The Prosecution of Corruption as a Political Strategy*

Daniel Zirker

University of Waikato

Hamilton, New Zealand

*This paper has been prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the IPPA, June 26-July 1,

2018, Pittsburg. I would likewould like to thank the administrator of political science at the

University of Waikato, Frances Douch, and the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, Allison

Kirkman, for their help in facilitating the presentation of this paper. The conclusions of the paper,

and the analyses herein, are my own.

Abstract:

The Prosecution of Corruption as a Political Strategy

The prosecution of corruption in developing countries has received increasing attention as the

understanding and technology of corruption abatement has improved, as per key scholars in

the field (Klitgaard 1988; Rose-Ackermann 1999; Johnston 2005; Quah 2013; Lamsdorff, )

among others. Pressures from the World Bank and the IMF, as well as from foreign aid-

granting agencies in Europe and North America, have encouraged a range of developing and

more developed countries long beset with both 'need' and 'greed corruption' to show tangible

results in their prosecution of corrupt practices. In a number of such countries (e.g.,

Tanzania, the BRICS countries), however, these prosecutions have apparently come to

represent strategies in banal power struggles, show trials that remove potential rivals from

political contention. This paper will compare and contrast cases in Tanzania and the BRICS

countries, among others, in an effort to shed light on the apparently unintended, and even

corrupting, effects of global pressures to reduce corruption, and the promise and pitfalls of

such prosecutions in the context of domestic political contestation.

This is a rough draft. Not for citation.

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“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Saint Bernard de Clairvaux (c. 1150)

INTRODUCTION: MAKING SENSE OF ‘CORRUPTION’

The prosecutions of corruption in putatively higher corruption countries have received

increasing attention as the understanding and measurement of corruption, the improvements

in detection and technological abatement, have improved, as noted by a number of scholars in

the field (e.g., Klitgaard 1988; Rose-Ackermann 1999; Johnston 2005; Quah 2013;

Lamsdorff 1999) among others. Global pressures on countries to end corruption clearly stem

from good intentions. Corruption is widely regarded as an expensive, disruptive and counter-

productive influence upon national development. Pressures from Transparency International

(TI), the World Bank, the United Nations, the IMF, the European Union, the OECD,

privately-owned accounting firms as well as an additional range of NGOs, from foreign aid-

granting agencies in Europe and North America to emerging ones in Asia and Latin America,

have encouraged countries long beset with both 'need' and 'greed corruption' to show tangible

results in their prosecution of corrupt practices.

In a number of countries (e.g., Tanzania, the BRICS countries, and Saudi Arabia, the

foci of this study), however, these prosecutions have often appeared to be focused upon

political strategies, used as weapons in more banal power struggles, and as show trials for

alleged “greed corruption,” where “need corruption” remains a critical problem. Such trials,

moreover, routinely remove rival political persons from political contention. They “kill two

birds with one stone,” as it were. Are such politically geared corruption trials inevitable in

mid- to high-corruption countries in this age of rapidly advancing globalization? Are global

pressures to prosecute corrupt politicians in effect actually intensifying corrupt practices? In

terms of democracy and fairness, the “road to hell” would be lacking even the good intentions

that had troubled Saint Bernard de Clairvaux if this were the case.

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In most high profile corruption trials the criminal charges and/or allegations of

criminal (greed) corruption that have been laid are typically weak, and counter arguments

raised are typically allowed to die in the usually impotent, if not always openly compliant,

media. While corruption, broadly construed, may be “ever present where power is wielded”

(Friedrich, 1972: 141), and an inevitable condition in a neo-liberal global environment,

corruption and perceptions of corruption are widely, if not universally,1 regarded as counter-

developmental, delaying or stopping economic progress and reinforcing criminal behaviour

in such societies. Corruption is by nature a secretive affair, however, and thus difficult to

identify, and even more so to measure. The major categories of corruption, bribery,

kickbacks, influence pedalling, nepotism, official fraud, election tampering, moreover, are

widely regarded as anathema to liberal democratic societies, strictly policed in ‘least corrupt’

countries, and are at least technically illegal in almost all countries today.

