Corruption

According to the Nigerian media, the Department of State Security Services (DSS) arrested seven judges over the weekend for corruption and is planning to move against an additional eight. Among the seven are three supreme court justices. The arrested judges are to be arraigned in court yesterday and then released on bail. The media reports that the DSS carried out the arrests in its characteristically rough manner: according to Leadership (Abuja) “Gun-wielding DSS and police operatives had on Friday night and in the early hours of Saturday swooped on the residences of senior judges, breaking doors and threatening to harm their family members and aides.” The move against corrupt judges is already a political football. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Nigerian Bar Association are accusing the Buhari administration of attacking the independence of the judiciary. The PDP accuses the Buhari administration of “selective prosecution” in its campaign against corruption. Abubakar Mahmoud, president of the Nigerian Bar Association has declared “a state of emergency.” He characterized the arrests as “unconstitutional" and a “Gestapo-style operation” that violated the constitutional separation of powers. The governing All Progressives Congress (APC) has countered by denouncing the PDP’s effort to associate President Buhari with the arrests. President Buhari said that the arrests were an attack on corruption, not the judiciary. He also said that that he would not undermine judicial independence. “The recent surgical operation against some judicial officers is specifically targeted at corruption and not at the judiciary as an institution.” Parts of the judiciary are notorious for corruption. According to the media, the DSS stated on October 8 that it had recovered more than N93 million (approximately $306,000) and $530,000 in cash from three of the arrested judges. However, it remains to be seen whether the DSS has the power to arrest judges. Claims that DSS methods at the time of arrest were rough and “disrespectful” are credible, given the frequent pattern of behavior of the security services.

On September 21, 2016, Amnesty International (UK) issued a report profiling human rights abuses by Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The elite police unit was established to respond to a spike in violent crime. The Amnesty report, based on some forty interviews, includes extortion, torture and other ill-treatment of prisoners, and theft of valuables from suspects. Amnesty concludes that a SARS assignment is popular because officers know “they can earn a substantial amount of money in a short time.” This latest Amnesty report is similar to others that have profiled police abuse. Credible complaints about police abuse date back to the colonial period. Root causes include bad recruitment practices, poor training, bad equipment, salaries that are too low, and a sclerotic judiciary that tempts officers to take justice into their own hands – resulting in extra-judicial killing. Most Nigerians at present appear to be alienated from the police, as they always have been. The Buhari administration is committed to reform of the security services. In 2015, the inspector general of police split SARS in two, in part to address human rights abuses. According to the media, at the time, the deputy inspector general said that the inspector general “is doing a lot to ensure that human rights abuses are corrected.” SARS officers are supposed to receive special training in human rights. More generally, the Buhari administration has revised military rules of engagement to mitigate civilian abuse, and there is at least one court martial underway. Implementation of reform, however, takes time and can often be halting, as the Amnesty report shows. Reform of the police and the other security services is intrinsically difficult, especially now with the Abuja government facing Boko Haram in the northeast, a renewed insurgency in the Niger Delta, and ongoing ethnic and religious conflict in the middle belt. Compounding the problem is the fall in government revenue with the international decline in the price of oil.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has frozen U.S. dollar bank accounts that former Nigerian First Lady Patience Jonathan claims are hers. The total value of the accounts is worth $31.5 million. She has applied to the Federal High Court in Lagos to unfreeze the accounts. Many Nigerians, including the Nigeria Labour Congress, are asking how she accumulated $31.5 million in the first place. It is hard to see how Patience Jonathan could have piled-up such a large amount of money. Now fifty-eight years of age, she is Nigerian-university educated, and has taught off and on and held various civil service jobs in her oil-rich native state, Bayelsa. She went into banking in 1997. When her husband, Goodluck Jonathan, became deputy governor of Bayelsa, the governor made her the state’s permanent secretary, the pinnacle of the state civil service. The appointment was widely criticized as she had no obvious qualifications for the post, and had been out of the civil service for years. After her husband became chief of state, she was known for her arrogance and imperiousness, and she is widely disliked. As first lady, she insisted on the use of the title of “Dame.” (There is no provision for a first lady in the Nigerian constitution; the wife of the current president calls herself ‘Mrs. Buhari.’) She also made political blunders. Shortly after the Boko Haram kidnapping of the Chibok school girls, in a meeting with community leaders, she accused them of fabricating the abduction to give her husband’s administration a bad name. Stories circulate that she collected fees for access to her husband. At present, she is in London, ostensibly for medical treatment. As is often the case with grand corruption at the top in Nigeria, the details are murky. According to the media, some of the accounts were opened in the names of Patience Jonathan’s domestic servants, who had no access to them. Her lawyer claims that $15 million of the frozen money was paid by the Nigerian state for her medical treatment in the UK. Because she is so widely disliked, there is always the danger of leaping to conclusions. Nevertheless, judging by the media and social media, most Nigerians regard her as guilty. With his wife under investigation and facing likely arrest should she return to Nigeria, the corruption issue is getting close to former President Goodluck Jonathan. But moving against the former president, who remains popular in the predominantly Christian south and east, could pose special challenges for the Buhari government. The average Nigerian is very poor, poorer still with the current state of Nigeria’s economy. They have little access to quality health care while elites almost always go abroad for medical treatment. Patience Jonathan’s expensive ‘treatment’ is typical of the corruption Nigerian elites are often known for. Popular indignation over corruption under Patience’s husband played a major role in Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in the 2015 presidential elections.

