Tag Archives: Ukraine

Ferreting Out Kleptocrats’ Buddies: The Ukrainian Solution Part I

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Every kleptocrat needs a buddy.  Someone to serve as an intermediary between the corrupt official and the bankers, real estate agents, and others in London, New York, and elsewhere happy to profit from handling dirty money.  A kleptocrat can’t just walk into a bank or real estate office in the United Kingdom, the United States, or other preferred offshore haven with a pile of money to invest.  As a public official, the antimoney laundering (AML) laws would oblige the banker or real estate agent to ask searching questions about how the kleptocrat came into the money and the law would likely also require them to report the transaction or proposed transaction to the authorities.  A buddy, particularly one who has remained out of the public limelight, is the perfect solution.  So long as they don’t know a potential customer is close to a senior public official, the banker or real estate agent meets their obligation to ascertain the source of the would-be customer’s funds by asking a few pro forma questions.

To plug the buddy loophole, the AML laws require banks and real estate agents to determine if anyone wanting to do business with them is a “close associate” of a senior official — a “politically exposed person” in the inelegant term coined by AML specialists.  If a potential customer is a PEP, the bank or real estate agent must ask the same searching questions about the origins of the individual’s funds that they must ask of a senior official.  Recognizing that bankers and real estate agents can’t be expected to know whether a foreign national wanting to do business with them is a close associate of a senior official in 190 plus countries, AML regulators allow them to rely on one of the several PEP lists peddled by commercial firms.  So long as the potential customer doesn’t appear on whatever PEP list they use, the banker or real estate agent need not conduct a detailed inquiry (“enhanced due diligence” in AML-speak) into where their money came from.

So how well do these commercial PEP lists do at identifying kleptocrats’ buddies?  Continue reading →

U.S. to Honor Corruption Fighters from Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Malaysia, and Ukraine

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Afghanistan NGO leader Khalil Parsa, Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, Guatemalan judge Claudia Escobar, Malaysian civil society activist Cynthia Gabriel, and Ukrainian investigative journalist Denys Bihus will share the 2017 Democracy Award for their work promoting democracy in their countries.  Bestowed annually by the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. democracy promotion agency, the ceremony will be held June 7 at the U.S. Capitol.  Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and the House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will both speak.

This year’s award is significant for three reasons.  In the wake of concerns Trump Administration rhetoric has raised about America’s commitment to human rights and democracy, Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi’s participation is a reminder that a strong, bipartisan consensus on these basic, universal values remains deeply embedded in U.S. political culture.  Second is the recognition by the National Endowment, perhaps the world’s leading advocate of democracy, that the fight against corruption is an essential element in building a democratic state.  Finally, the award is one more sign that those fighting corruption at home are not alone, that the international community supports them and stands with them.

More on the ceremony, biographies of each recipient, and the National Endowment’s democracy promotion work here.

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 →

When Should Countries Outsource Key Anticorruption Functions to Foreigners?

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Partly because of previous work I’ve done (with Sofie Schütte of the U4 Centre) on specialized anticorruption courts, I recently had the opportunity to participate in some interesting discussions in Kiev about ongoing debates about the possible the creation of such a court for Ukraine. There’s much to say on this topic generally, but what most and surprised me about the discussions I was fortunate enough to attend was how much they focused on a specific proposal—advanced by certain influential members of the Ukrainian civil society community—for the international donor community to participate (indirectly but formally) in the selection of the judges to serve on this court. There are a few different proposals floating around, but I’ll focus on the version embraced by a draft law currently pending in the Ukrainian Parliament. Under this proposal, judges on the special anticorruption court would be chosen by a nine-member Judicial Selection Committee. Of these nine members, three would be appointed by the President, three would be appointed by the Parliament, and three would be selected by the international donor community. (Formally, the last three would be appointed by the Minister of Justice, but that’s a formality: According to the proposal, the Minister of Justice would be obligated to consult with the international donor community and to appoint the three individuals that they recommend.)

