US Makes Fight against Corruption Global

* Introduces visa restriction, sanctions, others to deny corrupt actors access to ill-gotten wealth

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The United States of America (USA) has described corruption as a cancer that is spreading beyond national and regional borders requiring deliberate and concerted efforts by countries of the world including international agencies to nip in the bud.

According to the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the
U.S. State Department, James Walsh, corruption wherever it is found enables all forms of criminality, particularly transnational crime. 

Walsh disclosed that since corruption impedes investment, stifles economic growth, hampers government services and allows for criminality to flourish, the United States has started leveraging on diplomatic and foreign assistance tools to support preventative measures and criminal justice
responses to promote the enforcement of international anti-corruption obligations, and to strengthen domestic anti-corruption laws, institutions and regulations. 

Speaking at a Foreign Press Centers’ Anti-Corruption Virtual Reporting Tour, Walsh said that the President Joe Biden administration has not only made the fight against corruption a national security priority, but is beginning to partner with international organizations, governments, civil society and the private sector to checkmate the menace of corruption.

“As I noted earlier, we are increasing our focus on the transnational dimensions of corruption.  Through the multilaterally-supported Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, is substantially scaling up support to strengthen collaboration between investigative journalists and civil society to expose transnational corruption, drive policy reforms, and increase accountability for corrupt actors.

“Additionally, the department, in partnership with the Departments of Treasury and Justice, launched a Democracies Against Safe Havens Initiative, or DASH, at the Summit for Democracy.  This initiative will work to build partner-government capacity to deny corrupt actors the ability to hide ill-gotten gains, to encourage like-minded partners to adopt anti-corruption sanctions and visa restriction regimes and to detect and disrupt complex corruption schemes,” he said.

Other initiatives, he said, included the introduction and support for reforms to make information about the true ownership of legal entities more transparent and accessible to law enforcement.

 Speaking on the topic, ‘How U.S Agencies are Coordinating Efforts to Fight Corruption,’ the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary stated that the United States has also advanced effective implementation of its international asset recovery obligations through transparent and accountable returns of proceeds of crime, adding that while the country has targeted over $3.4 billion in corruption proceeds, it has “confiscated over $1.7 billion of these assets and returned – and assisted in the return of over $1.6 billion to victim countries. 

“Now these are funds taken out of the hands of criminals and kleptocrats, and they go back to these countries to support the schools, roads and hospitals
that they need”.

Also speaking, the Executive Director of USAID’s Anti-Corruption
Task Force, Shannon Green, noted that when money gets siphoned off through shady procurements, roads and schools do not get built. 

“When public officials are bribed to turn a blind eye to poaching or pollution, local economies get destroyed and the soil and groundwater on which those communities rely gets spoiled and become unusable,” she said.

Green disclosed that USAID is now prioritizing the fight against corruption because it weakens democracy and subverts the entire notion that government is meant to make decisions and to work on behalf of the public good. 

According to her, when candidates in an election are bankrolled by foreign corrupt interests and democratic institutions captured by kleptocrats, citizens lose faith in their government and increasingly in democracy itself.

“And so that is why, at USAID, we are taking on this issue with such vigour, answering the call when reformers are experiencing a historic opening and having the backs of our partners when the political winds shift.

“At the same time, as PDAS Walsh mentioned, we are grappling with a threat that has significantly evolved in recent decades.  So while we’re still seeing corruption as a pervasive local challenge in the many countries in which USAID works, as with everything else, corruption has become globalized.  Corruption today is a vast, networked and pernicious problem that
knows no boundaries.  

“And so for us, addressing that kind of transnational threat requires building new pathways for collaboration with the journalists, activists, small and medium enterprises and government supporters that USAID partners with and supports, but also internally within the U.S. Government,” she said.

While emphasizing that the war against corruption can only be won through a collaborative and coordinated approach, Green charged journalists, media representatives and civil society groups to “shine a light on dark money and help push for accountability for those who have engaged in corruption in order
to create lasting change”.