FIFA Investigates Its Own Corruption A year after the United States and Switzerland went after top FIFA officials on fraud, money laundering, and racketeering charges tied to a $150 million corruption scheme, soccer’s international governing body is taking actions itself. The federation fined former vice president Jeffrey Webb $1 million for accepting bribes and banned him for life from the sport. It also opened an investigation on former President Sepp Blatter and two top associates for bribery, corruption, and conflicts of interest, including adding several illegal provisions to their contracts—boosting their combined salaries to over $80 million, and guaranteeing them eight years of pay even if fired for just cause. FIFA’s new dynamism may begin to restore its tarnished reputation, and the information it uncovers could help U.S. and Swiss prosecutors with their own ongoing criminal cases. Romania Steps Up Anticorruption Efforts, the Maldives Falls Back Romania’s and the Maldives’ paths are diverging in the fight against corruption. Last week, Romanian prosecutors showed their independence and resolve by charging former Prime Minister Victor Ponta with abuse of office for influence peddling, for nominating a media mogul to parliament in exchange for financing Tony Blair’s 2012 visit. (Ponta resigned last year amid protests over a separate corruption case.) Ponta’s problems follow the interior minister’s resignation over a pending investigation into alleged embezzlement and abuse of power. In contrast, Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen responded to an Al Jazeera documentary exposing his role in a $1.5 billion money laundering scheme by raiding the offices of a local newspaper and human rights NGO. With a cowed judiciary and a stifled press, it is unlikely the increasingly repressive president will face an investigation any time soon. Corruption Fuels Conflict in South Sudan A new report from advocacy organization The Sentry documents how South Sudan’s leaders have looted the country throughout three years of brutal conflict that has displaced 2.5 million and left even more destitute. President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar have stoked ethnic fighting and killings while making millions from illegal stakes in oil, mining, telecoms, construction, and defense companies. With the ill-gotten proceeds, their families and cronies purchased luxury cars, flew in private jets, and bought lavish properties in Australia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. The United States—South Sudan’s largest donor—can help hold these leaders accountable by imposing sanctions, cracking down on money laundering, and helping to seize and return assets.

Central America Takes on Corruption  Central American judiciaries have been stepping up to fight corruption. Last year Guatemala’s attorney general’s office, working closely with UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), took down then-President Otto Pérez Molina for stealing tens of millions of dollars in customs duties. Pressured by civil society, the Honduran government agreed to a similar Organization for American States (OAS)-backed body, the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), to investigate graft after $200 million disappeared from the country’s social security system. And El Salvador’s new Attorney General Douglas Meléndez, sworn in at the start of the year, is prosecuting several high-level officials and former officials with unexplained millions in their bank accounts. While this week’s asylum in Nicaragua for former Salvadorian President Mauricio Funes and his family is a potential setback, the cases themselves represent a sea change in justice for Central America’s Northern Triangle. Maduro Undermines Checks on Power   On September 1st hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets demanding a recall referendum on President Nicolás Maduro before the year ends (this timing would ensure that his vice president doesn’t replace him). The government responded by kicking out foreign journalists, imprisoning members of the opposition, and this week by rejecting the authority of the legislature. The Supreme Court annulled all acts passed by the National Assembly since July 28, when the legislative body reinstated three lawmakers, giving the opposition a supermajority. These steps further diminish the potential for a peaceful democratic solution to the deepening political, economic, and humanitarian crises the nation faces. China’s G20 Ignores Corporate Secrecy At China’s G20 summit, member countries took a step back on the past years’ push to pierce secrecy around shell and anonymous companies. At the UK Anticorruption summit in May, six countries—including two G20 members—pledged to set up public registers of companies’ true owners, joining twenty-nine others that maintain and share the information among governments. Last year, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron promised to publish information on UK properties owned by foreign companies and used to launder an estimated $100 billion each year. And at the 2014 G20 conference, members agreed to take steps including requiring “know your customer” rules for banks. These issues didn’t make the Chinese G20 anticorruption agenda, which focused on asset recovery and repatriation of fugitives—central concerns for China’s domestic anti-graft program instead of the broader global anticorruption agenda.

South Africa’s minister of police reports that the country’s murder rate increased by 4.9 percent from March 2015 to March 2016. That is more than fifty people killed every day. Official statistics show 142.2 sexual offences per day in the same time period, a slight reduction that likely is due to under reporting. South Africa’s population is estimated at approximately fifty-three million. These statistics are appalling, but some context is needed. South Africa’s murder rate is by no means the highest in the world: according to NationMaster, which has compiled data from the UN and various census reports, South Africa ranks fifteen per capita, behind (among others) Honduras (one), Jamaica (four), Uganda (eleven) and Malawi (twelve). Tanzania, with about the same population as South Africa, ranks twenty-three; Nigeria, almost four times as large in population, ranks fifty-nine. Other types of crime in South Africa are also up: carjacking’s increased by 14.3 percent and house robberies by 2.7 percent. South Africa has the best official statistics in Africa. Nonetheless, as elsewhere, murder and rape are probably under reported. As always, when comparing crime statistics from one country to another, there are definitional and other issues. Nevertheless, the NationMaster ranking is a rough indication of how countries stack up against each other. The police minister, Nathi Nhleko, attributed the rise in the murder rate largely to domestic violence and alcohol abuse. He said, “What it says about us South Africans is that we are violent, we have a prevalent culture of violence. It’s not about what the government can do, it’s about what we can do. It’s a huge societal issue that we have to deal with.” South Africans are deeply concerned about the prevalence of a culture of violence. That concern played a role in the commentary on the Oscar Pistorius killing of his girlfriend Riva Steenkamp. It is also a concern in the United States. On the NationMaster list cited above, the United States ranks ninety-nine, much lower than South Africa’s rank, and about mid-way on the list. But, especially in cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, and Chicago the murder rate is likely much higher.