It appears to be the case that countries that are perceived (as ranked in the CPI) to

have mid- to high-levels of corruption, and relatively low press freedom, seem to be

experiencing an increasing number of corruption show trials, even though such countries

often have a preponderance of what is referred to as “need corruption,” the required

expenditure of low levels of resources as “user fees” to grossly underpaid bureaucrats, rather

than “greed corruption,” large scale corrupt practices that have no apparent developmental

value.2 Monika Bauhr contended in 2012, that

Despite extensive international and national efforts to contain corruption, there are few successful

anti-corruption programs. The major challenge for the anti- corruption industry is to understand

the limited success and find more effective ways to deal with corruption (68)

In the past two decades, global pressures to indict corrupt officials have grown

exponentially, stimulated by, among other measures, the UN Convention against Corruption,

or UNCaC, signed and ratified by most of the world’s countries, although compliance has

been sketchy. The European Union’s Global pressures to address corruption have provided

more corrupt countries with what appears to be a convenient tool in the inevitable struggle for

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power, however. Indeed, elites who all-to-often regard their class interests as national

interests, for example, and ‘administration [as] their personal fortress from which they direct

the political and economic life of the nation’ (Friedrich, 1972: 145), may even (if not always)

have the very best of intentions in their conduct of what are essentially corrupt, if nominally

legal, practices. Others openly engage in graphically corrupt practices, protected, or so it

may seem, by a prevalence of corruption in their respective societies. Sudden indictments, in

these contexts, must seem shocking if not bizarre. International pressures typically suggest

that these indictments stem from ‘good intentions.’ Such ‘good intentions’, however,

seemingly directed by neo-liberal ideology, which is typically at odds with local culture and

even electoral democracies (and their quasi-authoritarian emphasis on equality and

transparency) may well represent the ‘road to political hell’, to borrow from Saint Bernard de

Clairvaux’s phraseology.

The following study attempts to clarify with key examples, the strategically political

use of corruption prosecutions that often predominates in significantly corrupt societies, in

the use of anti-corruption indictments both as instruments to alleviate international anti-

corruption pressures, and as effective devices for the removal of rival politicians.

Corruption and Political Corruption

Corruption is, by nature, largely secretive, subject to various (and contrasting)

understandings, and hence very difficult to measure. Sample surveys, the bases of both the

CPI and the GCB, are often questionable, given the vulnerability of honest responses to

punishment. The reality and measurement of corruption as a social construct has necessarily

come to be closely tied, then, to perceptions, the easiest and most apparent understanding of

the many phenomena that are grouped under the nomenclature of corruption (Lambsdorff

1999). The surveys that the CPI uses to determine the CPI ranking represent an inexact

(perhaps of questionable validity in an absolute sense), but relatively reliable basis for

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measurement, at least in the national rankings. It is important to emphasize that the CPI

choice of surveys for specific countries, and its algorithm change periodically, making the

raw CPI data impossible to compare, although the national rankings do provide an interesting

and reliable ordinal data set. They mostly depend upon the perceptions of business people.3

The argument made by Johan Lambsdorff, one of the original formulators of the CPI

algorithm, is that the highest degree of validity (as well as reliability) in predicting relative

levels of corruption, narrowly and legally defined, can only be achieved in the measurement

of elite perceptions (of white-collar business people, the focus of most of the major

international surveys used by TI),4 as he explains in a major macro-analysis of the literature

(Lambsdorff 1999).

