Developing an Effective Corruption Prevention Strategy: Insights from Sierra Leone

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It is often said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is nowhere truer than in the fight against corruption. That insight has helped shape the approach of Sierra Leone’s campaign against corruption over the last several years. In 2018, Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), of which I am the Commissioner (Head), made a deliberate policy decision to emphasize prevention over enforcement. The ACC created a designated “Prevention Department,” which was empowered to work, in conjunction with other oversight bodies such as the Supreme Audit Institution and the Public Sector Reform Agency, to ensure that corruption prevention systems and processes are embedded in the national administrative and governance architecture.

Of course, talking generally about “prevention” is easier than actually implementing effective corruption prevention mechanisms. So, what are some of the key tools that Sierra Leone has deployed to enhance its corruption prevention system? I will highlight five that have been especially important and effective: Continue reading →

TI Senegal to IMF: Hold Our Government to its Anticorruption Commitments

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Last June the International Monetary Fund approved $1.8 billion in loans to Senegal to stave off a debt crisis. Funds were conditioned among other measures on the government’s promise to strengthen the fight against corruption, a condition the government accepted wholeheartedly and without reservation. Indeed, IMF Deputy Director Kenji Okamura assured the IMF board before voting the loan that the Senegalese government was serious about anticorruption reform, that it recognized it was “critical to the restoration of growth and fiscal stability” (here).

The government’s promises and Okamura’s assurances are now in doubt. Forum Civil, the Senegal chapter of Transparency International, reported in late October that the government has done virtually nothing to keep its promises.  

The Fund is not helpless in the face of the government’s broken promises. The loan funds are being disbursed in tranches; each tranche requires board approval and a meeting to okay the first tranche set for December. Moreover, four of the anticorruption reforms – enforcing the asset declaration system, strengthening the anticorruption agency and the prosecution, and tightening the civil service ethics code — are “structural benchmarks. That is, IMF procedures require the Board to assay progress on each before okaying a tranche.

In its October report, reprinted below, the Forum Civil documents the government’s failure to live up to its promises, lays out immediate steps it should take to demonstrate it intends to keep them, and urges the IMF, for the sake of the citizens of Senegal and their future, to hold the government to its commitments

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New Podcast Episode, Featuring Panel Discussion on Professional Enablers

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.  This episode features a panel discussion on the role of so-called “professional enablers” (including lawyers, accountants, consultants, and others) in facilitating corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering, and related activities. The panelists–Robert Barrington, Guy Beringer, Liz Dávid-Barrett, Tena Prelec–discuss the meaning of the “professional enablers” term, distinguish legal from illegal functions, and discuss the types of corruption-related activities that these service providers might facilitate. The panelists provide a variety of case examples from around the world, focusing particularly on the legal profession, and discuss potential responses, including highr professional standards.

You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

A New Page in the Populist Playbook: Imran Khan Frames Anticorruption as Foreign Manipulation

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In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan—who, if declared eligible, would be seeking a return to office in the 2024 elections—faces numerous allegations of corruption and other financial impropriety. More than 200 cases have been filed against him in Pakistan’s courts, and he continues to sit behind bars in Adiala Jail. Yet these legal troubles have had little effect on Khan’s popularity in pre-election polls. Part of the reason, as I discussed in my last post, is that Pakistan’s long history of politicized anticorruption enforcement has left Pakistanis deeply apathetic about corruption allegations and weary of their frequently cynical use. But Khan has also been unusually successful in convincing the public that the charges against him are politically motivated. What accounts for his ability to rally the public to his side when similarly situated Pakistani politicians have failed before him? The answer may lie in Khan’s concerted focus on what he claims is evidence of American meddling. 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 →

The More You Know About Chief Prosecutors, the Less You Trust Their Office?

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Prosecuting elected officials for corruption is often an uphill battle. The power and resources of the defendants, combined with the general difficulty of proving corrupt deeds (which usually happen behind closed doors), make it difficult to secure convictions. Moreover, prosecutors who bring charges against elected officials frequently face accusations that the decision to prosecute was politically motivated or biased. Such accusations, which are often fueled by the politicians themselves, have potential grave consequences. Not only can they result in public distrust in particular criminal proceedings against politicians, but also—and perhaps more importantly—these accusations can undermine the legitimacy of the legal system more broadly.