After nearly nine months, Brazil’s impeachment drama is over. The process ended on a curiously subdued note: the Senate’s questioning of Dilma Rousseff on Monday was a staid affair, and Tuesday’s speeches were calculatedly calm and measured. By the time the Senate began to vote today, Rousseff’s removal was a foregone conclusion. But the civilized, even boring, proceedings obscured an important objective of this week’s debates: shaping the historical narrative that will guide each side’s supporters over Michel Temer administration’s next twenty-eight months in office. On the Senate floor, Rousseff and her defenders stuck tenaciously and defiantly to script: the fiscal pretext for impeachment was weak and no previous president had been held responsible for the same errors; the economic crisis was not her doing but the result of international circumstances she could not control; and she herself never personally benefitted from the corruption that took place during her presidency. Rousseff was impressive, showing all of the qualities that led President Lula to choose her as his successor: attention to detail, intense message discipline, and an unwillingness to cede any ground. Most important to the Workers’ Party (PT) narrative, she returned over and over to the theme that when they lost at the polls in 2014, “sectors of the economic and political elite” began conspiring against her. By her account, the impeachment battle had its origins in Rousseff’s principled refusal to bargain with the former Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha, who is deeply enmeshed in his own bribery scandal but has yet to be removed by Congress. Rousseff was supported from the wings by twenty former ministers, her predecessor and mentor Lula, a number of PT bigwigs, and the starpower of crooner Chico Buarque. The opposition, meanwhile, hammered home the depth of the economic, political, and moral crises Brazil faces. They honed in on the narrow text of the impeachment petition—premised on arcane minutia about unauthorized spending and improper loans to the government by state banks—but also sought to show that the transgressions for which she could have been impeached were much broader. They repeatedly reminded Rousseff of the bait-and-switch between the lofty promises made during her 2014 campaign and the austere policies that were actually implemented during her second term, made grand statements about the usurpation of legislative functions by her administration, and noted that almost all of the costs of her fiscal maneuvers were borne by taxpayers. They repeated the now well-trod line that if Rousseff was not complacent with corruption she must be incompetent, and noted that while Rousseff was not personally enriched by corruption, her presidential campaign was financed by ill-gotten means. Most important to their long-time narrative about the legitimacy of impeachment, they noted that all three branches of government were represented at the Senate trial, and that by her very presence, Rousseff was acknowledging the legitimacy of the impeachment process. What sort of golpe is this, they asked, in which the defendant has the right to self-defense? They were supported from the wings by a handful of youthful leaders from the street protest movement. Whatever the arguments, what best explains the impeachment vote is exhaustion. It has been a turbulent three years since the first street protests erupted in July 2013, and many Brazilians simply want the political crisis to go away. In a poll published by Istoé magazine over the weekend, nearly two-thirds of Brazilians said that if they were senators, they would vote to see Rousseff go. That doesn’t mean that Temer is beloved: when asked who should govern Brazil, more than a third (35 percent) of those polled spontaneously responded that they would choose neither Temer nor Dilma. There is also a solid core of opposition, with 30 percent opining against Dilma’s impeachment. But by and large, Dilma had lost much of the public support she had when elected two years ago, and the Petrobras scandal appears to have greatly diminished her mentor Lula, whose ratings continue to decline as police and prosecutors close in on his family’s questionable dealings. What comes next for Brazil? This blog has repeatedly noted the importance of legitimacy to Brazil’s impeachment process. The PT narrative of golpismo by neoliberal forces on the right was artfully deployed by Rousseff and is likely to be a core message of the PT in coming years. This drumbeat will keep Temer and his coalition on the defensive, while turning attention away from the Rousseff administration’s own failures and the PT’s involvement in the corruption scandal. Temer has been playing a complicated game since he became interim president in May. On the one hand, he has been trying to keep the rowdy impeachment coalition in check, promising whatever he could offer to wavering supporters. On the other, he and Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles have been trying to convince investors that the economic team has a coherent plan for recovery that will come together when the political stars align. These dueling priorities were especially evident in the renegotiation of state debts, where investors’ cautious support for an emergency renegotiation lapsed into disappointment as Temer made repeated concessions to state governors in exchange for political support. Temer’s Janus-faced approach may also have reached a natural limit: the PSDB and the DEM parties in late August threatened to withhold support if Temer moved forward on planned wage increases for the judicial branch, which might have earned him short-term political support from some sectors, but would have cascading effects throughout the civil service and a brutal impact on the rapidly deteriorating fiscal results. Now that he is confirmed in the presidency, Temer will be under pressure to commit to the fiscal reforms that were impossible while he was a temporary stand-in. The challenge is significant, in at least three regards. First, the left’s criticism of the new government’s “neoliberalism” will limit what Temer can realistically achieve on the fiscal front. Temer seems to be aiming for a constitutional cap on spending that will promise hard choices about spending in the future while providing his administration some credibility gains in the present. But even this middle of the road solution will be politically difficult, requiring changes to constitutionally guaranteed health and education budgets. The second major reform would be to social security, reducing special privileges for some professions and raising the minimum retirement age, in an effort to cut one of the largest areas of government expenditure and expand on reforms undertaken by Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula. So far, the details of these reform proposals are nebulous, but they are likely to become more concrete by November, and the opposition will pillory Temer for even the slightest proposed change in social spending. The second major challenge is that the timetable for reform is remarkably short. All political oxygen between now and the end of October will be sucked up by the 2016 municipal elections, and then again during much of 2018 by the presidential election. These two contests will be the most wide-open elections of the post-1985 democratic era, in light of new restrictions on corporate contributions, the effects of the corruption scandal, the weakening of the two most important parties in the Brazilian party system (the PT and the PSDB), and the widespread “throw the bums out” sentiment expressed by voters. The field for the presidential race will begin to form by late 2017. As a consequence, the reform calendar is essentially restricted to fourteen months between November 2016 and late 2017. Considering that many less controversial constitutional reforms have taken much longer, and that so many different political actors will be angling for advantage as they look ahead to 2018, Temer will have a tough slog. The third major constraint is the ongoing Lava Jato investigation, and political scandals that keep popping up around it. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Temer’s coalition is held together at its core by a pragmatic and ideologically malleable center—“Centrão”—that is unsympathetic to the Lava Jato investigation and the increasing power of prosecutors and judges. I wrote recently about recent moves to dilute accountability reforms in Brazil, with support from actors across the political spectrum. These pressures seem likely to build, if only because so many different political forces are under threat. Temer has already been forced by public pressure to dismiss three ministers caught up in various scandals, he himself has been mentioned by witnesses in the Lava Jato investigations, and he is still the subject of an electoral court case investigating the financing of the 2014 Rousseff-Temer ticket. Meanwhile, disgraced former Chamber President Eduardo Cunha has not gone away, and the mid-September vote on his removal will be a bellwether of how well legislators have understood the lessons of voter anger. Concurrently, the progress of a plea bargain by Marcelo Odebrecht, scion of the construction fortune, has already led to allegations of illegal donations to candidates across the political spectrum, from the PT through Temer’s PMDB to the PSDB. It is symptomatic that despite the low-legitimacy moment, Temer has not dared to suggest a political reform that might change some of the perverse incentives that have led to the campaign finance abuses that fueled the Petrobras scandal. There is little prospect that Lava Jato or any of the many other parallel investigations will go away any time soon. The upshot is that the prospects for constitutional reform under Temer are limited. As is so often the case in Brazil, much change will therefore have to be incremental and will take place within the government bureaucracy, rather than through Congress. The shifts underway at Petrobras and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) are good illustrations of where things may be headed, with reprioritization of strategic objectives, asset sales, and general belt-tightening taking place far from the legislative melee. Meanwhile, Temer will be engaged in a mission to build his statesman credentials, including a trip to the G20 meeting in China today, followed by a big speech on Brazil’s independence day, September 7, and then the UN General Assembly. All along the way, expect him to be trailed by challenges to his legitimacy, in the form of celebrity protests, catcalls, and street demonstrations. A new political battle has just begun, to define Brazil’s trajectory after thirteen years of PT rule.