For some in the civil society community, this feature of the proposal is absolutely essential, and they fear that without a formal role for the international community in the judicial selection process, the anticorruption court will be a failure. Others feel equally passionately that formalizing a role for international donors in the selection of special court judges is deeply misguided, and will jeopardize (both politically and legally) the special court experiment. I don’t know nearly enough about Ukraine’s specific situation to have an informed view on this one way or the other. But the proposal seemed sufficiently novel and interesting to be worth contemplating more generally. After all, though to the best of my knowledge there’s no precedent for what the draft Ukrainian law proposes, it’s not unheard of for countries to “outsource” (for lack of a better term) aspects of the law enforcement apparatus that most countries most of the time would consider core functions of the state, particularly in the context of anticorruption or closely related matters. (Probably the best known example is CICIG in Guatemala, in which a UN-sponsored body, headed by a non-citizen, has substantial investigative—though not prosecutorial or adjudicative—powers.) Is this an approach that more countries should adopt—for their investigators, prosecutors, or even their courts?

Again, I don’t have a terribly strong or well-informed view on this question, so this isn’t one of those posts where I’m going to take an aggressive, argumentative stand. I’m still thinking this through myself. But I figured that since this question might be of interest to others as well, I’ll offer a few thoughts on the possible advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing some or all of a state’s core law enforcement functions. I’ll think about this mainly in the context of anticorruption, though many of the arguments would apply more generally.

Long story short: I can think of two big potential advantages for this sort of outsourcing, and four countervailing drawbacks. Continue reading →

London Anticorruption Summit–Country Commitment Scorecard, Part 2

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This post is the second half of my attempt to summarize the commitments (or lack thereof) in the country statements of the 41 countries that attended last week’s London Anticorruption Summit, in four areas highlighted by the Summit’s final Communique:

  1. Increasing access to information on the true beneficial owners of companies, and possibly other legal entities, perhaps through central registers;
  2. Increasing transparency in public procurement;
  3. Strengthening the independence and capacity of national audit institutions, and publicizing audit results (and, more generally, increasing fiscal transparency in other ways); and
  4. Encouraging whistleblowers, strengthening their protection from various forms or retaliation, and developing systems to ensure that law enforcement takes prompt action in response to whistleblower complaints.

These are not the only subjects covered by the Communique and discussed in the country statements. (Other topics include improving asset recovery mechanisms, facilitating more international cooperation and information sharing, joining new initiatives to fight corruption in sports, improving transparency in the extractive sector through initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, additional measures to fight tax evasion, and several others.) I chose these four partly because they seemed to me of particular importance, and partly because the Communique’s discussion of these four areas seemed particularly focused on prompting substantive legal changes, rather than general improvements in existing mechanisms.

Plenty of others have already provided useful comprehensive assessments of what the country commitments did and did not achieve. My hope is that presenting the results of the rather tedious exercise of going through each country statement one by one for the language on these four issues, and presenting the results in summary form, will be helpful to others out there who want to try to get a sense of how the individual country commitments do or don’t match up against the recommendations in the Communique. My last post covered Afghanistan–Malta; today’s post covers the remaining country statements, Mexico–United States: Continue reading →

Guest Post: “Global Cities–Joining Forces Against Corruption” Conference Recap, Part 2

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Jennifer Rodgers and Gabriel Kuris, the Executive Director and Deputy Director, respectively, of the Columbia University Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI), have provided a two-part series of guest posts summarizing CAPI’s conference on “Global Cities–Joining Forces Against Corruption”, which we previously advertised on GAB. This is the second of the two posts. (Part 1 can be found here.)