Corruption is typically defined assuming one of five expressions, all of which are seen

to be primarily damaging to political systems. Corruption, in its strict definition, is limited as

we have noted (above) to actions or reactions of public officials. Considered individually,

individuated as it were, without wider implications for a society, most instances of corruption

are relatively innocuous in and of themselves, except, perhaps, for the last category. The five

categories typically discussed are: bribery, nepotism, influence peddling, official fraud, and

election tampering. Bribery represents the most obvious expression of corruption, and is often

used, as in the UK, as a comprehensive definition. A distinction is often made as well

between need and greed corruption, and this usually (but not always) applied to bribery.

Bauhr notes that

The need and greed distinction builds on the notion that the motives for being corrupt vary

between different settings. That is, the basic motives for paying a bribe or engaging in corruption

can be either need or greed….citizens pay bribes either to receive services that they are legally

entitled to and that are conditioned upon paying a bribe (“need”)…or to receive advantages that

they are not legally entitled to (“greed”) (Bauhr 2012: 69).

Perhaps central to this distinction is the scope of corrupt activities. While “greed corruption”

is typically much grander in scale, it is almost universally regarded as illegitimate behaviour,

whereas “need corruption,” when it is present in a country, tends to be far wider in

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distribution, and hence, despite its far lower “take” per act, it is typically regarded by anti-

corruption agencies as far more serious a problem. Bauhr observes that

At the root of the most commonly used distinctions between forms of corruption lies the scale or

the profitability of different types of corruption. The distinction between petty and grand

corruption, for instance, also involves the scale and level of the problem (Bauhr 2012: 68).

Grand corruption is linked to the “less serious” problem of Greed Corruption, acts that can be

readily identified in most cultures as both illegal/criminal and, if discovered, potentially

prosecuted, if, of course the national will exists to do so.

John T. Noonan, Jr., a former court of appeals judge in the US, noted in his book,

Bribes, that gifts and tips (to government officials) “are equally hard to tell from bribes”

(1984: 688). He argued that all gifts, private or public, anticipate some sort of response. In

this context, he noted that a culture of tipping generally accommodates a culture of bribing

and/or influence peddling.5

Charges of nepotism have declined in most Western countries since the 1930s, when

any hint of nepotism in public service was strictly limited in the interests of rationing public

positions to families. Today, it has become the norm in most Western countries that close

family members, selected of course strictly on merit, can occupy official positions in the

same or proximate departments, if a public official uses his/her influence to accommodate a

relative, this is clearly a conflict of interest, and hence a contemporary example of nepotism.6

Influence peddling and election tampering are clearly the most insidious of the

categories, fraught with collective and systemic implications, although often regarded,

particularly by global moralists, as less pressing than bribery. Over forty years ago Joseph

Nye observed that

…not only is the study of corruption prone to moralism, but it involves one of those aspects of

government in which the interests of the politician and the political scientist are likely to conflict’

(1967: 417).

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Political corruption, including the prosecution of a political rival to remove him/her from

contention, appears far less threatening to international agencies than does structural bribery

at an institutionalized and relatively low level. In other words, “need corruption,” because it

is often institutionalized, rises above “greed corruption” as an international priority, although

global investigators appear to be placated by a “greed corruption” trial. Susan Rose-

Ackerman explained corruption in 1999 as “a symptom that something has gone wrong in the

management of the state” (9). This ties in closely to her more collective definition of

corruption as one of many “allocative mechanisms” for the distribution of scarce resources

(1978:1), especially where a government has attempted to limit market incentives. Nye

argued that corruption “…poses serious problems. Broadly defined as perversion or a change

from good to bad, it covers a wide range of behaviour from venality to ideological erosion”

(419).

Peter deLeon summarises the definition of political corruption inclusively:

Reduced to its quintessential meaning, political corruption is a cooperative form of unsanctioned,

usually condemned policy influence for some type of significant personal gain, in which the

currency could be economic, social, political, or ideological remuneration (1993: 25, Italics in the

original).