A month after the governing African National Congress (ANC) lost heavily in South Africa’s municipal elections, the party is at war with itself. From my perspective, the struggle is between democratic reformers who want to restore public confidence in the ANC and win back lost voters, and those around President Jacob Zuma who are seeking to preserve their patronage networks based on publicly owned enterprises and sleazy contracts. An effort, apparently orchestrated by the president’s allies, if not the president himself, is underway to remove Pravin Gordhan, the well-regarded treasury minister. (Gordhan has sought to introduce a wide range of reforms in the publicly owned enterprises.) But, the heart of the matter is not the treasury minister or government contracts but rather control of the ANC in a period of leadership change. President Zuma must leave office in 2019, if not forced out earlier. Sometimes a comedian captures well where a society or an institution is in a period of political turmoil. ‘Evita Bezuidenhout’ has done so in An Open Letter to the ANC published in the Daily Maverick. Evita is a character created by Pieter-Dirk Uys, an actor probably most famous for his performances in drag. In the days of National Party domination, her performances were a send-up of the absurdities of apartheid. Now, she has turned to the ANC. Her letter is full of sly jokes and is thoroughly entertaining. But, she also makes serious points: “‘What do people think of when they see a fat politician in parliament?’ They immediately think of a thin voter. And many ANC voters are poorer and thinner than before.” With respect to the municipal elections, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) performed well, and the mass of voters “proved they have learnt a lot in the last 21 years.” She won’t leave the ANC because many in the party “are still working hard to keep the country more or less balanced.” She will not abandon the ANC to “ambitious and charismatic comrades focused on getting the most for themselves… They are ruthless and successful because they know that as loyalty to the president is paramount, no one will dare challenge their thievery in the public arena.” She closes by recalling that during the transition to non-racial democracy, the National Party under F.W. de Klerk “did something no one would expect.” She calls on the ANC to do the same now. Perhaps she is hinting at ANC “recall” of Zuma from the presidency – but she is not explicit. Drag performers are popular satirists in South Africa, with a long tradition of outrageous criticism that is tolerated by the powers that be. Like Evita, the Australian Barry Humphries character ‘Dame Edna” is also popular. Pieter-Dirk Uys, who is openly gay, is also widely celebrated in South Africa for his role in popular HIV/AIDS education.

Harvard’s inimitable Matthew Stephenson this week published a thought-provoking blog post comparing anticorruption efforts in Asia and Latin America. Crudely summarizing Stephenson’s argument, a few years ago many looked to Asia as the gold standard in anticorruption efforts, in part because of the success of independent and effective anticorruption agencies (ACAs) in the region. But recent news of political meddling with Hong Kong’s ACA, brazen kleptocracy in Malaysia’s state development fund, and efforts to water down reform in Indonesia all suggest that the pendulum is swinging in a less positive direction. By contrast, Stephenson is optimistic about the important gains made in recent years in Latin America, including by Guatemala’s International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG), Brazil’s Car Wash investigation, elections in Peru and Argentina that highlighted voter frustration with corruption, and Mexico’s “3 out of 3” reforms. As Stephenson was careful to note, it is dangerous to generalize across regions. The on-the-ground details in each country get in the way of blanket statements about how regional anticorruption efforts are playing out. I agree, and I would go further. An additional caveat that the anticorruption community should keep in mind—even while celebrating successes—is that the effectiveness of anticorruption efforts is only really evident over the long haul. This is in large part because by their very nature, anticorruption reforms tend to generate significant pushback. Anticorruption reforms are never really complete: even independent and well-functioning institutions can decay over time, under pressure from the powerful interests that benefit from, and are empowered by, corruption. Incipient anticorruption reforms are even more vulnerable to regression. Latin America has indeed been making enormous strides forward in recent years, under a remarkable set of homegrown anticorruption campaigners, but resistance appears to be building against those who would reform the system. In recent years, a cautiously optimistic story could be told about Brazil, in light of the incremental anticorruption gains of the past generation. But recent developments suggest that these gains are under threat. Clientelistic parties and opponents of reform in both the Rousseff and Temer administrations have introduced proposals—both via decree and through legislation—that would weaken prosecutors and judges and considerably undermine the transparency of court cases, institute a tax amnesty law for repatriation of foreign holdings, restrict corporate leniency agreements, and limit plea bargaining. Although some of these proposals are framed as a seemingly reasonable effort to block the “abuse of authority,” they would have a chilling effect on the nascent—and still very uncertain—efforts to tackle corruption in Brazilian politics. Equally important, a set of necessary anticorruption reforms pushed forward by prosecutors, and placed on the legislative agenda with the support of 2 million citizens, has been stymied by congressional foot dragging. Acting president Michel Temer, who has now been mentioned twice in the Car Wash investigation, has adopted what is at best an ambiguous attitude toward anticorruption efforts, appointing a cabinet that is staffed by a number of unsavory characters, and failing to exert even an ounce of energy in support of reform. In Guatemala, the UN-backed CICIG is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. The easy criticism is that due to the presence of an international body like CICIG, Guatemalan institutions have not been under pressure to reform themselves. This is too facile, if only because there was never any sign that Guatemala’s institutions would be able to reform on their own, and CICIG’s presence seems to have empowered Guatemala’s prosecutors. The remarkable former attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, moved against some of the most powerful figures in Guatemalan history, and the prosecutorial service has gained new staff, prestige, and resources. Yet the genocide case against former president Efraín Ríos Montt was overturned by the high court, and there are fears that the court might be similarly timid in addressing corruption charges against former President Pérez Molina and his vice president. Meanwhile, President Jimmy Morales has been slow to build on anticorruption successes, and in fact, the early days of his administration have been marked by a surprising willingness to compromise with questionable elites. One of the few barriers to regression has been the mobilization of the Guatemalan public, which has encouraged the appointment of a few reformers in the Morales administration, and which will be essential to ensuring the success of a planned judicial reform package to be drafted later this year. In Mexico, the “3 out of 3” reforms were a huge deal, not least because for months they seemed to be destined for the trash bin, after Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) legislators delayed their consideration and then attempted to sink them with a poison pill. As my colleague Shannon O’Neil pointed out, voter concern with corruption was one of the driving forces behind the PRI’s historic loss in the June gubernatorial elections, and the effort to move forward on the reforms may have been the PRI’s attempt to get out ahead of the corruption issue before the 2018 presidential elections. Yet just this week, news has emerged of the Mexican first lady’s luxurious vacation digs in Key Biscayne, which it now turns out are owned by a company that will be bidding for Mexico’s port business. This after another contractor sold the first lady her $7 million Mexico City mansion in a controversial transaction two years ago. Old habits die hard, even though public asset disclosure requirements in “3 out of 3” were aimed at curbing exactly this type of abuse. There is no reason to be a sourpuss. Latin Americans should be justifiably proud of the remarkable gains of recent years, and Stephenson is right to point out their relative success compared to the current backsliding in Asia. But the common thread running through the recent Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican country experiences is the importance of citizen engagement: without public pressure, politicians tend to revert to old practices. Before he became one of the most famous judges of all time, Sérgio Moro wrote an academic paper on the Mani Pulite investigations of corruption in Italy, which noted that “judicial action against corruption is only effective with democratic support.” He concluded this after observing that when public attention turned away from the corruption investigations in Italy, politicians did all they could to make prosecutors’ lives more difficult: they strengthened evidentiary protections, decriminalized accounting fraud, reintroduced parliamentary immunity, and reduced statutes of limitations in corruption cases. It is probably unrealistic to expect Latin American publics to remain engaged on anticorruption: at some point, there may just be too much bad news, or the news may be too destabilizing to everyday governance, or the corruption effort will be seen as a partisan crusade, or the news that there is corruption in high places will no longer galvanize a weary public. Efforts to eradicate corruption will always be a game of inches, and the politicians who would like a return to the old status quo in Latin America have only just begun to fight.

