Tag Archives: Corruption

Business, Government, Politics

The West’s hypocrisy on corruption is amoral

DUPLICITOUS STANDARDS

Intro: Westerners have no right to feel morally superior over those in developing nations

The West likes to believe corruption is something that happens elsewhere. It is presented as a pathology of poorer countries, weak institutions, and unstable governments. In much of Africa, corruption is routinely cited by Western politicians, the media, and international organisations as evidence of failed governance. It is used to justify conditions on aid, scepticism towards investment and, increasingly, a broader sense of moral superiority.

Yet the uncomfortable truth is that many of the same behaviours exist in Britain, Europe, and the United States. The difference is not always the conduct itself. The difference is often the language we use to describe it. In Western democracies, power rarely operates through crude bribery or overt illegality.

Instead, it works through relationships, access, networks, and privileged information. Outcomes are shaped quietly, informally, and often entirely within the rules. Those closest to political and financial power gain opportunities, protection, and influence that others do not. We prefer to call this lobbying, networking, or simply “how things get done”. But if similar systems operated elsewhere, we would often call them corruption.

The global pandemic exposed this contradiction particularly clearly. Between February and November 2020, more than £3.7bn of UK PPE contracts were channelled through a “VIP lane” for companies with political connections. Those firms were significantly more likely to secure government contracts, even where they had limited relevant experience.

Had a similar process emerged in an African country – where politically connected individuals were fast-tracked for lucrative state contracts during a national emergency – Western governments and media outlets would almost certainly have described it as corruption. In Britain, however, the language was notably softer: “urgency”, “extraordinary circumstances”, “procurement challenges”. The same behaviour, but a different use of language and vocabulary. What increasingly troubles the public is not simply individual scandals, but the perception that elite networks operate by different rules altogether.

The Epstein affair reinforced that suspicion powerfully. It exposed the extraordinary proximity between convicted offenders and some of the most influential political, financial, and social figures in the Western world.

The main focus of accountability for the sexual abuse was rightly directed at Jeffrey Epstein himself and later Ghislaine Maxwell. But many others associated with Epstein – some of whom knowingly enabled, tolerated, or benefited from the network of influence and privilege surrounding him – have emerged largely untouched.

For many people, this reinforced the belief that wealth, influence, and proximity to power can create a form of informal immunity. Not necessarily from the law itself, but from the level of scrutiny and accountability that would apply to ordinary people – or indeed to public figures in other countries.

When access, relationships, and privileged information determine outcomes, public trust is inevitably eroded – regardless of whether formal rules have been technically breached.

If confidence in democratic institutions is to be rebuilt, it will require more than compliance processes and carefully managed optics. It demands a far more honest recognition of how power actually operates within Western systems.

Because the real danger is not simply that corruption exists elsewhere. It is that the West has become extraordinarily skilled at defining its own behaviour in ways that prevent it from recognising corruption when it is closest to home.

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Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Addressing corruption in the EU is an urgent matter…

EUROPEAN UNION

Intro: Corruption throughout the EU is endemic. It needs urgent and effective attention

In southern and eastern European countries corruption is much more widespread than it is in Britain.

Cecilia Malmström, the EU’s Home Affairs commissioner, estimates that across the EU, the amount of money paid in bribes and racketeering may add up to more than a £100 billion.

This is a staggering sum of money. The estimate given is based on surveys of people who were asked whether they knew about specific cases of having to pay a bribe and what their general perceptions of the problems of corruption in their country were.

In the UK, less than 0.5 per cent of people had either experienced, or knew of, an instance of bribery, the lowest percentage in the EU’s member states. This compares extremely favourably to respondents in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, where between 6 and 29 per cent of those questioned indicated  that they were asked or had been expected to pay a bribe in the last 12 months.

Yet, the perceived rates of blackmail and extortion related activities in the UK compared to others in the EU are much closer. Even in Britain, where the actual rates are deemed low, 64 per cent of people think corruption is widespread. Across the EU, an average of 74 per cent believes this is the case. In Greece, the perceived rate rises to an astonishing 99 per cent.

The gap between actual experience of corruption and perceptions of it can be accounted for by the widespread publicity which is given to instances of political corruption and the attention which is drawn to interest and exchange-rate fixing scandals still emerging from the financial industry (such as LIBOR, the price of oil and, more worryingly, the true value of gold).

In those countries with the highest experience of financial bribery, most instances relate to healthcare. This has stemmed from the inadequacy of public health provision which has led people to bribe and blackmail doctors to secure early treatment of illness.

Ms Malmström, a Swede, asserts that stamping out corruption is not the responsibility of the European Commission. Rather, she says, that responsibility lies with national governments, on whom she is calling to do more. She is certainly right to argue that instances of bribery is not just draining resources from legal activity and feeding criminality, but that such activity is also undermining the trust that the public has in democratic institutions.

What is more, however, is that in the UK the report’s findings may well have the unintentional consequence of further eroding the fragile belief in the EU. Whilst this report makes clear that the Commission’s own anti-corruption unit is under-resourced and has a vast swathe of fraud allegations in EU spending it will never likely investigate properly, the unit has long been the subject of reports of incompetence and irregularities in the management of its own budget.

Rectifying this situation should be an EU priority. But the EU’s bribery report may well have the effect of colouring the view that many Britons already have – that it is even more corrupt than they ever thought. It is right to ask if British taxes which flow to the EU are being wasted or, worse still, whether they are being harnessed to feather criminal nests and extortion rings.

The possibility exists in the UK for an in-or-out referendum on British membership of the EU in 2017, following the pledge given by the Prime Minister since he has held office. But, this recent EU report will only confirm Eurosceptical prejudices. For Europe to be cleansed of endemic corruption, the European Commission must act with a degree of urgency and effectiveness in dealing with the issues that underpin it.

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