CORRUPTION 101: HOW TRULY DAMAGING IS IT AND CAN IT BE STOPPED?
I magine you’re in Sipopo, just outside the capital of Equatorial Guinea. You see a five-star hotel and fifty luxury villas standing empty while villagers dry their clothes on the billion-dollar highway no-one drives on. A wealthy, oil-rich nation where the schools have no electricity and the ceilings collapse, where the hospitals are so expensive, according to Equatoguineans, they are “not there for us”, and where people are so poor, they are forced to drink directly from polluted rivers that flow right
next to enormous government palaces.
Where there’s an economy, there’s corruption. $2,000,000,000,000 is lost to corrupt activities globally every year. Corruption is a betrayal of trust. It’s a crime that can affect nations and economies for decades. It victimises generations. Corruption is a cancer that is arguably more prevalent in the Global North but nonetheless has the most painful symptoms presenting in the South. Just ask the 700 victims of the 2021 explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea’s main city, caused by government malpractice and neglect. To fully understand the cancer, though, would require volumes of never- ending studies. However, a brief and simplified overview of how rampant corruption is, how devastating its impacts are, and the efforts to tackle it across the Global South is possible using various case studies. After all, if it were as easy as saying that corruption is bad and all the perpetrators are criminals, Equatoguinean strongman Teodoro Obiang wouldn’t have shaken hands with a Nobel Peace Prize-winning US president.
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INVISIBLE BORDERS
Azerbaijan, the Congo & Yemen
Over one hundred tons of mortar shells and rockets was bought by the Republic of the Congo (or Congo-Brazzaville) from Azerbaijan in January 2020, sold through a Bulgarian company on a ship registered in Vanuatu and clandestinely received via Derince, a port 1,000 kilometres southeast of Istanbul. No official public record of the purchase exists. A confidential cargo manifest, however, shows that the shipment is the latest in a series since 2015 that have exported over five hundred tons of hand grenades, explosives, mortar systems, millions of bullets and more to the Central African state. The largest shipments listed Saudi Arabia as a “sponsoring party”.
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Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has held power for 36 years in part due to his highly-armed security services – his notorious Republican Guard received a cache of weapons from the Azeri Defence Ministry before launching the bloody 2016 post- election Pool offensive against the opposition Ninja militia which killed hundreds, displaced tens of thousands and saw “an unlawful use of lethal force by the country’s security forces” according to Amnesty International. Though the weapons, responsible for the helicopter bombing of a school, cannot be traced back to Baku, many agree with Incarner L’Espoir party leader Andréa Ngombet Malewa:
“[The] regime deployed a scorched earth strategy. The weapons that they bought from Azerbaijan went straight to that operation.”
Now to spot the corruption in this case. It goes without saying that Sassou-Nguesso is a hardened dictator, but the key is noting that Congo-Brazzaville is currently suffering from arguably the worst debt crisis in its history – so how did it pay for the shipment whose estimated value is tens of thousands of dollars? Well, now we know what Saudi Arabian sponsorship entails. Though not official, financial statements in Jeddah indicate that the Saudi regime either paid for the cargo deliveries or the weapons themselves. Why? It’s no coincidence that these payments coincided with the negotiations for Congo-Brazzaville’s eventual accession to OPEC in 2018, the Riyadh- dominated oil-producer’s club. Saudi Arabia’s dangerous presence in the global arms trade is protected by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, up until Pre-
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President Joe Biden’s decision to stop supplying the bombs used to annihilate Yemen. The blatant corruption of keeping all assets of Aramco (the world’s largest company) within one family and having journalists assassinated for disagreeing with the Crown Prince (also in Turkey) cannot be exposed as long as the West continues to support the regime.
As for the Azeri connection, it is suspected that the private Silk Way Airlines, connected to the family of President Ilham Aliyev and registered in the British Virgin Islands, has not only flown weapons to the Congo but also to multiple embargoed conflict zones using diplomatic clearance to smuggle arms. Azeri opacity is an asset for authoritarian leaders looking to purchase weapons under the radar – it’s no surprise that Serbia and Bulgaria have also been implicated in selling weapons to Congo- Brazzaville through companies such as Transmobile and Yugoimport.