This post was co-authored by John Campbell and Allen Grane, research associate for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Many friends of South Africa’s post-1994 “non-racial democracy” have seen developments within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), especially under Jacob Zuma, as threatening the open political system based on the rule of law. So long as voting was largely determined by racial identity, the 80 percent of South Africa’s population that is black seemed to ensure that the party would remain in power indefinitely. The White, Coloured, and Asian minorities supported the Democratic Alliance (DA), but together they are not large enough to constitute an alternative to the ANC, except on the provincial level. (The DA has long dominated predominately Coloured and White Western Cape.) The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which calls for an assault on White “privilege,” were largely confined to the townships. Especially under Zuma, internally the ANC appeared to be moving away from grassroots democracy and toward greater centralization under party apparatchiks, with a focus on “Lithuli House” (the ANC party headquarters in Johannesburg), rather than constitutionally mandated government institutions, often referred to as “Union Buildings” (the seat of government in Pretoria). Patronage, often with a criminal dimension, seemed to flourish under Zuma and his close associates. The disreputable Gupta brothers with their apparent goal of “state capture” (to win contracts) and business ties to Zuma’s son became the ANC’s face. However, the August municipal elections appear to signal the end of monolithic ANC domination of South African political life, and any threat of one-party rule is receding. Post-1994 ANC rule is being replaced by the emergence of coalition politics that have the potential of opening the political process and also of imposing a greater degree of political accountability on elected officials than in the past. At least some voters appear to be moving away from voting according to racial identity and toward issues of government policy. Hence, the August elections appear good for South Africa’s “non-racial” democracy. The chart below shows the swing to the DA and the EFF and away from the ANC. (The totals are never 100 percent because of numerous minor parties.) The data for this graph is found on the website of the electoral commission of South Africa here: http://www.elections.org.za/ South Africa’s largest cities are the heart of its economy and part of the modern world. Up to now, the ANC dominated the municipal governments in Tshwane (Pretoria), Gauteng (Johannesburg), eThekwini (Durban), and Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth). The DA dominated Cape Town. Now, however, in most of the major cities, coalitions will be required to produce a majority. In Gauteng, where the ANC won the most votes but not 50 percent plus one, the EFF appears to have the upper hand, and a coalition between the center-right DA and the radical EFF cannot be ruled out. Indeed, there could be many strange bedfellows: there is talk of a possible coalition between the Freedom Front, a White, Afrikaner minor party, and the EFF in hitherto solidly ANC Limpopo province. In general, EFF spokesmen are ruling out coalition arrangements with the ANC. There remain questions that can only be answered following in-depth analysis of the election results. Did in fact significant numbers of blacks abandon the ANC? Or, instead, did they stay home while White, Coloured, and Asian turnout soared? (This seems unlikely, given that turnout was at least 58 percent.) The DA did well, but can its rate of growth be sustained? The EFF did not do as well as had been widely predicted. Nevertheless, it did increase its share of votes. Finally, the National Union of Metal Workers, a large, wealthy trade union, has deep support in Nelson Mandela Bay, a center of South Africa’s automobile industry. It has mooted the establishment of a “responsible, left-wing” new political party for the 2019 national elections. Such a new party could have a significant impact on the future of all three of the major parties that contested in 2016.

