A DIRE MOMENT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

This Dangerous Moment In The Fight Against Corruption

Based on an address to the Meeting  of the Commonwealth Caribbean Association of Integrity Commissions & Anti-Corruption Bodies 

Presentation by Frank Vogl.       These are extended excerpts of a presentation given on February 25, 2025, that provide a broad summary of just where we stand in the global fight against corruption today. The focus of these remarks are on justice, trust and democracy, the shattering of the U.S. anti-corruption machinery by President Trump, economics, money and crime, war and corruption – and the inspiring example of courageous campaigners for integrity, transparency and accountability.     

Ladies and ​gentl​emen​, it is an honor to again have the opportunity to participate in a gathering that I last addressed back in March 2016.  I am inspired by remarks made to this gathering at your conference in June 2024 by the Chair of this meeting, Lady Avril Anande Trotman-Joseph, who stated:  “In our work, we need to understand that corruption is about life, living, human propensities and behaviours.  Therefore a comprehensive societal approach must be adopted with emotional intelligence along with the data supported by the artificial intelligence, to realise effective integrity, accountability and anti-corruption.”

Justice

Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, who has been a victim of Chinese oppression, wrote in his memoir, “1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows,” that: “When administrative power is unlimited, when the judiciary is subject to no scrutiny, when information is shielded from public view, society is bound to operate in the absence of justice and morality. Corruption of the judiciary is the public face of a morally bankrupt body politic, a scar disfiguring the era in which we live.”

 Across the world the political winds are in the backs of those who seek to place themselves above the law. Authoritarianism is on the rise​ and democracy in many countries is more deeply challenged than at any time since the end of World War Two. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, less than eight percent of the world’s population lives today in countries that are full democracies. The United States, for example, is ranked as a “flawed democracy.”

 In May 1993, a few friends established Transparency International, which today is the largest anti-corruption non-governmental organization with national chapters in more than 110 countries. Our initiative more than 30 years ago, has helped to spawn hundreds of civil society groups, instit​utions, investigative journalism organizations,​ and academic researchers. In 1998, I helped to establish the Partnership for Transparency Fund, which has provided technical support to dozens of civil society organizations in many countries as they have implemented anti-corruption projects and programs.   TI and PTF have made important contributions, yet while the anti-corruption movement on a global basis has never been larger, it have also never been more threatened.

 Trust and Democracy

 Last week, in a court case in New York on the legal basis for the existence of a State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, a judge ruled that the Commission has legal authority.  Judge Rivera wrote: “The state has a paramount interest in promoting public trust in government by ensuring impartial enforcement of the ethics and lobbying laws and the act furthers that goal.”

 Indeed, public trust in government is paramount, yet in many countries, trust in government is broken. Opinion polls last year in the United States, for example, showed that almost two-thirds of Americans do not trust their government to deliver on its election pledges, majorities do not see the government as either accountable or transparent and, according to a poll by the Partnership for Public Service, 74 percent consider the government to be corrupt. In the U.S., tens of millions of voters flatly ignored the powerful warnings that Donald Trump planned to establish a dictatorship. Their sense of corruption in government and distrust of government influenced them to hurl aside the incumbent Democrats irrespective of the threats to democracy that Trump posed. In the election in Germany this week the political parties on the extreme right (AFD) and the extreme left (Die Linke) won almost 30 percent of the vote, while the two most established parties (the CDU and the SPD) failed to secure a combined 50 percent – the vote is just the latest example of widespread disenchantment in once strong democracies in the established pro-democracy political parties.

 Corruption’s Impact

 Corruption continues to trap hundreds of millions of people in absolute poverty, stimulating wars and violence and environmental destruction. One consequence is that today over 100 million people are displaced from their homes and their countries. In scores of countries, sexual corruption is creating some of the worst humanitarian tragedies where powerful men demand sexual favors, rather than cash bribes, and where law enforcement and the courts ignore the crimes.  Corruption is robbing so many people in so many countries of their basic freedoms – notably the freedom to live a life of dignity.

 I fear that the immediate future will see the fight against corruption challenged more than at any time since Transparency ​International and PTF were established in the 1990s. This is a dire moment in the global fight against corruption.

Trump Administration Actions

 There have been – and continue to be – actions taken by the Administration of President Trump that amount to a tsunami rushing across the landsc​ape of anti-corruption. Never before in my lifetime has the independence of the judiciary and the legal system been more broadly under attack in ways that are unfolding in Washington DC.

 In the last four weeks, President Donald Trump fired 18 Inspectors General, dismissed the top lawyers in the main branches of the U.S. armed forces, halted investigations and prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,  effectively terminated investigations of U.S. financial institutions by the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau, so signaling to these institutions that now, perhaps, they have lower risks in cheating their customers.  Deregulation is going to be a priority for all U.S. agencies that regulate business and finance.