When Raymond Malonga, a satirical cartoonist, was kidnapped from hospital by plainclothes officers in Brazzaville in February 2021, Ngombet went on to say that they “are worried that the weapons that Sassou-Nguesso’s regime bought from Azerbaijan could be used to crack down on the opposition during the upcoming election.” Although firms in Europe and North America are often linked to corruption and secretive arms deals, the trail of blood and tears seems to stop everywhere else. Note that corrupt leaders are not precluded from doing business with so-called champions of democracy and freedom. As long as the West protects them, activities like these cannot be stopped. More significantly, it stops any possibility for positive change – as Ngombet put it: “They don’t want the world to see how much the Congolese people are eager for political change.”
SOCIALISTS GET GREEDY TOO
Brazil, Myanmar & South Sudan
For such a complex crime, how corruption works is relatively simple. Transparency
International explains it clearly: “corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private
gain.” How this happens depends on how creative you are – unsurprisingly most crooks
are not all that imaginative. Bribery, theft, and violence are common at all levels from
landowners extorting people in Punjab to cabinet ministers taking bribes in Delhi. Of
course, the higher up the bad apple, the more opportunities that arise and more damage
that can be done. Offshore tax havens, cronyism, stealing and hiding public funds,
arbitrary imprisonment, and a violent suppression of human rights are all on the table.
Three examples can be used to demonstrate the typical means by which nationwide
programmes of corruption are initiated, with their crucial differences underlining the
ever-important effects of cultural and historical influences.
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First, Pindorama. “If I talk, the republic is going to fall.” Operation Car Wash revealed the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history, took down three Brazilian presidents and changed some of the world’s biggest economies forever. So how did Car Wash, led by young judge Sérgio Moro, pull it off? Alberto Youssef, who ran a small petrol station and car wash complex in Brasilia, was arrested on suspicion of money laundering – “doleiros” would declare black market money as petrol station earnings, a common activity. However, the reason he claimed the republic would fall if he confessed was the fact that his clients were not just common criminals but politicians, executives and some of the wealthiest, most influential people in Brazil. Consider an example of how corruption typically worked: Petrobras, the largest state-owned oil company on the continent, plans to build a new factory so normally construction firms would compete for the contract. Instead, a “cartel” of firms, led by the largest Odebrecht, would join together and receive a ridiculously-larger sum than before. In exchange for receiving the contracts, the “cartel” agreed to siphon off 1-5% (via laundering sites such as the car wash) of the share into a slush fund used to bribe politicians and executives to keep giving contracts to them. For instance, Rio de Janeiro
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mayor Sergio Cabral received over $800,000 for a refinery in Itaboraí that was never built, and whose cost was pushed up $8,000,000 by the “cartel”.
When it was discovered that these “doleiros” were also working for Petrobras executive Paulo Costa, the gloves went off and Car Wash was launched with Moro and hero cop Newton Ishii uncovering the shocking truth that: more than $2,000,000,000 was siphoned off Petrobras in bribes and secret payments for contract work, $3,300,000,000 was paid in bribes by Odebrecht, more than 1,000 politicians were on the take from meat-packing firm JBS, 16 companies were implicated, at least 50 congressmen were accused, and every living president since 1985 was under investigation. The operation also implicated three Peruvian presidents, the Venezuelan government and influential individuals in seven Latin American countries, shutting down at least 17 projects and laying off millions. After the ruling Workers’ Party senior senator Delcído do Amaral was arrested after a humiliating sting operation, the incarceration of popular former president Lula da Silva was inevitable. You see, despite his laudable work on poverty and the environment, Brazil’s political structure makes corruption a necessity for any politician: federal, state and city elections across the fifth-biggest country on Earth means campaigns are inanely expensive and that it is practically impossible for any one party to win a majority. Therefore, appointing executives (to companies like Petrobras) to secure illegal campaign finances is an unfortunate necessity. Moreover, to gain the cooperation of other parties, money must be spent. When this “mensalão” scandal was discovered in 2004, Lula was forced to work with the most corrupt party in the country, Michel Temer’s PMDB which spelled his demise. Ironically, the anti- corruption efforts of his successor President Dilma Rousseff enabled Car Wash to go ahead. PMDB politician Eduardo Cunha wanted the operation to stop before it got to him and thus orchestrated the impeachment of Rousseff, though he went to prison anyway. She was succeeded by Temer, who epitomises the sort of person Car Wash was supposed to stop but he was only charged. Coinciding with the drop in commodity
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prices, Brazil’s economy collapsed, and unemployment doubled. Understandably, far- right Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-corruption mandate appealed to voters in 2018 and brought in an equally, if not more, destructive administration, though this is mainly due to the president’s conservative, homophobic and sexist rhetoric as well as his government’s COVID-19 failures – in spite of this, he is still popular and has been praised by NGOs for his anti-corruption work. Even still, Bolsonaro’s family have been implicated in a number of corruption and interference scandals that could be Car Wash-related proving that very few in Brazil are immune. One unemployed citizen of Itaboraí, who planned to work at the unfinished refinery said: “We don’t know the people we elect. They come in disguise.”