Rachel Brown, Sherry Cho, Lincoln Davidson, Bochen Han, Theresa Lou, and Gabriella Meltzer look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. China and Russia to hold “routine” naval exercises in the South China Sea. China’s Ministry of National Defense announced on Thursday that China and Russia have scheduled cooperative naval exercises in the South China Sea for September. While China also stated that the naval exercises will be aimed at strengthening Russian-Chinese cooperation and are not directed at any other country, the announcement comes at a time of intensified strain between China and other Asian nations due to rival claims in the South China Sea. Following an international arbitration ruling rejecting Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged bilateral talks between Beijing and Manila over the territorial dispute. Reportedly, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has recently indicated to Mr. Kerry that Beijing seeks to “move away from the public tensions and to turn the page” and resolve tensions through direct dialogue with the parties concerned. Despite this indication of Beijing’s interest in defusing regional tensions and Chinese statements that the drills are targeted at furthering Russian-Chinese strategic partnerships, it is likely that just like previously conducted joint naval exercises in the Sea of Japan, many will construe this as an effort to restrict the influence of the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. 2. Top Hong Kong anticorruption investigator removed. Following the resignation of Rebecca Li, the acting head of the Operations Department at Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), speculation has swirled as to the future of the ICAC’s neutrality. Li’s removal surprised many as she had spent thirty-two years at the commission, earning praise for her work and even becoming the first person from the agency to be sent to an FBI training program. While the nominal reason for her departure was non-political and related to her performance, some suspected that the change was due either to a lack of trust in her by Chinese officials or to her role in investigating a corruption case involving Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong’s chief executive. Li had been leading the case investigating whether Leung had improperly taken funds from the Australian company UGL. The commissioner of the ICAC claims that the chief executive had no involvement in the decision to remove Li, but the fact that Leung selects the ICAC commissioner and the Chinese government approves the choice has fueled further suspicion. Li is expected to be replaced by Ricky Chu Man-kin. Her removal met much internal opposition and even caused the cancellation of the ICAC’s annual dinner since so many employees planned to boycott. While the ICAC is respected globally for its effectiveness and independence in addressing issues of graft, this turmoil could indicate weakening autonomy at a time when concern in Hong Kong is already mounting over the freedom from mainland Chinese interference in other media and educational institutions. 3. China’s strict condom policies make sex workers vulnerable to HIV. Asia Catalyst, a New York–based nonprofit that promotes civil society and health of marginalized groups in Asia, released a report this week that sheds light on China’s ineffective HIV prevention policies. China’s HIV prevalence is relatively low, with roughly 500,000 people reportedly living with HIV or AIDS at the end of 2014 out of a total population of 1.4 billion. The country’s epidemic is primarily concentrated among high-risk groups such as gay men and sex workers, with 92 percent of cases resulting from sexual intercourse. Sex work is illegal in China, and the Ministry of Public Security categorizes condoms as a “tool of offense” for prostitutes. Among suspected prostitutes, police authorities view condom possession as evidence of illegal activity and precedent for arrest or penalty. As a result, only 48 percent of surveyed prostitutes previously interrogated by police carry condoms, compared to 68 percent of those with no prior encounters with law enforcement. Asia Catalyst is encouraging the ministry to desist condom search and seizure and to decriminalize prostitution, instead working alongside the sex worker community to prevent HIV transmission. 4. Beijing tightens information control. The Chinese government took major steps forward in restricting news outlets that are not state-owned this week, enforcing regulations that ban original reporting by private media. The government shut down Sina, Sohu, and NetEase this past weekend for violating the rules. While the crackdown may have been a direct response to reporting of flooding in northern China that has killed dozens, it also fits into a general trend towards greater state control of the information space. Over the last two weeks, the Chinese government has increased scrutiny of online live-streaming platforms, accusing them of hosting “vulgar” content that “challenges the baseline morality of society.” This week, the Chinese Communist Party released an “informationization” strategy that aims to make the country a cyber superpower by mid-century. While its primary goals is to make China technologically self-reliant, it also has implications for China’s domestic media controls and international propaganda. Responding to reporters’ questions at a press conference announcing the policy document, Cyberspace Administration of China Vice Director Zhuang Rongwen said that the strategy encourages Chinese online media companies to expand their presence in Hong Kong, a move that seems aligned with or inspired by Chinese tech mogul Jack Ma’s purchase of Hong Kong’s leading English-language paper last year. 5. Chinese demolition work on Buddhist monastery sparks controversy. Larung Gar, a Buddhist monastery home to ten thousand monks, nuns, and laypeople located in the Tibetan county of Sertar in Sichuan province, is currently undergoing government-mandated demolition efforts that aim to eradicate quarters for all but five thousand residents by 2017. Two competing narratives are at play. The official purpose—“to build a Buddhism-practicing place that is more orderly, beautiful, safe and peaceful” and to “[accelerate] the urbanization… of Larung Town”—is in line with China’s overall urbanization campaign, which seeks to set the country on a more “human-centered and environmentally friendly path.” Government officials say that the current site posed serious health and safety concerns for its residents, citing nine fires at the institute that had apparently resulted in a loss of $340,000. Advocacy groups, on the other hand, claim that the move is just an attempt to tighten control over Tibetan culture and religious life. United States–based think tank Human Rights Watch points to a recent order that called for greater legal and ideological guidance in the community. While nothing suggests that the authorities consulted the Larung Gar leadership about the demolition, senior monastics are urging calm and discouraging residents from participating in protests. Bonus: New Zealand cracks down on predators. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced an ambitious conservation plan that calls for the extermination of non-native predators in the country by 2050. The government estimates that introduced pests cost New Zealand’s agricultural industry 3.3 billion New Zealand dollars (NZD) ($2.4 billion) and kill 25 million native birds annually—including the country’s iconic Kiwi—as well as prey on other local species. Key’s government is setting aside 28 million NZD ($20 million) to support a new joint venture that will develop pest control technologies, and has outlined four interim goals to be met by 2025. A potential sticking point in the plan, however, is New Zealanders’ love for cats, which kill billions of birds and small mammals yearly around the world. An avid cat-lover himself, Key (who owns a cat named “Moonbeam Smokey Fluffy Key”) said that while stray cats are on the government’s hit list, pet cats would be spared.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Bochen Han, Gabriella Meltzer, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Justice Department announces action against 1MDB. The ongoing scandal surrounding Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB took a dramatic turn this week when the U.S. Justice Department announced plans to seize $1 billion in assets as part of an investigation into money laundering and funds improperly taken from 1MDB. While the fund was intended to boost Malaysia’s development, some of the money appears to have instead gone toward enriching Prime Minister Najib Razak, his stepson, and other associates. Among the activities undertaken with siphoned money are financing of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street and the purchase of a private jet as well as properties in New York, California, and London. Overall officials believe that more than $3.5 billion was stolen and this action is the largest pursued under the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Although Najib is only alluded to as “Malaysian Official 1,” this still marks the first time he has been officially linked to the case. He denies that the money was stolen and rather attributes the new wealth in his accounts to a personal donation given by the Saudi royal family. The Malaysian attorney general has previously said Najib did not obtain the funds through corruption, but Najib’s press secretary said Malaysia would participate in “any lawful investigation.” Other nations have also gotten involved with Switzerland seizing a Van Gogh and two Monet paintings and Singapore announcing that it had taken assets valued at $177 million. These actions against 1MDB come amidst a broader international debate about money laundering and ownership disclosure set off by the Panama Papers leak. 2. Beijing backs the Philippine’s grisly war on drugs. In a statement released on Tuesday by the Chinese embassy in Manila, Beijing professed its willingness to cooperate with the Philippines in its fight against drugs, calling narcotics a “common enemy of mankind.” Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who has vowed to end crime within six months of taking office on June 30, has taken a brutal tack: “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself,” he said in a speech earlier this month. Since May, more than two hundred suspected drug traffickers have been killed in confrontations with law enforcement officers, whom Duterte has offered to pardon if human rights advocates accuse them of abusing authority. He claims that many of the unclaimed bodies were Chinese nationals, and questioned why “most of the guys who come here [from China] do drugs.” Though China executes more drug offenders than any other country overall, drug cases most likely involve seizures and arrests rather than extrajudicial killings. Though the director-general of China’s Ministry of Public Security’s narcotics control bureau has stated that “we are willing to take all kinds of measures to combat drugs together,” just how far is China willing to go in its support of Duterte’s gruesome offensive? 3. Pakistani hotlines outdo hospitals in targeting dengue. A recent Science Advances study in Pakistan reveals that triage hotlines are far more effective than hospitals in forecasting outbreaks of infectious diseases such as dengue. Dengue, a mosquito-borne tropical virus, is typically found in urban and semi-urban areas and causes flu-like symptoms that occasionally lead to fatal complications, particularly among children. While there is no treatment, early detection and access to care reduces fatality rates to under 1 percent. The Pakistani researchers observed 300,000 calls to a health hotline in Lahore over a period of two years, where patients were asked to provide their symptoms and addresses. Using this information, epidemiologists were able to accurately predict dengue patient numbers in ten municipal sub-regions two to three weeks in advance of an outbreak. They then dispatched mosquito-control teams to targeted neighborhoods, rather than randomly dispersing them across the city of ten million people. This research will prove particularly helpful following a 2011 outbreak of dengue in Punjab that caused 21,000 infections and 350 deaths. 4. Bangladesh court charges forty-one in Rana Plaza case. Three years after a garment factory collapse in Dhaka that resulted in over 1,100 deaths, a court formally charged thirty-eight people with murder and three with helping the factory owner, and principal accused, escape after the incident. Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment exporter, relies on garments for about 80 percent of its exports and four million jobs. The collapse of the eight-story complex sparked demands for greater workplace safety across the globe and put pressure on foreign companies importing from Bangladesh to act. The industry has since recovered following a period of factory closures and reassessments, but the terrorist attack in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave earlier this month has reignited concerns over the industry’s future. Questions also remain over the progress made to improve worker safety and rights. 5. Baidu again under investigation. Following an investigative report published last weekend, sponsored search results at Baidu, China’s largest search engine provider, have again come under scrutiny. According to the Beijing News, illegal ads for online gambling sites appear in Baidu search results late at night, but not during the day. The paper claims that Baidu has received nearly $45,000 in revenue for these ads, which were registered through third-party advertising agencies and spoofed real companies which do not provide gambling services, and are thus legally allowed to advertise online (gambling is illegal in China). China’s top internet regulator is investigating the incident and state media issued a flurry of articles condemning the company. Baidu has been under scrutiny since earlier this year, when it was revealed that ads on the service for a shady state-run medical clinic offering fake treatments played a role in the death of a college student. Bonus: KFC at center of dispute over disputing South China Sea dispute decision. As Chinese media ramped up criticism of last week’s decision on the status of South China Sea features by a United Nations tribunal and claimed the whole incident had been orchestrated by the United States, protests targeting Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlets as a symbol of the United States appeared in several Chinese cities this week. However, authorities were quick to shut down the demonstrations, arresting organizers, blocking the term “KFC” on social media, and ordering news outlets to “not hype… illegal rallies and demonstrations.” State media also criticized the protesters, calling them unpatriotic and pointing out that KFCs in China employ Chinese people. And the Communist Youth League urged patriotic youth to stay home and post anti-U.S. memes online rather than demonstrating in the streets.

It is Latin America’s anticorruption season. Deep beneath the waves of revulsion about scandal, graft, and the general filthiness of local politics has been a profound concern with democracy. In particular, there is a growing awareness that the dangerous liaisons between corruption and electoral finance threaten the stability and legitimacy of elected governments in the region. While there is plenty of good news about the impressive corruption busters who are shaking up settled patterns of corruption and impunity in the region, many of the underlying links between corporate transparency, corruption, and campaign finance remain deeply troubling and potentially destabilizing. Of eighty-seven companies mentioned in the FCPA Blog’s most recent Corporate Investigations List—a count of companies whose public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that they are the subject of an ongoing and unresolved investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—fully twenty-six are Latin American. Given that Latin America accounts for only 7 percent of the global economy, the fact that it accounts for 30 percent of current enforcement actions is impressive. Equally remarkable is that Brazil alone accounts for more than one in five of the companies on the list. Of course, enforcement actions by U.S. regulators only target companies traded on the U.S. markets. The longstanding prevalence in Latin America of closed companies and conglomerates controlled by single families means that many regional corporate leaders are not publicly traded, much less traded on U.S. stock exchanges where they would be susceptible to U.S. regulation. Furthermore, it might be argued that much corruption is simply illegal enrichment, and does nothing to fund campaigns. But personal enrichment often comes at the cost of private-regarding policies. More damaging still is that as companies across the region increasingly expand beyond their domestic markets and into neighboring economies, they sometimes carry with them the nefarious practices of political influence-peddling that helped them dominate at home. By way of example, Odebrecht, the once-massive construction firm at the heart of Brazil’s Lava Jato case, has expanded significantly to neighboring countries since the turn of the century. In its baggage train it carried significant campaign contributions, whether to Peruvian candidates with a role in the construction of massive interoceanic highways, or to Panamanian politicians with influence in over-priced public works projects. Recognizing the dangers of corruption to electoral competition, the investigations that have swept the region in recent years have triggered a variety of changes in domestic laws aimed at destabilizing the nexus between politics and corruption. These include a ban on corporate donations in Brazil, a similar ban combined with campaign spending limits in Chile, and this week, after months of heavy civil society prodding, transparency requirements for politicians and the strengthening of anticorruption bodies in Mexico. But as a Transparency International report published earlier this month demonstrates, emerging market multinationals are lagging behind in the push for greater corporate transparency. Publicly listed companies do better than privately held companies, but overall, the results show that less than half of the emerging market multinationals are transparent about their internal anticorruption programs; only 47 percent report transparently on their holdings and subsidiaries in other countries; and a measly 9 percent report on their activities in other countries even though, on average, these multinationals have operations in twenty-six countries each. Latin American multinationals account for about a fifth of the index, and they perform about 10 percent better than the (abysmal) index average. But given that their home countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico—are all democracies, and half of the multinationals in the global sample are from non-democratic countries, perhaps we should expect even better from the multilatinas? Further regulation and red tape may have perverse effects, of course. But increased corporate transparency standards, especially if adopted voluntarily, might prove to be a competitive advantage, especially as the regulatory environment in Latin America is tightening anyway under citizen pressure. Under these new conditions, both multinationals and smaller firms in the region may see improved transparency standards as a way of simultaneously enhancing domestic politics in their home countries and improving their business prospects abroad.

