partner” for gas supply to the EU, though since Azerbaijan imports gas from Russia, it’s not at all clear why the EU wanted to involve the Azerbaijani government in the supply chain.) But another reason is that Azerbaijan has made use of what critics have dubbed “caviar diplomacy”: the use of strategic bribery (direct and indirect) to corrupt and curry favor with Western governments and institutions. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Despite Serious Flaws, U.S. Safeguards Against Political Corruption Can Serve as Model for the World

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Today’s guest post is from Scott Greytak, the Director of Advocacy at Transparency International US.

As much of the world converges on Atlanta for the 10th Session of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) Conference of the States Parties (CoSP), the urgent need for a renewed, reinforced, and relevant global anticorruption framework takes center stage. Among the most important issues to address concerns political finance transparency, an issue that the current version of the UNCAC does not directly cover. The United States is well-positioned to provide leadership on this issue. While U.S. laws on money in politics have failed to keep pace with America’s evolving political dynamics, aspects of these laws nevertheless can and should serve as inspirations for much of the world as it struggles with political corruption. The CoSP presents a chance for the U.S. to share its experiences and lessons learned with other countries, and to support resolutions and amendments to include commitments on political finance transparency in the UNCAC itself.

Suggesting that the U.S. can be a leader or a model on the issue of regulating money in politics may sound surprising. My colleagues and I at Transparency International US are all too aware of the many failings of American democracy, including the American approach to political finance regulation. More than in any other major developed country in the world, for example, people in the United States believe that rich people buy elections, and U.S. political finance laws are in urgent need of updating, to address persistent problems like the influence of “dark money” in elections, and the need for adequately funded public financing programs for political campaigns. But comparatively speaking, some pieces of the U.S. legal framework can serve as a useful benchmark. For instance, a survey by the Global Data Barometer Political Integrity Module and the International IDEA’s Political Finance Database revealed that of 181 countries surveyed, 100 do not have any limits whatsoever on how much money can be given to a candidate for office. In contrast, the United States has comprehensive contribution limits for candidates, political parties, and traditional political action committees (even though such limits are infamously absent when it comes to “independent” expenditure committees, or Super PACs). Emphasizing this best practice, among others, on the global stage in Atlanta could help jumpstart a much-needed exchange and collaborative approach that could raise the bar for all democratic and emerging-democratic countries.

To this end, the United States should support resolutions and amendments that require countries to enact and enforce laws that disclose campaign contributions to candidates and political parties, as well as expenditures made by those candidates and parties, in a timely and publicly accessible fashion. The U.S. can also support requirements that countries to establish and appropriately fund independent oversight bodies that monitor political spending and enforce political finance laws. The U.S. delegation can support protections for whistleblowers who call out political finance violations and can urge countries to expressly commit to sharing information, best practices, and resources in fulfillment of these commitments, and to engage with civil society closely and consistently when developing and implementing these measures.

Amidst yet another year of increasing global political unrest and accompanying anxieties, successful examples of U.S. laws can and must serve as inspirations to others. In an era of seemingly limitless challenges to democracy in all regions of the world, it is this collaboration and commitment that can fortify its foundations. A first step can and must be taken by the U.S. in Atlanta.

Guest Post: The OECD’s Report on Brazil Should Be a Wake-Up Call

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Today’s guest post is from Guilherme France, the Research and Advocacy Manager at Transparency International Brazil and a PhD candidate at the Institute for Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery (WGB) conducts periodic reviews (in successive “phases”) on how well signatories to the OECD Convention on Preventing Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. Recently, the WGB published its Phase 4 report on Brazil. The picture it paints is rather bleak, and should be a wake-up call for Brazilian citizens and, one hopes, the Brazilian government. While the WGB also acknowledged some improvements in Brazil’s anticorruption framework (such as better inter-institutional cooperation, an increase in funding for law enforcement agencies, and efforts to enact a stronger whistleblower protections), Brazil is underperforming with respect to enforcement, and backsliding with respect to institutional independence. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Corporate Transparency Is Easy

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Today’s guest post is from Gary Kalman and Annalise Burkhart, who are, respectively, Executive Director and Program & Research Associate for Transparency International U.S.

Readers of this blog know well that anonymously owned companies are the go-to vehicle for laundering illicit funds. From the revelations of hidden assets exposed in the Panama Papers to the search for sanctioned assets of Russian oligarchs, anonymous corporate structures enable corrupt and criminal actors to steal, hide, launder and benefit from illicit proceeds with impunity. The anticorruption community therefore cheered when the U.S. Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), requiring the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to collect beneficial ownership information for U.S. companies and align with international standards.

As the Treasury Department is finalizing its rules for implementing the CTA, the law’s opponents have been engaged in a campaign of scaremongering aimed particularly at small businesses, with various memos, articles, and notices warning of a burdensome reporting process, uncertain or unclear disclosure requirements, and the risks of hefty fines and possible jail time for business owners who might inadvertently fail to file the appropriate information.

These claims are exaggerated, inaccurate, and misleading. Instead of providing helpful guidance to small businesses, these alarmists are stoking fear among business owners, likely to mobilize political opposition to the effective implementation of the CTA. Here are the facts: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Forcing States to Grant Corruption Victims Legal Standing

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Today’s guest post is by Carlos G. Guerrero Orozco, a Mexican litigation lawyer and partner at López Melih y Estrada Abogados. He chairs the non-profit Derechos Humanos y Litigio Estratégico Mexicano and heads the International Database Taskforce at the Working Group on Victims of Corruption of the UNCAC Coalition.

Corruption is what social scientists call a “wicked problem,” one extraordinarily difficult to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Governments thus need all the help they can muster to tackle it. But too many sideline a critical ally, those harmed by corruption.

Corruption’s victims are many and their injuries diverse. Journalists threatened, and too frequently murdered, for revealing corrupt schemes. Whistleblowers attacked for denouncing corruption. Citizens injured or killed when corruptly constructed buildings collapse; those denied access to education, health care, and fair courts thanks to bribery, embezzlement, and other corruption crimes.

All are victims and all have real claims for damages and strong incentives for joining with governments to fight corruption.

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