It is important to appreciate that we only know the true extent of Brazil’s ongoing battle with corruption because of the unprecedented success of Car Wash, which was enabled by the Workers’ Party itself – as a Federal Police union representative said: “They lost power because they did the right thing.” However, in most countries, anti- corruption efforts are either non-existent or mere facades and the criminal activities themselves work in different ways.
On 1 February 2021, civilian government leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were arrested in Naypyidaw by the military, known as the Tatmadaw, led by General Min Anh Hlaing on charges of electoral fraud. The coup ended Myanmar’s short-lived dalliance with democracy, led to mass demonstrations, hundreds of deaths and injuries, but also the exposure of the Tatmadaw’s illicit funding. Similar to nations such as Pakistan and Thailand, the military has always had great influence in the government of Myanmar, and also akin to these countries, it does not just receive funding from the national budget. When militaries have powers independent of a civilian government, a useful way of maintaining their influence is securing independent funding; this way, generals can pay their men, bribe politicians, extort tax-
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payers, push around lawmakers and control governance behind the scenes. When General Ne Win overthrew the government in 1962 and enforced his Burmese Way to Socialism, he set up a system where battalions had to fund their own operations by taking stakes in local businesses. Surviving the 8888 Uprising and the right-wing State Peace and Development Council dictatorship, this idea led to two large conglomerates being established in the 1990s, Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL) and the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), which have stakes in businesses and industries across the country including banking, mining, tobacco, tourism and even an indoor skydiving centre in Yangon.
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Critically, the Tatmadaw top brass runs these conglomerates with a third of shares held by military units and the rest by former and current personnel, including Min Anh Hlaing and his son Aung Pyae Sone who owns a beach resort and a majority share in the national telecommunications company Mytel. Leaked reports showed that MEHL paid out $16,600,000,000 in dividends from 1990 to 2011, and stripped 35 individuals off their shares for crimes such as desertion indicating its use for punishment as well as rewards. Undoubtedly, these funds obtained illicitly enabled the 2021 coup – according to the United Nations, the conglomerates allow the Tatmadaw to “insulate itself from accountability and oversight.” While some companies and individuals such as Japanese drinks firm Kirin and Singaporean tobacco investor Lim Kaling have suspended cooperation with MEHL, the Tatmadaw is still secured by China and Russia’s paralysis of the UN Security Council and the abject failure of the UK, New Zealand and Canada to follow the US’s example of sanctions targeted at the conglomerates. Though this is a different means of corruption to Brazil, the result is similar – the people and small businesses suffer, with many Burmese comparing themselves to Sicily under the Mafia. Anna Roberts, from Burma Change UK, explained that the people “want the military back to barracks, and they want a civilian economy and a civilian federal government that respects their wishes.” Unfortunately, a ruthless military junta continuing to get rich despite international sanctions doesn’t exactly have a motive for respecting the people’s wishes.
The previous examples have all happened in peacetime, but what effect does war have on an already damaged system? When UN official Yasmin Sooka returned from South Sudan in 2016, she warned that something as horrifying as, and possibly worst than, the Rwandan genocide would probably happen again in a country already ravaged by war – her latest report now shows that the government and senior politicians have embezzled $36,000,000 since 2016, robbing the South Sudanese of a stable future. Corruption
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perpetuated the fighting in a vicious cycle that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions during a brutal civil war that technically ended in February 2020 though shocking violence continues throughout the fractured nation. The youngest country in the world consists of over 60 disparate ethnic groups who were previously united against the Khartoum government until their autonomy was gained in 2005 and finally independence in 2011. The largest groups are the Dinka and the Nuer – Stetson- wearing President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, invited Riek Machar, a Nuer, to become his deputy in a show of unity. Two years later, their personal rivalry escalated into a terrifying ethnic conflict that saw war crimes, humanitarian emergencies and a populace brought to the brink of starvation.