Political corruption, in essence systemic dysfunction, is only very poorly presented and is

generally policed as individual deviant behaviour. Hence, when show trials are staged, and

can be interpreted as serving political ends in moderate- to highly-corrupt countries, this

attenuates and may even contribute to the impact of corruption, and would seem to inhibit the

establishment of a comprehensive social response such as has had a major influence in the

last two decades in Singapore and Hong Kong. Because the costs for society of all forms of

corruption are intolerably high, we must conclude that virtually all cases of official

corruption, perhaps the best description of at least some of these trials, including fraudulent

prosecution of political rivals in the process of election tampering, corresponds to some

degree to this wider, collective concept of political corruption.

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As Erickson acknowledges: “Every human community has its own special set of

boundaries, its own unique identity, and so we may presume that every community also has

its own characteristic styles of deviant behaviour” (1996: 19). The punishment of alleged

greed corruption as legally deviant behaviour reflects a disruption in the social, if not legal

relationships. Following on from this, Chibnall and Saunders (1977) argue that private

citizens’ “rules” differ markedly from those of elites. They argue that elites and ordinary

citizens devise their own conceptions of political ethics by engaging in their own social

constructions of reality. The public trials of politically prominent persons can create a wider

perception of corruption in a society. Such perceptions may incorporate not only ideas about

the legality of behaviour, but also concerns about the secrecy of an action – they suggest that

private citizens are likely to see secrecy as evidence of wrongdoing - (“why keep it a secret if

you have nothing to hide?”), while elites defend secrecy as a necessary part of policymaking.

Corruption, then, is formally and legally defined in most cases as occurring in one of

five expressions, all of which are seen to be primarily damaging in a systemic context. The

five categories typically discussed are: bribery, nepotism, influence peddling, official fraud,

and election tampering. Bribery represents the most obvious expression of corruption, and is

often used by some Western liberal democracies as a comprehensive definition.

‘Corruption’, in its strict and narrowly legal definition, tends to be limited to individual

actions or reactions of public officials. The World Bank, however, despite its theoretically

global perspective, has proposed a narrow definition, albeit one that (except of course, for

stipulating the act of corruption as simply and always individualistic) leaves the door open for

a broad range of illegal and legal activities : ‘the abuse of public office for private gain’.

John Girling (1997) notes that ‘corruption is not just a “deviant” element in society, identified

by the legal institution’. The fact remains, however, that the term “corruption” is often

reduced to a narrow, individual act, as does the following explication: “Any definition of

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corruption has to incorporate, at a minimum, the notions of [an individual] wrongly getting an

advantage—pecuniary or otherwise—in violation of official duty and the rights of others”

(Maingot, 1994). Rather, corruption stems from ‘the incompatibility, in important respects, of

economic and political systems: this is the most evident in the case of the mutually exclusive

claims of capitalism and democracy’ (Girling, 1997:30).

In this broader regard, over 500 years ago Machiavelli described corruption as a

decline in the virtue (or virtù)7 of a state or a ruler. It does not require imagination to suppose

that the individual’s “getting of an advantage” (Maingot, 1994) can become a systematized

social norm, and treating corruption as merely an individual crime would be, at the very least,

ill advised in this context. Carl Friedrich (1972), while recognizing that the common

(individualistic) definition of [greed] corruption misses a wider more pervasive definition

perhaps more appropriate for mid- to highly- corrupt systems, also observes that the classic

and ancient social definition, as captured by Machiavelli, that corruption is a “general disease

of the body politic,” must inevitably be confronted. The cynical use of show trials to

undermine political rivals neatly misses this point. For Machiavelli, Friedrich wrote, “…when

virtù has been corrupted, a heroic leader must appear who in rebuilding the political order

infuses his virtù into the entire citizenry” (Friedrich, 1972: 131). Corruption, in this sense,

seen as part and parcel of the corruption of the collective, represents a social, or even society-

wide condition, not the transgreesions of a political rival.