The CAPI “Global Cities” conference featured two speakers who discussed their own experience working to promote strong municipal anticorruption enforcement, though there could hardly be a wider gulf in the circumstances they currently face. Commissioner Mark Peters of the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) talked about about his office’s strong history of combating not only corruption but waste and mismanagement in NYC government, and Lev Pidlisetskyy of Ukraine’s Parliament gave an inside account of the incredible challenges his brand-new political party faces in fighting the massive and entrenched corruption left over from the Yanukovich era by instituting reforms in the judiciary, decentralizing authority, and engaging the public through new transparency tools

The panel discussion on “Engaging the Public: Mobilizing Citizens, Civil Society, and the Media” looked at the how cities can effectively partner with outside entities to better fight corruption. Athanasios Tsiouras of the Athens Mayor’s Office described Athens’ sophisticated and award-winning online platform for disbursing important information and collecting citizen complaints. Jose Ramon Amieva of the Mexico City Mayor’s Office spoke about major efforts to streamline local government processes like obtaining permits and licenses. And Fuad Khoury, the Comptroller General of Peru, discussed his office’s unique Young Auditors Program, which enlists students and teachers nationwide to help root out corruption, waste, and inefficiency. Dick Dadey, of Citizens Union of the City of New York, provided a civil society perspective, encouraging city governments to utilize networks of good government groups to make change. And Jeri Powell of New York City’s DOI took a historical view, emphasizing the importance of gaining the public’s trust in fighting corruption.

The next panel, “Game Changing Cases: An Inside Look at Breakthrough Investigations” featured prosecutors from all over the world discussing some major law enforcement successes, as well as the challenges they confront. A leading prosecutor from Venice explained a highly successful case in which 50 defendants, including a sitting mayor, were arrested for corruption offenses. New York federal prosecutors generated a lively discussion by describing a bribery case against a sitting state legislator, charged after another legislator agreed to cooperate with authorities and wear a recording device during his interactions with his colleague. A leader from the Catalan antifraud office described working on a variety of cases that help local officials build their own integrity systems. And a Malaysian prosecutor explained how a major case, built up during an extensive and lengthy investigation, was derailed by a defendant’s suicide while in custody.

Finally, “Ensuring a Clean Clean-Up: Fighting Fraud in the Wake of Disaster” provided an illuminating and instructive look at corruption risks related to major events that city governments should plan for to avoid making a bad situation worse. A member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana spoke about how his office got up and running in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and what they would do differently today. Steve Lee, the Acting Director of the Department of Consumer Affairs of New Jersey, drew practical lessons from what kinds of consumer frauds his office has handled since Hurricane Sandy. And Alan Brill from Kroll provided a fascinating look at how easily criminals can steal unwitting citizens’ identities by setting up bogus free wifi sites, and how we can better protect ourselves against this kind of fraud.

From Perth to Barcelona, from Lima to Toronto, cities have become crucial battlefields in the fight against corruption. The citizens of the world’s growing urban majority are demanding fair and honest services from local governments, putting cities on the vanguard of public integrity enforcement and innovation. CAPI’s inaugural Global Cities conference made a compelling case that the international anticorruption community can learn from the voices of the local practitioners, policymakers, and public citizens working to clean up city halls worldwide. Interested readers can learn more about the conference from the online  videos, presentation slideshows, and other conference materials. And don’t forget to register now for CAPI’s upcoming online discussion forum on which we’ll soon be dissecting what we learned at Global Cities in greater detail with the participants!

Guest Post: “Global Cities–Joining Forces Against Corruption” Conference Recap, Part 1

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Jennifer Rodgers and Gabriel Kuris, the Executive Director and Deputy Director, respectively, of the Columbia University Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI), have provided a two-part series of guest posts summarizing CAPI’s recent conference on “Global Cities–Joining Forces Against Corruption”, which we previously advertised on GAB. This is the first of the two posts.

CAPI’s “Global Cities” conference brought together delegations from 14 cities across six continents to discuss the corruption challenges in urban settings and new ideas for reform. Videos of each speech and panel, presentation slideshows, and other conference materials are now available online. The discussion will continue on an online forum launching soon on the CAPI website, and those interested in participating in these online exchanges should feel welcome to register now. CAPI plans to periodically reprise the conference, with a shifting roster of cities, to build a coalition of cities on the vanguard of fighting urban corruption.