I could write a six hundred word blog before getting to the point here, but I will get right to it: The 1MDB asset seizure is likely to have minimal impact on Malaysian domestic politics. To recap … the U.S. Justice Department this morning announced it was filing “civil-forfeiture complaints against more than $1 billion of assets allegedly acquired using funds misappropriated from a Malaysian economic development fund,” known as 1MDB, according to the Wall Street Journal, which has extensively covered the 1MDB saga. This is believed to be the largest asset seizure in U.S. history, and the Justice Department has targeted a wide range of purportedly 1MDB-related assets that were supposedly bought with misappropriated money from the state fund---classy art, a private jet, the rights to the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” luxury real estate in New York and Los Angeles, and more. It’s an impressive list of potential seizures, and an important case showing the power of the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Expect authorities in other countries that are still investigating 1MDB, like Singapore and Switzerland, to eventually make other demands for asset recovery. But as for the impact on domestic Malaysian politics? Don’t expect the case to lead the Malaysian government to fold, the way that investigations of FIFA triggered reforms in that institution. The impact on the administration of Najib Tun Razak will be virtually none. Yes, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference today that, “Unfortunately and tragically, a number of corrupt officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.” Yes, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is believed to be the “Malaysian Official 1,”---which the New York Times says is a “high-ranking government official who oversaw the fund and is a close relative of Mr. Aziz,” Najib’s stepson, who was one of the people served with complaints by the Justice Department. Yes, the perception within Malaysia (and probably globally) is that Najib played a central role in 1MDB’s funny business, his denials to the contrary. Yes, Najib is probably very unpopular with urban Malaysians, although no poll has been taken in recent months that quantifies his support---or lack thereof---in urban areas. Yes, Najib and his family are perceived by many Malaysians to live lavishly, with little evidence of where the money comes from. But Najib also has proven a masterful and tough politician throughout the 1MDB scandal, and Malaysia’s opposition, which was close to winning parliament in 2013, has fallen apart even as the 1MDB investigations mushroom. Over the past two years, Najib has overseen a dramatic crackdown on civil society, forcing or prompting the closure of several independent media outlets, overseeing a suspicious sodomy case that put Anwar Ibrahim back in jail, and presiding over the arrests of many other civil society leaders on vague sedition charges. He has purged the governing coalition of opponents and stacked his cabinet and the Malaysian bureaucracy with loyalists. He has installed as his top deputy a man, Ahmad Zahid Hamdi, even less liked by both members of United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and younger Malaysians; his deputy serves basically as a kind of insurance against getting rid of Najib. Meanwhile, the opposition coalition---if it can be called that now---has fragmented with Anwar in jail, the government cracking down on civil society, and fissures emerging among the parties that made up the 2013 coalition. It was always a coalition held together with scotch tape, but last year the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), the Islamist party, left. It had long argued with other members of the coalition over social issues, including whether state and federal governments could implement Islamic law on a range of criminal issues. The new coalition that has emerged, which includes some small remnants of PAS, is weaker; it lost two by-elections to the ruling coalition in Selangor and Perak in June. Anti-Najib politicians and civil society activists are in such disarray that some belatedly have come around to seeing former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as their champion. Mahathir, who is 91 and was hardly known for his democratic style as prime minister, has indeed been harshly critical of Najib for more than a year now, and has derided the prime minister over 1MDB. Now, Mahathir says he is forming a new party to reinvigorate Malaysian politics. He probably will populate with some leading critics who were fired from Najib’s cabinet and other senior levels of UMNO. It’s not likely to restore Malaysia’s opposition to the level of being able to challenge, nationwide, for control of parliament.

Nigeria’s notorious corruption was a centerpiece of the 2014-2015 presidential campaign of Muhammadu Buhari, and fighting it has been a centerpiece of his administration. Abuja is an important Washington partner, and a successful Nigerian campaign against corruption is in the American interest. However, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow Matthew Page argues that the United States is not doing nearly enough in a hard-hitting, thought-provoking brief on corruption, “Improving U.S. Anticorruption Policy in Nigeria.” Page deftly sketches out the magnitude of corruption in Nigeria and its threat to democracy and good governance. Then he turns to the heart of his brief, why U.S. help has been largely ineffective. He notes that U.S. policy since the restoration of civilian government in 1999 has largely been focused on security cooperation, economic growth and development, and democracy and governance. But, not corruption. In an important insight, Page sees a divergence of approach between senior administration policy makers and U.S. working-level officials. Hence, President Obama, Secretary Kerry, Attorney General Lynch and Treasury Secretary Lew have publicly stated that anticorruption efforts are a U.S. policy priority in Nigeria. Yet diplomats cultivate relationships with as wide a range of elites as they can, including those who are corrupt. There are also perennial issues of interagency coordination. Page’s bottom line: “U.S. anticorruption policy remains broad-based and untargeted, centered on modest assistance programs for police investigators and civil society watchdogs.” Page’s specific recommendations repay careful consideration. They are all practical: Establish a U.S. interagency working group on Nigerian “kleptocracy” that would facilitate coordination and cooperation among the relevant U.S. agencies; Establish within the U.S. Embassy in Abuja a FBI special agent tied to the Bureau’s International Corruption Unit in Washington; Issue an executive order on Nigerian kleptocracy that would enhance efforts to restrict Nigerian financial transactions in the United States related to corruption. A vigorous U.S. anticorruption policy requires the closest partnership with the Nigerian authorities. However, in the past, corruption – often blatant – infected the highest reaches of the Nigerian government. Too many high level officials were making too much money from corruption. Under Buhari, that has changed, but “corruption fights back.” Buhari has made it clear that he seeks outside assistance. That provides a special opportunity for a new U.S. anticorruption campaign.