Johnston (2005) admits that in his very straightforward individualistic, if broad-

reaching, definition of corruption, ‘the abuse of public roles or resources for private

benefit’(12), there is abundant contention regarding the key terms of ‘abuse’, ‘public’,

‘private’ and ‘benefit’. It may be of some comfort, if patently inaccurate, in many societies to

regard corruption very narrowly as an individual and illegal act that is intrinsically unrelated

to a broader, social pattern. However, to use charges of individual corruption against a

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political rival, even if valid, in a society rife with corrupt practices, sends a decidedly mixed

message. When this is accompanied with a veil of secrecy surrounding the long-term policy

implications of such trials, the obfuscation of anti-corruption policies is intensified.

Georg Simmel’s 1906 sociological analysis of secrecy, as it happens, outlines a

number of the problems latent in secrecy, a concept deeply related to corruption in public

administration. As Simmel puts it in the opening lines of his protracted essay, ‘All

relationships of people to each other rest, as a matter of course, upon the precondition that

they know something about each other’ (441). This proceeds much further in the analysis of

representative democratic policy makers. The legitimacy of policies in most societies

appears to rest almost exclusively on publicity and transparency in government actions, even

though these two features are rarely present in a pure form. Simmel’s point, however, is that

in government, secrecy frees the politician from responsibility (496). Moreover, secrecy is a

barrier to change. As Simmel puts it, “Refuge in secrecy is a ready resort in the case of social

endeavours and forces that are likely to be displaced by innovation” (472).

Karl Deutsch introduced the concept of government qua communication in the early

1960s. If government is communication, then opacity, particularly as a policy, appears to be

the abnegation of governmental responsibility. Opacity and concentration of decision-

making are intrinsically and causally related, moreover. The shield behind which an

irresponsible representative may choose to operate at one and the same time reduces the need

to share power. The sharing of policymaking decisions requires transparency—this amounts

to accesibility. If would-be participants in the policy making process are ‘shielded’ from the

process, the resultant decisions are necessarily concentrated in the hands of the few. As

regards government, then, ‘the higher the actual degree of concentration of decisions, the

greater the actual degree of vulnerability is apt to be; and the greater the imagined degree of

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such concentration, the greater may be the fear of infiltration or destruction’ (Deutsch, 1963:

211).

Considered as individual actions, or as individuated, without wider implications for a

society, most instances of corruption are relatively innocuous in and of themselves except,

perhaps, for ‘election tampering’. A distinction is often made, for example, between ‘need’

and ‘greed corruption’, as they are usually (but not always) applied to bribery. John T.

Noonan, Jr., a former court of appeals judge in the US, noted in his book, Bribes, that gifts

and tips (to government officials) ‘are equally hard to tell from bribes’ (1984: 688). He

argued, in fact, that all gifts, private or public, gratuities or ‘rewards’, anticipate some sort of

response. From this perspective, however, it seems to make little sense to regard cases of

corruption, even ‘legitimate’ or ‘legal corruption’, as if they were merely individual

aberrations. Society itself, from this perspective, may be hostile or amenable to corruption.

Robert Klitgaard (1988: 75) defined the likelihood of corruption in a given society

with an algorithm:

‘C = M + D – A’ (Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability ).

While it is widely accepted that there are problems with this formula, it nonetheless useful in

understanding the close relationship between corruption, legally defined, and secrecy,

especially in “developing countries.”

Influence peddling is the most insidious of the categories, fraught with collective and

systemic implications, not to mention difficulties in detection. Although it closely resembles

bribery, it typically has societal implications. Prosecutorial evidence in this regard,

moreover, must necessarily be built around indications of collective damage. An

inexplicably large bank account, for example, may be regarded as the result of a quid pro

quo, or as success in the liberal capitalist economy, depending upon the details and

transparency of prevailing banking regulations, and the duty-of-care (responsibility to the

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privacy of potentially innocent actors) in an investigation. Again, a court of law must, of

necessity, show that relationship, on an individual level. However, what if such behaviour is

serving collective, socio-economic class or partisan ends, such as raising funds for a party

electoral contest (or, indirectly, election tampering)?