The conference commenced with keynotes addresses by the mayors of two historic cities working to boost transparency and public trust: Miguel Ángel Mancera of Mexico City and Giorgos Kaminis of Athens. Both mayors emphasized the empowerment of everyday citizens through new oversight mechanisms, cooperation with civil society, and emerging technologies—like Athens’s online budget monitoring tool. Both cities are also working to streamline legal regulations and public procedures, whether through Athens’s one-stop shops for citizen services or Mexico City’s legal reforms in public procurement and property registration.

The first panel, “The Shifting Landscape of Urban Corruption: New Challenges, New Approaches” examined the corruption issues cities currently face worldwide. Leaders of Western Australia’s Corruption and Crime Commission discussed their development of a “Misconduct Intelligence Assessment” tool to track the dynamic corruption risks of the modern boomtown of Perth. Chicago’s Inspector General spoke about emerging challenges such as the increasing prominence of quasi-governmental entities, the changing role of money in politics, and the grey areas of “legalized corruption.” Leaders from the anticorruption agencies of Catalonia and Kenya discussed the intersection between corruption, civic ethics, and public procurement.

The second panel, “Comeback Cities: Restoring Integrity after a Corruption Scandal”, covered the efforts of Toronto, Philadelphia, and New Orleans to break out of ceaseless cycles of scandal and clean-up to build resilient structures of oversight and civic cultures of lawfulness. Toronto’s Accountability Framework pioneered a new integrity model in a city reeling from a procurement scandal. Philadelphia’s Inspector General helped the city recover from high-level corruption so rampant the FBI wire-tapped the mayor’s office. Federal oversight is helping New Orleans to finally overhaul its notoriously corrupt police department. At the end of the panel, Frank Anechiarico of Hamilton College brought in comparative experience from Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and New York City from the volume he co-edited about city-level anti-corruption structures, Local Integrity Systems.

The third panel, “Bridging Political Boundaries: Partnering with National and State Government”, provoked some of the conference’s most engaged discussions. An aide to the mayor of Lviv, Ukraine, discussed how local activists whose reforms were frustrated by corruption at the national level helped upend national politics. Delegates from Nairobi and Chicago discussed collaboration between federal, regional, and local levels of law enforcement. Finally, GAB Senior Contributor Rick Messick brought an international-level perspective, emphasizing the counter-intuitive benefits of competition, rather than cooperation, among overlapping levels of government.

In our next post, we will summaraize the conference’s other speeches and panels, on topics ranging from the fight against corruption in post-Maidan Ukraine to the risks posed by cybercrime rings when cities host major events.

Corruption Reform in Ukraine: Too Much, Too Soon?

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On October 26, Ukrainians headed to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections that international observers labeled free and fair. On the eve of this election, the Economist nicely summed up the precariously fragmented Ukrainian state in a cartoon: a Ukrainian maiden, in the grips of a snake labeled corruption, fending off a menacing Russian bear. Indeed, corruption has plagued the functioning of the Ukrainian government on multiple fronts. Aleksandr Lapko wrote about corruption in procurement that leaves conscripted Ukrainian soldiers without the proper equipment to fight the separatists: in his words, “corruption can be as deadly as a bullet.” Former President Viktor Yanukovych’s ill-managed estate stands as a monument to both the corruption that riddled his former government and to the hopelessness of many Ukranians, Lapko included, in solving this seemingly intractable problem.

Ukraine’s leadership is eager to shed this troubled legacy of corruption and remake its government in a new, more European image. Obama hailed the October 26 elections as a positive step in that direction. President Petroshenko called out corruption as the nation’s central concern in his inaugural address to the new Parliament on November 26. Unfortunately, Ukraine seems to be following in Russia’s and other corruption-plagued countries’ ill-fated footsteps in its quest to distance itself from the post-Soviet corruption plague. By attempting to do too much to fight corruption with untested, newly created institutions, Ukraine may ultimately end up doing too little. Continue reading →