Some public criticism—fair or unfair—of prosecutors is inevitable. However, prosecutors can (and should) try to minimize the harmful effects such criticism might have on the overall legitimacy of the institutions of justice. How can they do so? In a recent and highly recommended article, Ori Aronson, Julia Elad-Strenger, Thomas Kessler, and Yuval Feldman suggest that one way prosecutors can increase the perception that their offices and investigations are objective and unbiased is by refraining from highlighting the personal traits or biographical details of the individuals who lead those offices. To use the jargon of the authors, “non-personalization” of prosecutors’ offices is superior to their “personalization,” at least in terms of offices’ perceived objectivity. The authors base this conclusion on a series of experiments involving reactions to decisions made by Israel’s head of prosecution—former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit—concerning the corruption allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (a topic that was featured on the blog numerous times; see, for example, here, here, and here).

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UNCAC Coalition to UNCAC State Parties: Ensure Corruption Victims Can Recover Damages

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As Carlos Guerrero explained here last week, corruption is anything but a victimless crime. Citizens are injured or killed when corruptly constructed buildings collapse on them. Others are denied the right to education, life saving medical treatment, and the fair resolution of their disputes thanks to bribery, embezzlement, and conflicts of interest.

The drafters of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption were not blind to the tremendous damage corruption does to identifiable persons or groups of persons. That is why they included a specific provision making it absolutely clear that all parties must grant victims of corruption an opportunity to seek compensation for any injuries sustained. In no uncertain terms article 35 requires state parties to open their courts to any individual or entity injured “as a result of an act of corruption.”

But UNCAC state parties have yet to take article 35 seriously. Academics, civil society organizations, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime all report that only a few victims in a handful of states have recovered damages. In the vast majority of the 190 countries that have ratified the Convention, not a single person injured by corruption has been compensated for their loss.

The UNCAC Coalition‘s Working Groups, a global network of over 350 civil society organizations in 100 countries, is demanding change. The parties to UNCAC meet this December in Atlanta to review each other’s progress in complying with the convention. Below is the Coalition’s letter to them urging that compliance with article 35 by all 190 be a priority.

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New Podcast Episode: In the 101st Episode, Hosts Reflect on the 100th Episode!

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.In the previous episode (the 100th episode of the series), the KickBack hosts invited a dozen leading anticorruption experts (plus me) to offer their reactions to one or both of two big-picture questions about the field: (1) What is one thing about corruption that you’ve changed your thinking on in the past 10 years?, and (2) What is the most significant development — positive or negative — in relation to corruption and corruption studies over the past thirty years? In the most recent episode (the 101st), KickBack hosts Liz David-Barrett, Robert Barrington, Dan Hough, and Sam Power (all with the Sussex University Centre for the Study of Corruption) reflect on the wide range of answers that the various respondents gave to these questions, and more generally use this as an occasion to thing more broadly about the present and future of anticorruption–both as a practical reform agenda and as a field of study and research. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations: KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

Pakistanis Are Sick of Hearing About Anticorruption

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Anticorruption experts have long grappled with the enduring puzzle of why voters continue to support allegedly corrupt politicians. Why is it that the same people who point to corruption as a significant problem in their societies nevertheless cast their votes for candidates who have been credibly accused, or even indicted or convicted for, corruption offenses? Consider, as a particularly striking example of this paradox, the case of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. At the time of writing, Khan continues to languish behind bars in the high-security Adiala Jail, incarcerated on charges stemming from one of the more than 200 cases that have been filed against him in various courts around the country. Many (though not all) of these cases allege corruption or related forms of financial impropriety. Khan’s incarceration might prevent his candidacy in Pakistan’s upcoming elections. But if he is permitted to run, he is expected to win easily. If Pakistanis detest corruption—as all evidence suggests that they do—then what explains Khan’s overwhelming popularity, notwithstanding the numerous and serious graft-related investigations ongoing against him?

The answer—which may shed light on this puzzle in other contexts as well—is rooted in the politicization of judicial proceedings and the long-term effects of recurrent corruption allegations in politics. 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.

Continue reading →