International Pressures for the Remediation of Corruption and Collateral Benefits

Transparency International, a non-profit NGO established in 1993 to combat global

corruption, followed international anti-corruption campaigns by the International Monetary

Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as periodically mandated campaigns by the four

remaining global accounting and auditing.8 The range of pressures begins with the

Transparency International’s CPI, although its collaborative efforts with other NGOs and

government agencies extends its pressure markedly. For example, The Organized Crime and

Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is described on its web page in the following terms:

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is an investigative reporting

platform formed by 40 non-profit investigative centers, scores of journalists and several major

regional news organizations around the globe. Our network is spread across Europe, Africa, Asia

and Latin America. We teamed up in 2006 to do transnational investigative reporting and promote

technology-based approaches to exposing organized crime and corruption worldwide (OCCRP

n.d.).

The Global Anti-Corruption Consortium is described as a new and innovative consortium

made up of the OCCRP, TI, and:

• The African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR)

• The Government of Argentina

• Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

• C4ADS

• Connectas

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs Denmark

• Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Open Society Foundations

• Open Society Justice Initiative

• United States Department of State

• United States Agency for International Development (King 2016).

This network of governments, government agencies and NGOs is increasingly capable of

offering rewards and disincentives to countries with mid- to high-corruption ratings.

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The UN Convention against Corruption (UNCaC), now with almost universal national

ratification of publicly declared intent to ratify,9 proposes a regime for each country that

includes the establishment of banking transparency for “Politically Exposed Persons,” major

government officials and their family members. While most of the countries that have ratified

this have only begun to comply with its provisions, the pressure to show progress in the

prosecution of corrupt officials is palpably greater in 2018 than it was even five years ago.

The World Bank has a range of measures, including the Worldwide Governance Indicators,

and the European Union, in conjunction with the GAN Integrity project, has likewise linked

perceived efforts to fight corruption, including what are often regarded as politically-

motivated show trials, as “steps in the right direction.” They may not be. As the numbers of

overall corruption trials, including those of rival politicians, suddenly increased in India

(Indian Express 2017), concurrent with rising perceptions of corruption, as per the CPI

(Mourdoukoutas 2018), one is left with the impression that global pressures to reduce

corruption are at the least ineffective. The OCCRP notes in an article on its web page (King 2016)

that:

This new initiative will connect investigative journalists turning a spotlight on the secretive

shadow economy with anti-corruption activists able to translate complex information into

compelling campaigns for change. The project is structured to ensure the independence of

reporters and activists to pursue their distinct goals, and will generate information sharing

between those communities on an unprecedented scale, with common themes agreed at editorial

level (King 2016).

While private accounting firms, e.g., PricewaterhouseCooper, KPMG, Deloitte, have also

taken on an active role exerting international pressures upon corrupt regimes, and have

contributed to the rewarding of putative anti-corruption efforts, when they are cynical and

politically motivated manipulations of the political process, they may score well with the

firms while intensifying their perceptions (if not reality) of corruption. We should remember

as well the serious accounting scandals10 leading up to, and following the 2008 global

financial collapse. The major international accounting firms that survived this turmoil11 have

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nonetheless taken up the mantle of anti-corruption advocates, and in many cases these have

been active in medium- to high-corruption countries (e.g., PricewaterhouseCoopers 2011).

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu advertises on its web pages that

Our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) consulting practice helps to implement a compliance

program for domestic and foreign anti-bribery and corruption regulations such as the Foreign

Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 in the United States. We also investigate group companies in each

country to identify potential FCPA violations such as bribery in local business practices. If “red

flags” are identified, we will expand all aspects of research to locate the issue and support the

development of measures to prevent a recurrence (Deloitte n.d.).

Many of the high profile corruption trials have employed one or more of the remaining ‘Four

Sisters’ to substantiate their cases.