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The hidden element, however, is how oil comes in. Being an oil-rich nation, it was assumed that South Sudan would survive on its own but in truth the mismanagement of the reserves and senior rulers fighting over resources was a long-term cause of the civil war. The Sentry argues that the civil war and ongoing violence is “largely the result of conflicts among the elites who are desiring to “re-negotiate” shares of political- economic power balance, including natural resources, through war.” Infamous examples include:
... the spending of nearly $1,000,000 of public
money on famine-relieving cereals that never came in 2013; the military’s tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers”, troops who exist only on payroll documents, said to be the primary method of military and security officials to divert wealth to private accounts; and, most disturbingly, the soldiers in this conflict over resources who are offered the chance to abduct and rape women in lieu of their salaries
Sooka alleges that several “international corporations and multinational banks have aided and abetted in these crimes,” supported by Kiir’s family’s links to Asian oil giants, British tycoons and traders from Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea and Kenya. Every example has one clear thing in common: the people were those who suffered. Again, due to Western influences, even in a perpetuating cycle of war and corruption, true justice is hard to find.
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BLOWING UP A COUNTRY
Lebanon & South Africa
Sometimes corruption goes further. Sometimes corruption itself singlehandedly destroys a country, or in the case of Lebanon, literally blows it up. The 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut, killing 210 people and destroying the main source of food imports, was the result of years of systemic corruption. Lebanese protestors are not calling for the resignation of one politician – they want the entire political system dismantled and cleansed of corrupt practice. But how does the system work? Based on confessionalism, it was set up by French colonists aiming to ensure equal religious representation in politics by making the president a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the house a Shiite Muslim. However, factionalism caused a civil war from 1975-1990 ended by the Taif Agreement that divided parliament into religious groups which allowed militia leaders and oligarchs to entrench themselves at the top of their respective factions with power usually handed down from father to son. Each group essentially became a fiefdom based on patronage and self-enrichment. Critically, they each took charge of certain government services, but these were neglected as the rulers stole public money: the Sunnis’ waste management cost the taxpayer $420,000,000 a year, yet garbage would pile up in cities to ridiculous amounts; the Maronites’ electricity and water utilities saw regular blackouts and undrinkable water coming out of taps. However, any attempt to criticise one section of government was tantamount to attacking the entire religious sect it belonged to meaning reform became excruciatingly difficult. Consequently, debt skyrocketed. Then Syria happened. Lebanon’s economy depends on imports and its banks’ famously high interest rates that quickly became sustainable only by constantly attracting more deposits – when the Syrian civil war broke out, investors withdrew their money and the financial system collapsed. When the Saudi regime kidnapped prime minister Saad Hariri, forced his resignation then sent him back to Lebanon to resume his post, the markets lost confidence and poverty and unemployment rose substantially. The IMF could not provide help without reform and naturally this did not come.
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One consequence of the blatant corruption among the Lebanese elite was the 2,700 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate that sat in the port of Beirut for seven years, neglected by the government, before it exploded on 4 August 2020 causing $15,000,000 worth of damages and rendering a quarter of million people homeless. Immediately, President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Hassan Diab and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nusrallah traded blame and accused each other proving to the people that the system was broken. Now with similar government failures in response to COVID-19, it is clear that a country destroyed by religious factionalism in the last century seems to have been destroyed by the unity of the elites to protect and enrich themselves and their cronies in this century.
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Tsamina mina zangalewa. This time for Africa? At the time of the 2010 FIFA World growth, a rising black middle class, and one of the fastest rates of development in the Cup, South Africa was coming to the end of its “golden age” of sustained economic
world. The Rainbow Nation that anti-apartheid leaders such as Nelson Mandela and
Thabo Mbeki had spearheaded was an example for the rest of the continent to follow.
Then it all came crashing down; a recession hit, unemployment rose, racial tensions
resurfaced, and gun violence increased, all primarily due to the cancer of corruption
spread mainly by President Jacob Zuma. Already a controversial character who actively
practiced polygamy and had standing allegations of organised crime and even rape
against him before he became president in 2009, Zuma quickly polarises opinion: on the
one hand, he is an esteemed anti-apartheid campaigner, but on the other, since he
entered politics, it is clear his one objective has always been to enrich himself above all
else. Siphoning off billions from the public coffers for him and his inner circle caused
foreign investment to plummet and national services to suffer. Revelations about the
1990s South African Arms Deal with multiple European firms which cost over
$3,000,000,000 exposed Zuma for abusing his position as deputy president to increase him. State institutions such as housing and education have failed miserably due to his personal wealth. This was one of the first of many corruption cases brought against
corrupt activities, unqualified teachers bribing their way in and government-built
houses collapsing being some examples. Hundreds of other cases involve billions
officially spent on developing the poorest areas of the country without any
development projects going ahead. The result of scandals such as that involving the
Gupta brothers, who enjoyed lucrative contracts from Zuma whilst involved in money
laundering and other financial crimes, is a rise in poverty and violence.
