Tag Archives: United States

Building Political Will to Fight Corruption: American Political Pros Advice to Democratic Candidates

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A September 29 memo by The Senate Majority PAC, a group of long-time American political consultants, shows how Democratic candidates for the House and Senate can connect with voters’ disgust over corruption. While keyed to the U.S. mid-term elections, the advice should be taken to heart by those everywhere seeking to mobilize citizens or voters to fight corruption.

The memo’s most important point: Tie corruption to an immediate, current concern. Yes, corruption is inherently bad, and everyone should be against it. But what will move far more people than a simple message decrying corruption is one that links it to a current ill. In the United States, that is the growing increase in the costs of food, fuel, and other daily living expenses; hence, the memo suggests several ways candidates can amplify an anticorruption message by showing ways it jacks up prices.

A second important point, also likely effective in many settings, is to make the fight against corruption a nonpartisan issue. Explain that corruption is systemic issues and commit to take on corruption wherever it is found. An above payback politics message can be especially appealing when so many candidates’ prime reason for seeking office is to wage lawfare on their erstwhile opponents.

The corruption literature often treats the political will to fight corruption as exogenous, a fancy way of saying it originates outside the body politic.  To be sure, there are a few cases where outsiders have been critical (Guatemala when CICIG had international support, Ukraine today) but by and large the fight against corruption must be home grown (endogenous to use another ten-cent word).  The Senate Majority PAC’s memo suggests some ways it can.

Full text below.

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Republican Senator Seeks Investigation into Whether Donald Trump Jr. is Profiting Off Ties to His Father

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Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee September 21 asking it to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr., eldest child of President Donald Trump, has used his relationship with his father “for private financial benefit.”

In the letter (here), he writes that

For years, serious questions have been raised about members of presidential families using their names and proximity to the President to advance private business interests.

In a nod to fairness and bipartisanship, he asks the Committee to investigate Hunter Biden as well, but the bulk of his letter recounts the ways Don Jr. has used the family name to enrich himself. From the payment of a lavish wedding afterparty by a Russian oligarch, to his promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, the pursuit of international real estate deals, several reported investments in defense contracting.

“These reports raise legitimate questions about foreign access to members of a sitting president’s family and whether such relationships can create actual or perceived expectations of favorable treatment,” he writes. He then asks the Committee to “establish the facts, determine whether existing ethics, disclosure, or anti-corruption laws apply, and identify reforms necessary to prevent the presidency from becoming a vehicle for private enrichment by those closest to it.”

The letter is remarkable for two reasons. It puts the question of Presidential relatives trading on their link to the single most powerful individual in the modern world on the agenda at a time when it is likely to engage the public (and hence lawmakers), and it was written by a Republican. It’s unlikely the Committee will act before November, but, particularly if the Republicans suffer a major defeat in November, an investigation will surely be at the top of agenda in 2027.

Is it Too Late to Corral America’s Wealthy? Casey Michel’s United States of Oligarchy

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The discovery that Anthropic and OpenAI were able to freely roam cyberspace after escaping their sandbox triggered global alarm bells. If AI programs can break out of the electronic guardrails that prevent their running amok, there is no telling what havoc they might wreak.

Casey Michel, Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, writes about escapees from a different sandbox in the United States of Oligarchy. The escapees: members of America’s billionaire class. The sandbox: the ethics codes, social norms, and laws that constrain the conduct of America’s wealthiest.

Michel recounts the harm Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and fellow billionaires have already done while operating free of these constraints. He describes the far greater damage likely if those constraints are not soon reimposed and urges reforms to ensure the ultra-rich can never again break out.

Today’s billionaires are not the first to have slipped the sandbox’s guardrails. United States of Oligarchy reminds that the same techniques that fueled the rise of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Stanford and other nineteenth-century “robber barons” – bribes, shell companies, large campaign contributions – have helped today’s counterparts realize unimaginable levels of wealth. But there are profound, startling differences between the two. The first generation of robber barons never made common cause with autocratic regimes; their activities never compromised the nation’s security, and they never rejected the democratic ideal.