Examining Seven Countries across National Rankings

The selection of following examination of cases of relatively higher levels of

corruption and relatively lower levels of development and democracy is geared to examine

the parameters of this relatively new pattern of corruption show trials. The five BRICS

countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and, a late addition, South Africa) are of central

interest because of their potentially, if not currently powerful global economies, and their

unique position as possessors of relatively high levels of corruption as indicated by

Transparency International’s (TI’s) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the Global

Corruption Barometer (GCB).12

The concept of the BRICS grouping, originally an invention in a study written by

Goldman Sachs economist and chair of their Asset Management division, Jim O’Neil, in

2001; it anticipated a massive global economic downturn (which eventually happened in

2008) and the major countries that would weather it, in his view, included the BRIC

countries.13 By 2004 the BRIC countries were meeting to establish a special trading network,

although tensions between them existed (e.g., India and China). In fact, all of the four

original countries did well immediately following the 2008 crash, and had become

responsible for over 50% of the world’s economic growth by 2011-2012. After a China-

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Brazil-Russia economic decline in 2013,14 which occurred for separate reasons, their

economic power and annual growth rates have diminished markedly.

The four BRIC countries, despite their recent economic downturns, have come to be

regarded as new models of growth, countries beset with high levels of corruption and, at least

periodically, periods of rapid economic growth; in other words, they are structurally sound, as

was evident even in 2013 (Zirker and Baburkin 2013). Two high corruption countries,

Tanzania and Saudi Arabia, have been added to this study to provide insights through

outliers, and recent high profile anti-corruption actions. Tanzania is significantly lower on

the UNDP development scale, and Saudi Arabia significantly higher.

At first (and largely cursory) glance, international observers express approval of high

profile corruption trials. BBC World Service, for example, lauded the conviction of two

former government ministers in Tanzania without apparently deliberating at all on the flimsy

evidence relayed in the charges, or the numerous delays leading to a seven-year trial and the

convenient end of a presidential term. It simply reported that the trial, which was

extraordinarily transparent as a political tactic, had proved that “the tax exemptions [weakly

linked to the defendants, cost the government millions of dollars in lost revenues” (BBC

World Service 2015). Measures of perceptions of corruption (the CPI), of press freedom (the

Press Freedom Index) and several other related measures in seven mid- to high-corruption

countries, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and the BRICS countries, underscore the political nature of

the corruption trials. In short, just how “anti-corruption” these putatively anti-corruption

trials actually are obscures the wider contexts as well. Sometimes the trials, such as that in

the Senate that removed President Dilma Rousseff from the presidency following her

impeachment by the Chamber of Deputies in Brazil in 2016, are only very obliquely related

to corruption because the prosecuting parties were, if anything, more clearly guilty of

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corruption than was their defendant. The Saudi arrests in 2017 were not even linked to

judicial proceedings.

Brazil: A Coup under the Guise of Anti-Corruption Prosecutions?

The removal of President Dilma Rousseff through impeachment and conviction in the

Senate in 2016 was not formally based on charges of corruption. Although Brazil had been

caught up in a firestorm of corruption scandals over the previous two decades (e.g., Zirker

and Reddinger, 2003), and most notably after 2014 in the “Car Wash” scandal (Lava Jato)

legislative corruption scandal, the charges against Rousseff involved shifting parastatal

budgets into the federal budget to make the latter appear stronger, an action that, although

illegal, previous presidents had done with impunity. Rousseff was explicitly not corruption.15

A former leftist guerrilla during the 21-year military dictatorship, and a social democrat, she

had slipped to single digit popularity ratings by 2016, stemming from the traumatic economic

recession that had hit the country after 2012, and many Brazilians called for an extra-

constitutional change of government. Her supporters, mostly in her leftist Workers’ Party

(PT), regarded her removal from the presidency in 2016 as a coup d’êtat (Rovai 2016).

