perspective

The war against corruption: Why corruption is winning

Transparency International has published its annual Corruption Perceptions Index and, for once, I think this rather tiresome survey of how likely various countries’ public officials are to be crooked has something important to tell us. Generally speaking, the CPI spends its time informing us that poor countries have worse governance than rich countries, which is not a very useful insight. What it fails to do is tell us that a significant reason for this fact is that rich countries make it very easy for poor countries’ rulers to steal from their subjects, obscure the theft, and spend the proceeds on property in Mayfair, Miami or St Moritz.

But I do think it’s important that, this year, influential Western countries are sliding down the rankings: the United States has dropped to its lowest-ever score and last year’s crackdown on independent media and judges haven’t even been reflected in that score yet. “We’re seeing a concerning picture of long-term decline in leadership to tackle corruption,” noted TI. “Even established democracies, like the U.S., UK and New Zealand, are experiencing a drop in performance. The absence of bold leadership is leading to weaker standards and enforcement, lowering ambition on anti-corruption efforts around the world.”

Hopefully, TI’s index and its grave conclusions will help galvanize opposition to the pro-oligarch policies that are infesting the world, and help to stave off oligarchical takeover in places that are still doing okay. That is, I suppose, valuable. 

Still, I haven’t changed my opinion that the Corruption Perceptions Index should be abolished. It is absurd that Hong Kong is ranked as the 12th cleanest jurisdiction in the world, while China — the country it exists to loot — is 76th. Just as ridiculous is the position of the United Arab Emirates at 21st in the list, considering its growing role as a lynchpin of global kleptocracy, including from Russia (ranked a lowly 157).

The United Kingdom may have fallen to 20th but that is still far too high for a country that, by its own admission, launders a hundred billion pounds a year. That’s equivalent to the entire GDP of Kenya, which is down at 130 in the list.

You simply cannot understand corruption on a country-by-country basis because kleptocracy is a globalized phenomenon, and anything that suggests you can — particularly something so crude as a league table — is too misleading to be useful. 

Talking about multijurisdictional wizardry, check out this report from the FACT coalition on how U.S. companies structure their affairs. Thanks to new accounting rules, it is possible to see how and where U.S. corporations pay tax. Some of the results are pretty remarkable: Boeing pays more tax in Germany than in the United States; Tesla pays only $28 million to the U.S. Treasury, fully 27 (!) times less tax than it pays in China.

Of course, a large chunk of these companies’ profits barely get taxed at all, but instead are routed to countries that treat them generously, of which Ireland, the Netherlands, Bermuda and Singapore are particular standouts. 

The fact that this information is disclosed is good, because it allows ordinary citizens to see how big companies win special treatment, and hopefully thus increases public pressure for fair taxation. I would not therefore be at all surprised if some skilled and energetic lobbyists are right now working very hard to make sure the disclosures end as soon as possible.

Of course, you do not need to leave the United States to obtain complicated corporate structures, as shown in this recent piece from Bloomberg, about how the Russian oligarch, party-goer and billionaire Suleiman Kerimov opened a Delaware-based trust to, er, manage assets held by a Liechtenstein-based foundation but originating from his business empire in Russia, where he remains a member of the upper house of parliament. But then Kerimov was sanctioned in 2018 for what the first Trump administration called “worldwide malign activity”. He was specifically accused of bringing millions of euros into France in suitcases, using it to purchase villas, and evading taxes on them (there’s no school like the old school).

Despite the sanctions, Kerimov continued to benefit from the trust, according to Bloomberg. But the Treasury Department has gradually been catching up with everyone involved: a $216 million fine for a venture capital firm in June; an $11.5 million settlement from a private equity firm in December; and a $1.1 million fine for an attorney around the same time.

I’d like to say that hopefully this will focus minds on the majesty of sanctions and the importance of complying with them. And there are certainly some — such as the excellent folks of Collectif Sassoufit who are campaigning against corruption in Congo — who want the United States to designate more people, since justice can’t be obtained at home. I, however, think it’s time to have a serious reconsideration of Western over-reliance on sanctions, particularly in the light of the way that the United States is using them now. 

If you want an example of what I mean, consider the case of Kimberly Prost, an impeccably-credentialled Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court who was sanctioned because the White House didn’t like the way she’d authorised investigations into U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan (other ICC staff were also sanctioned for investigating other alleged American and Israeli transgressions), and who suffers repeated indignities as a result. “I have an e-reader,” she said. “it’s not even an American product, but for some reason, I assume tied to the payment, I’d purchase books, I’d start to read them and then they’d disappear.” You just, she admitted, “sort of end up using cash a lot.”

Frivolous sanctions like this are just driving countries to find ways around the restrictions (it’s notable that banks in Canada, the UK, and the Netherlands are happy to keep serving her, and it seems unlikely they’d be doing that without permission from their respective governments) and, in decades to come when genuine criminals can bank with impunity, future generations will despair at how U.S. governments wasted the powerful weapon that was their dominance of the global financial system.

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