The legal cases against Zuma have popularised an important term: state capture,
defined as “a form of corruption in which businesses and politicians conspire to
influence a country's decision-making process to advance their own interests.” It also
involves weakening anti-corruption institutions in a country. State capture in South
Africa and Lebanon are stark examples of the unending devastation malpractice in a
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public office cause. It is perhaps the worst kind of corruption, to not only cause the people’s immediate suffering but to victimise their children and grandchildren, to wipe away hope for a better future. Though major systemic change is still to come, President Cyril Ramaphosa maintains his unwavering anti-corruption stance and there is growing hope that South Africa can turn the corner on this dark chapter of its post-apartheid history. However, as long as the criminals remain in expensive suits, shaking hands with world leaders and multinational executives, it makes it hard to put the handcuffs on.
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WE KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRDS SING
Israel, China & Malaysia
So how do we stop corruption? It goes without saying that having law enforcement and the judiciary on side is a major asset. Many corrupt officials have been removed from power and even imprisoned, including presidents (such as Lula in Brazil, though he was recently controversially released) and prime ministers (such as Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan
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Pakistan, after his illegal finances were exposed in the Panama Papers). But how can we separate a corruption case from politics? Well, truthfully the answer is we can’t, but that does not always have to be a bad thing. Take the case of prime minister Najib Razak who was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison for abuse of power and a further 10 years for money laundering in 2020. The 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal alleged that Najib, who set up the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund in 2009 (that is, a government-owned investment fund built with state earnings used to improve economic development), knowingly transferred $10,000,000 from the fund to his private account. The scandal involved American and Malaysian authorities estimating $4,500,000,000 to have been siphoned from the fund, with the money being linked to luxury properties, van Gogh artwork and multinational banks – Goldman Sachs was forced to pay $3,900,000,000 for its involvement. As for the politics, the scandal was the main reason for Najib’s humiliating election defeat in 2018 to 92-year- old Dr Mahathir Mohamad who went on to lead a dangerously-fragile coalition. When this coalition dramatically collapsed in early 2020 and Najib’s pro-Malay party, UMNO returned to power under Muhyiddin Yassin, the former prime minister felt confident that the trial would end in his favour. Fortunately, internal politics had more sway since Muhyiddin had previously been fired by Najib for his objections to the scandal meaning that rather than use his influence to acquit Najib, he left the young anti- corruption forces to it and saw a criminal conviction.
Unfortunately, politics can also be an obstacle for the judiciary as is the case for serving prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was indicted in 2020 for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes on three separate occasions. Unlike Najib who maintained that he was misled by advisors, Netanyahu prefers to label his ongoing corruption trial a “witch hunt”, unsurprisingly reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. In a court appearance in May 2020, he said that the trial was trying to “depose a strong, right-wing prime minister, and thus remove the nationalist camp from the leadership of the country for many years.” There are three main cases against him: Case 4,000 alle-
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ges Netanyahu granted regulatory favours worth around $500,000,000 to telecommunications company Bezeq and in return, he sought positive coverage of himself and wife Sara on a news website controlled by the company’s former chairman, Shaul Elovitch (he and his wife, Iris, have been charged with bribery and obstruction of justice); Case 1,000, in which Netanyahu and his wife wrongfully received almost 700,000 shekels worth of gifts from Arnon Milchan, an Israeli Hollywood producer, and Australian billionaire businessman James Packer for help with their business interests; and, case 2,000 that alleges Netanyahu negotiated a deal with Arnon Mozes, owner of Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, for better coverage and that, in return, he offered legislation that would slow the growth of a rival newspaper. The case has polarised the electorate. Thousands of demonstrators gather weekly outside his official residence and across Israel under the banner of “Crime Minister”, demanding he quit, but his right-wing base has stayed loyal. Supporters see the man they call King Bibi as strong on security and foreign affairs. Since he has survived three elections despite being on trial, the fourth one in March 2021 due to another failed coalition is not set to
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be any different. Of course, the trial itself could take years unless sufficient evidence is found to force Netanyahu into a plea deal but at the moment, this seems unlikely.