That’s the indictment Michel lodges against the current generation, plain by his subtitle: How America’s Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy.

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Legislation to Stop President, VP from Abusing Power to Steal Taxpayer Funds

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On April 15 House and Senate Democrats introduced a bill entitled Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act. Key provisions include:

  • Ban the sitting President/VP from collecting settlement payments from the United States by prohibiting the President, Vice President (VP), their spouses/children, a trust that exists for their benefit, or an entity they own or control, from collecting damages payments from the United States through a settlement or similar agreement with the government the President/VP leads.
  • Pause the filing and processing of a sitting President or VP’s administrative claims by prohibiting federal agencies from processing or fulfilling damages claims brought by the President/VP. Also, prohibit the President/VP from filing administrative claims for damages while in office.
  • Impose guardrails on the President/VP’s federal lawsuits seeking damages by only allowing the President/VP to collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public.
  • Cooling-off period during a former VP’s term as President, meaning if a former President’s VP is elected President, impose the same restrictions on the former President while the former VP is still in the White House.
  • Impose guardrails on claims by former presidents/VPs by allowing former presidents/VPs to collect damages from the U.S. government, but only if:

Link to more detailed explanation and copy of the bill here.

January 14 Webinar on the Future of the OECD Antibribery Convention

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Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf moderates a webinar this Wednesday, January 14, 3:30 pm CET, 9:30 EST, with three former Chairs of the OECD Working Group on Bribery.

Parties to the Convention commit to criminalize the bribery of foreign officials and to prosecute those subject to their law regardless of “national economic interest … or the identity of the natural or legal persons involved.” What makes the Convention so critical in the fight against global corruption is their global economic clout. Between them they account for 80% -90% of international trade and investment.  

As with any international agreement, enforcement depends on peer pressure. With the Convention that falls to its Working Group, made up of representatives from its 46 parties with an expert on international antibribery law chairing (here).

The U.S. retreat from enforcement of the FCPA (here) and the Italian judiciary’s dismissal of cases against Italian companies (here) now present the Working Group with its greatest challenge since the Convention came into force. 

What can the Group do to bring the U.S. and Italy into line?  What happens if the U.S. and Italy get away with ignoring their Convention obligations? Will other countries continue to pursue foreign bribery cases? Especially cases that might disadvantage their nationals?

Former Working Group chairs Mark Pieth, Drago Koss, and Danielle Goudriaan will offer their views on the Convention’s future and take questions from participants. Click here to register.

Trump Blares Profits, Eliciting Barely a Peep

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That was the headline on the lead story in the May 26 New York Times.

The author, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and one of Washington’s most respected journalists, reports the growing view that the Trump Administration’s corruption represents “the most brazen use of government office in American history.” In support he cites anticorruption guru and GAB favorite Michael Johnston who told him–

I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning

To quote a guru on another subject (revolution — V. Lenin), the question is now: What is to Done?

Belgian and Uzbek Governments Profit from Termination of DoJ’s Kleptocracy Unit

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Central Asia Due Diligence and the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights have identified the latest fallout from the Trump Administration’s destruction of American institutions devoted to fighting global corruption. The governments of Belgium and Uzbekistan have each pocketed $108 million in stolen assets that should have gone to the people of Uzbekistan.

In this just released paper, the two human rights NGOs explain how the demise of the Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative allowed the two governments to ignore provisions in the UN Convention Against Corruption and the principles of the Global Forum on Asset Recovery that together bar assets stolen by a corrupt official from being kept by the government of the country where the official stashed them or returned to the official’s corrupt cronies.

Lawyers for the Initiative had designed a sophisticated process (details here) to see the $216 million in bribes to former Uzbek first daughter Gulnara Karimova found in Belgian banks DoJ would go to the UN trust fund overseeing development programs in Uzbekistan. With the Initiative’s demise, the Belgian and Uzbek governments apparently saw no reason they should not divvy up the money between them.