President Trump sought to close the US Agency for International Development which, among other programs, has supported anti-corruption civil society organizations across the globe and independent journalists willing to take great personal risks to expose corruption. We have seen – and we are seeing – the dismantling of a vast amount of the U.S. anti-corruption governmental machinery that has provided global leadership.

 At the same time, President Trump is striving to control the media while bluntly attacking the mainstream media, from the leading television networks to even the Associated Press. This assault on free speech will gather momentum.

 By the mid-1990s, Boris Berezovsky had emerged as one of the most powerful men in Russia, owning the giant Sibneft oil company, and, more importantly, controlling ​the country's main television channel, ORT and other media. He did a deal with then ​President Boris Yeltsin – vowing to use his media to massively support Yeltsin’s election campaign in 1996 in return for even bigger business opportunities for himself. Yeltsin won that election. At the time Berezovsky was the politically most influential of the new Russian oligarchs. By the way, he fell out of favor with Putin, and fled to the UK where he died under mysterious circumstances.

Today, Elon Musk is the most powerful American oligarch. He controls the largest social media channel, X, which he deploys to support President Trump. In exchange, Musk’s sprawling business empire obtains exceptional government access and influence – and, in time, contracting opportunities. At his inauguration, Trump placed the heads of X, META, Google and Amazon, in the fro​nt row. These oligarchs have vast media control that Trump values because, as every autocrat knows, media control is second only​ in importance to control of the institutions of justice, in defeating opposition and centralizing political power.  

 Never before has a U.S. President surrounded himself in his Administration with so many billionaires, each with great business interests that can explicitly profit from governmental actions. There is no reason to believe that conflict of interest rules will be enforced. They are able to weaponize authority and so monetize power.

President ​Trump has placed three of his most loyal supporters in the positions of U.S. Attorney-General, Director of the FB​I, and head of national intelligence with control over the 18 U.S. government intelligence agencies. You will also recall that in a stunning decision last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a U.S. president could not be criminally prosecuted for any official act while in office. It did not define the term official act. It places the president, in many respects, above the law.

 In many countries today there is an onslaught against free speech, freedom of assembly, and the key pillars of democracy. The U.S. government, that once sought to be a model for all nations, is becoming a model for graft, conflicts of interest, cronyism, and kleptocracy.

Corruption is universal. The Corruption Perceptions Index reflects corruption in government and it so often appears that the Western industrial democracies are so much “cleaner” than most other nations. We constantly need to look at corruption through a wider lens, taking into account, for example, money laundering. After all, Denmark is once again in the new CPI the top ranking country with a score of 90 out of 100. Yet, the country’s largest bank, DanskeBank, perpetrated the largest single set of money laundering crimes in history. It used a small bra​nch office in Estonia to launder over $235 billion of dirty cash, most​ly from Russia and Belarus, into Western financial markets.

 Economics & Corruption

 Let us talk economics – the dismal science that poses intense corruption challenges. Fundamental distortions in the structures of national economies, and in global economic systems trap billions of people in poverty, promote economic inequality, and reduce economic growth. Increasingly, these factors are leading failing governments with vast external debts, to turn to Russia and China for security assistance in return for political influence and access to key areas of the economy, often including natural resources. President Trump’s destruction of the “soft” power promoted by USAID will strengthen the global reach and influence of both Russia and China.

The global economic system consists of three parts: the formal economy, the informal economy, and the secret economy. The latter embraces tax evasion, money laundering and other transnational financial crimes, as well ​as the vast area of counterfeit trade.

Many citizens of the world’s poorer countries are trapped in the informal economy​ where governmental regulations are set aside, where labor conditions are violations of human rights, where companies do not pay taxes and where extortion of the poor – petty corruption – i​s widespread.

Meanwhile, in many countries​, including those where the formal economy dominates, we find rising gaps in wealth distribution, which produces resentment and frustration and deepening distrust of government. In the United States alone, one-half of all households – 60 million households – have combined total wealth that is just one-fifth the total wealth of the top one percent.[1]

The inequalities of wealth and income are also reflected​, for example, in terms of gender, education, ​housing ​and access to healthcare​, that are matters for concern. It would be false to ascribe these realities primarily to corruption, and yet in many countries it is a contributing cause of significance.