Unlike most of the world, in China, if you are found guilt of corruption, you are not sent to prison. You are executed. Of course, the death penalty, which was awarded to Lai Xiaomin for bribery, embezzlement and bigamy in January 2021, is reserved for the few special cases. Most of those arrested are forcibly disappeared, purged from the party and incarcerated in the harshest conditions – unsurprisingly, a number attempt suicide before they are caught. Paramount Leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 with a solid ambition to root out corruption in the Communist Party and end factionalism in the Politburo and military. The benefit of ruling with an iron fist is anti-corruption actually seems quite successful: since 2012, authorities have investigated more than 2,700,000 officials and punished more than 1,500,000 people. They include seven national-level leaders and two dozen high-ranking generals. Prosecutors have tried 58,000 officials and sentenced two to death. Despite these efforts and the widespread domestic popularity gained, independent review (such as Transparency International) has suggested that they have done very little to improve the situation – China still scores 40/100, even though 87% of citizens say they believe things to have gotten better. One possible explanation was offered by professor Zhang Ming: “Once you establish and empower agencies to investigate, they will inevitably find more and more people to lock up. Eventually, it hurts the party’s prestige and the public confidence in it.” Alongside the blatant disregard for human rights, Beijing has been careful to marry its anti-corruption efforts with its evermore important economic policies with analyst Wu Qing commenting that “the financial industry is the focus of the anti-corruption campaign. It’s in line with the government’s economic policies such as ‘de-bubbling’ and stabilising the finance sector.” Evidently, there are a several different ways law enforcement can handle anti-corruption, but the key step is at least having them commit to it.
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IT’S TIME TO GET ANGRY
Algeria, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua & Burkina Faso
Most of the time, the establishment, including law enforcement, is either silently or actively complicit in corrupt activities therefore justice must be achieved in other ways, one being popular unrest. Mass demonstrations against corruption are common across the world and attention is often drawn to cases such as in Russia, Belarus, or Romania.
In the Global South, however, it is commonly assumed that nothing will actually change despite the protests and while this can be true, stand-out examples prove that this is a wrong assumption to
make.
Change takes different forms, goes at different paces, and produces disparate results depending on where you are. To show this, consider the ongoing protests in Algeria that toppled President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019 and those in Kyrgyzstan that removed President Sooronbay Jeenbekov in 2020. These are both examples of partial change due to popular uprisings – in Algiers and Kherrata, the Hirak movement called for the end of the political elite and although the ruler of almost twenty years resigned, the people see no difference with his successor Abdelmadjid Tebboube and continue to protest. Similarly, in Bishkek, though Jeenbekov resigned after protestors stormed the presidential palace, his successor Sadyr Japarov continues to lead the pro-Moscow elite. In both cases, the powerful figureheads of corruption left but the system stayed on. Managua, in recent years, saw protests against the stealing of public funds by Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, an example of little or no change – Ortega continues to rule corruptly. Finally, Burkina Faso in 2014 saw the people rise up against corruption and overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Blaise Compaoré, an example of more positive change from mass demonstrations.
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THE DRUGS, THE VIRUS & THE CANCER
Imagine you’re in Kassumba, in the south of Guinea-Bissau. You see the white sand on the beach, the calmly-swaying palm trees, the crystal clear water and the bag of cocaine washed up by the tide. Although Guinea-Bissau is classified as a “narco-state”, Bissau- Guineans simply want what most people do: “we just want fresh water and better schools,” says one village elder. The illegal drugs trade is one of the many instances where corruption thrives, and people suffer. The Syrian government uses illegal Captagon production to finance the bloodshed and Central American nations like Mexico and Honduras have long been plagued by narco-politics. Where there’s an economy, there’s corruption. Even in the COVID-19 pandemic, corruption stews. Cases of people bribing their way out of lockdown restrictions in Cameroon and Uganda inevitably caused further spread of the disease, and allegations of PPE and vaccine corruption in both the Global North and South are becoming more common. It is not possible to root it out for good, but we can make it difficult to get away with it – ultimately, scaring public officials is the only way to prevent corrupt practices. As long as there is someone still advocating for justice, there is always hope.
FIN.