So thanks to the Trump Administration, Belgium, one of the world’s wealthiest countries, is now $108 million wealthier, and Uzbek’s leaders, several Gulnara’s accomplices, now have $108 million to spend keeping themselves in power. Meanwhile, the citizens of Uzbekistan, GDP per capita $3,500, scrape by.

TI USA: Attorney General’s Memorandum Redirecting U.S. Anti-Corruption Efforts Raises Questions and Concerns

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Below is the statement TI US released today in response to Attorney General Bondi’s Memorandum directing federal prosecutors “to shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations that do not involve” criminal cartels and transnational crime and disbanding DoJ’s KleptoCapture Task Force and Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Congress passed the Federal Extortion Prevention Act by a wide margin and has regularly approved funding for the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. GAB shares TI USA’s concerns about the Attorney General’s Memorandum and hopes she will reconsider it as supporters in Congress, the business community, and the anticorruption community make their concerns known.

Washington, DC—On February 5, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi circulated a Memorandum to U.S. Justice Department employees with the subject heading “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations.”

The Memorandum explains the outlined changes as a step toward implementing President Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order entitled “Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

Among the changes are directives to (1) eliminate the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative (KARI); (2) prioritize Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) investigations that are related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs); (3) shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection; and (3) remove the “bureaucratic impediment” requiring that investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA or FEPA regarding foreign bribery associated with cartels and TCOs first be authorized by, as well as conducted solely by, the Criminal Division and the Fraud Section, respectively, of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Transparency International U.S Executive Director Gary Kalman issued the following statement:

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Dreaming Small: Curtailing Prop Bets to Prevent Sports Corruption

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Globally, sports betting has become the “number one factor fueling corruption in sports.” Although the United States has not been as affected by this problem as other countries (at least in modern times), the recent widespread legalization of sports betting in America—accompanied by a surge in sports gambling, especially online—might change that. Thirty-eight U.S. states now permit sports betting, and six more are considering following suit. In 2023, Americans placed roughly $120 billion worth of bets with legal sportsbooks, a near $30 billion increase from 2022, and the percentage of Americans who bet on sports has grown to 39%, up from 19% in 2022. As sports gambling proliferates, so too does the risk of competition manipulation for monetary gain. A slate of recent scandals provides anecdotal evidence that this is indeed a serious problem. For example, in 2024, NBA player Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for his involvement in a gambling scheme that included tipping off certain bettors that he would exit a game early and underperform sportsbooks’ expectations. In 2023, the University of Alabama head baseball coach was fired for providing information that Alabama would lose a certain game to a gambler who then bet on that outcome.

A comprehensive, or even global, solution to this problem would be ideal, but such a solution will likely take time to enact and implement. Regulators ought not wait. Instead, in the near term, state regulators can and should target a subset of the problem by restricting forms of betting that present an especially significant risk of competition manipulation. One area that deserves particular attention is the proliferation of “prop bets” on individual athletes at the collegiate level. Continue reading →

The Anticorruption Legacy of American Civil Service Reform

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In the waning months of President Donald Trump’s first term, he issued an executive order that could have drastically reshaped the U.S. federal bureaucracy. The order created a new federal government job classification with far fewer civil service protections, called “Schedule F.” While most career civil servants in the U.S. federal government are protected from politically motivated firings and cannot be fired without cause, under Schedule F, employees “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” could be fired without following standard civil service procedures. With Trump now set to reassume power, Schedule F is back on the table, threatening to take away employment protections from potentially hundreds of thousands of federal employees and making it easier to fire civil servants for purely political reasons.

Commentators have pointed out the potential negative effects of Schedule F on administrative capacity, government performance, and accountability. But another key reason to be skeptical of Schedule F is that it represents a step backwards in the history of American civil service reform, which has its roots in 19th century anticorruption movements. Civil service independence and merit-based hiring came about in response to endemic corruption in the federal bureaucracy. The anticorruption history of the American civil service holds important lessons for modern civil service reformers, both in the United States and elsewhere.

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