Conditions of inequality are worsened by the opportunities that the individuals processing the greatest amount of personal wealth and economic power may well use their money to influence political decisions in ways that run counter to the broad public interest.   ​This is what is happening in the U.S. today as President Trump pushes for tax cuts for the wealthy and business contracts for the new American oligarchs, as well as for himself and his family. The current U.S. budget process may lead to severe cuts in programs that support the least fortunate Americans, while adding benefits for the most fortunate. The wealth gap will widen – trust in government will fall even further.

 Money-Crime & Corruption

 Let us talk about money and organized crime. From the earliest days of formal banking, back in Sienna, Italy, in the 14th century, there was profound concern about the morality of financial dealings. At that time, the governors of the city state commissioned the artist, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, to paint great murals for the opulent city council chamber.  His large frescoes, that you can visit today, are titled The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. 

Banks came into existence to finance governments. ​They still do that, but they do many other things and, overall, many banks in their zeal to maximize profits, have ignored the concerns of the governors of Sienna. Greed dominates. The major U.S. banks recently reported that 2024 saw absolute record profits. Several of the banks award record compensation to their top executives. Yet, the banks are lobbying very hard for governmental deregulation, so that they can make even bigger profits, add to top compensation, while taking increasing business risks that could result in a crisis even worse than the Great Recession of 2008/09.

 The banks are the essential vehicles for the transfer of funds across national borders – today as much as $3 trillion dollars of illicit cash is moved through the dark corridors of banking on behalf of kleptocrats, their cronies and criminal networks.

As the Panama Papers revealed, a considerable portion of this dirty money is sheltered through so-called holding companies, many registered in the Caribbean, that are not bound under law to disclose their true ownership. With the passage of the Corporate Transparency Act in the United States a few years ago, and similar laws and regulations in many other countries demanding disclosure of beneficial ownership of these holding companies, there is hope that the businesses and individuals behind the dirty money transfers will be unmasked. This could be significant, but ​effective enforcement in the U.S., the U.K., Switzerland, and the European Union, is far from certain.

I wrote a book called “THE ENABLERS”[2] that examined the roles of the lawyers, bankers, accountants, real estate firms, auction houses, and assorted financial consultants, who enable organized crime and kleptocrats alike to move staggering amounts of cash across the world into safe investments. As the Trump Administration reduces its focus on corruption, so I worry that the enablers will be even more active and ever-more prosperous.

Corruption & War

 Let us talk about war. Corruption is a contributing cause of so much of the violence and war that now abounds. In Sudan, rival armed forces are killing staggering numbers of civilians and more than 14 million refugees, so far, are victims. Russia and the United Arab Emirates and prime suppliers of money and arms fueling the war, while taking home natural resources including gold.

 Control of vast natural resources is a prime cause of the terrible war ranging in the Congo, where armed forces back​ed by Rwanda are taking control of vast land areas, as thousands are beimng killed and tens of thousands are being displaced.

 The horrendous war in the Middle East, ignited by Hamas, accompanied by Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, resulted from vast financing from Iran in particular – finance that reached the terrorist organizations via complex dirty money transnational networks, including increasing uses of crypto-token exchanges.  in the Middle East since the Hamas attacks on Israelis in October 2023. Hamas based in Gaza, Hezbollah based in Lebanon, and terrorists in Yemen, are primarily backed by Iran.

And right now, in yet another terrible war zone, we are seeing President Trump striving to extort fully $500 billion of assets from Ukraine – it is the bluntest, shameless, example of corruption and war.

Conclusion

There are important anti-corruption gains. For example, a vicious kleptocratic regime was ousted in Bangladesh. But then the last election was stolen by President Maduro in Venezuela. Yes, the former chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign ​Relations Committee, Senator Robert Men​endez, was successfully tried for taking bribes from the Government of Egypt. But then Trump’s Justice Department did a political deal with the Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, that resulted in all corruption charges against him being dropped.

At this dire time and one where the tides of corruption are flowing so forcefully, how can I remain an optimist?

Over time we shall win. I do not underestimate the forces of greed and crime and the malign ambitions of authoritarian regimes and would-be dictators. Yet, I encourage you to be inspired by the courage in one country after another of individuals who are committed to a better world where integrity, transparency and accountability are the norm.

Recall, for example, that in mid-October 2016, the Public Prosecutor in South Africa, Thuli Madonsela, as she ended her term of office released a report: “State of Capture – Report on an investigation into alleged improper and unethical conduct by the President and other state functionaries relating to alleged improper relationships and involvement of the Gupta family in the removal and appointment of Ministers and Directors of State-Owned Enterprises resulting in improper and possibly corrupt award of state contracts and benefits to the Gupta family’s businesses.”

The “State Capture” report was key to the downfall of President Zuma, to the ending of the business empire in South Africa of the Gupta brothers. It led to the extensive hearings of the Zondo Commission run by the country’s chief justice that exposed a vast array of corruption by Zuma, his cronies and business partners.

Across the world there are activists striving to speak truth to power. Many of them face enormous risks. Last year, I visited Malta and saw a memorial to Daphne Caruana Galizia who was blown up in her car in 2017 for her fearless journalism to expose organized crime and political corruption. Her sons and others have demonstrated great skill and courage in investigating her murder, assisting in exposing the criminals and building on Daphne’s work to expose corruption at the highest political levels.

We must remember the many individuals who have been murdered by governments because they called for justice. Then, we must be encouraged by the many individuals and organizations across the world who right now are undaunted and who are campaigning for the values that this conference rightly places at its center.

In the early 1960s, a young black man from Alabama, emerged as a fearless​ leader of the American civil rights movement and he became a leader over decades in the U.S.​ House of ​Representatives until his death at age 80 in 2020.   I want to quote from his memoir because he refused to back away from the fight, knowing like all of you that justice is of paramount importance.

John Lewis wrote: “Some people have told me that I am a rare bird in the blue sky of dreamers. I believed innocently and profoundly as a child that the world could be a better place…I have survived the worst aggression, all the attacks mounted against dreamers to stamp out the light that they see. I have been rejected, hated, oppressed, beaten, jailed and I have almost died only to live another day. I have witnessed betrayal, corruption, bombing, lunacy, conspiracy, and even assassination – and I have still kept marching on.”

Thank you. We must all keep marching on.

The following is an excerpt from a 2016 speech to a Caribbean forum organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Urgency and Opportunity: Working to Clean Up Caribbean Corruption

March 09, 2016 in London, England

Ladies and gentlemen it is an honor to be with you today at the start of this conference. We are gathered, as the king declares in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “in the corrupted currents of the world.”

We are here to find paths to enhance coordination and partnership within the Commonwealth to turn back those corrupted currents and build public trust in the ability of governments to promote transparency, accountability and justice.

Transparency International (TI) is a global non-partisan, not-for-profit, civil society organization with more than 100 national chapters across the world – and of course in this country and region too.  We are constructive partners wherever possible with other NGOs, with business and government in the common quest to combat corruption in all its forms – the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain.

I am especially honored to have been invited here by the Commonwealth Secretariat. About 23 years ago I sat down in London with a New Zealander, Jeremy Pope, then the General Counsel of the Commonwealth Secretariat to try and convince him to consider joining TI.  Jeremy was our founding Managing Director and played an enormous role in defining what TI should be and would become. By the way, in 2000,[1] Jeremy and I co-authored an article for the World Bank/IMF journal on the roles of anti-corruption agencies - ACAs.

The United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) supports the existence of independent bodies established through national legal systems to enforce, implement and promote anti-corruption policies and principles. A well-functioning oversight mechanism with a focus on anti-corruption is vital for good governance. Transparency International embraces ACAs as natural partners in our common cause.

Today, I want to leave you with three central thoughts on this topic:

First, anti-corruption commissions and other similar bodies dedicated to cleaning up graft are essential – the political and economic costs of continuing corruption are intolerable;

Second, we have seen two decades of increasing cooperation among a rising number of players across the world around the central objective of eliminating corruption and the tempo of cooperation is increasing formidably;

And, third, we have enormous opportunities to build on the progress and so work jointly as partners to forge outcomes that benefit all peoples.

My greatest concern relates to corruption and human security.

Last year in Zimbabwe, a 7-year old girl was raped. The rapist paid the local police to avoid arrest. Only after the intervention of my colleagues at Transparency International’s Advocacy and Legal Advice Center (ALAC) in the country were investigations launched. The villain was eventually arrested, taken to court and sentenced to jail, where he died of HIV/Aids. The young girl, as well perhaps as other of his victims, has HIV/Aids today.

I could tell you many humanitarian nightmare stories. Stories about counterfeight medicines that have led to deaths as health ministry officials and their business cronies got rich. Stories about vast numbers of deaths in buildings that collapsed because the developers and construction companies bribed local official inspectors so that they could avoid basic safeguards and key standards.

So at the outset today let me underscore a crucial goal: corruption must be ended to secure the basic rights of all people and ensure a world where everyone can live in dignity.

...continued ...full text: - Presentation to the Commonwealth Anti-Corruption Commissions in the Caribbean. 

[1] In 1990, the bottom half of American households had a combined wealth of about $700 billion, while the top 0.1% held slightly more than double that at $1.8 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. Today, the bottom half of households collectively own close to $4 trillion in assets, while the top 0.1% have a combined wealth of more than $22 trillion – more than five times the assets held by the bottom half.