The upcoming 2018 presidential election had only one popular candidate by 2016,

Dilma’s mentor and founder of the PT, the leftist union leader, former President Luiz Inácio

Lula da Silva, known to Brazilians as Lula. He was initially possessed of a 42 % preference

for president among the 20 or so candidates, the next highest of whom, an extreme right-wing

former military officer implicated in torture during the 21-year dictatorship (1964-1985), Jair

Bolsonaro, who had single digit popularity. Lula had been a centrist president and had left

office in 2010 with the highest popularity rating of any Brazilian president in modern times.

The corruption trial of Lula in 2017-18 was unprecedented in it reach, and was linked

to other prosecutions surrounding the Brazilian construction giant, Odebrecht (BBC World

Service 2018). Prior to the 2010, and despite literally hundreds of major corruption scandals,

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the expulsion from Congress of PT leader, and former chief-of-staff to Lula, José Dirceu,

there had been almost virtually no prosecutions in Brazil for high-level corrupt practices.

Beginning in this decade, however, a series of convictions, significantly but not exclusively

involving the president’s PT party, led to numerous lengthy prison terms, and virtually

eviscerated the PT. In 2016 Dirceu was sentenced to 26 years in prison on corruption charges.

The evidence against Lula, including an alleged gift of an apartment in Rio to which

he may never have visited and did not legally own, as well as other “scanty evidence,”

resulted in to a sentence, imposed by federal judge Sergio Moro (after a trial that was perhaps

charitably called a “kangaroo court proceeding” [Weisbrot 2018]), of over 9 years in prison

and disqualification from any political position for 10 years. Interestingly, Moro was

subsequently awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law by Notre Dame University in the

United States. That same honor had earlier been bestowed upon Lula (Barcellos 2018).

Brazil ranked surprisingly higher on the CPI than the other three BRIC countries prior to

2016. It has subsequently dropped significantly.

India under Modi

A number of apparently political corruption trials occurred in India in the early part of

this decade (Montlake 2011), although India’s ranking in the CPI continued to drop. With

the accession to power of populist Narendra Modi, the number of corruption trials have

reached into the many thousands. There do not seem to be many that could conceivably be

linked to an ulterior political agenda. Other tactics, including the removal of and re-issuing

of high denomination currency, with the view to ending high profile tax avoidance, has been

seen to be ineffective at best, although perceptions of corruption have diminished to some

extent. Can we blame the relative restraint in the use of high-profile corruption trials to

accomplish political ends?

17

China and the Forging of a New Dynasty?

Xi Jinping has pursed anti-corruption policies with a good deal of commitment, although,

again, the salience of potential political rivals as defendants is noteworthy. Bo Xilai, one of

the Chinese mandarins and a former mayor of Dalian, followed by a term as governor of

Liaoning, and then from 2004 to 2007, Minister of Commerce. Bo was tried and convicted of

corruption as the current president of China, Xi Jin Ping began his consolidation of power.

Bo had last served as a member of the Politburo, and was Communist Party Secretary of

Chongqing (2007-2013), was the son of Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Elders of the Communist

Party of China, was thus regarded as one of the select "princelings," and hence represented an

immediate rival to Xi’s consolidation of power. As Gracie (2017) put it in a BBC report,

“Five years ago, China's most charismatic politician was toppled from power. His disgrace

allowed his great rival to dominate the political stage in a way unseen in China since the days

of Chairman Mao.” Although Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was convicted of the murder of a British

businessman, after a confession, Bo’s charges represented a familiar pattern: “the charge

sheet—bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power—was the standard one used against a

Communist Party boss. It was a classic Chinese political takedown” (Gracie, 2017).

In 2017, Sun Zhengcai, a rising star in the Politburo and an apparent contender for

power, was convicted of corruption and indiscipline and removed from power. As noted in an

article in the Guardian,

“Sun Zhengcai’s major problem was not corruption or womanising [the official charges against

him] but failure to profess full loyalty to Xi Jinping” said China expert Willy Lam, noting that the

investigation was concluded unusually fast compared to similar cases (Agence France-Presse

2017).

Writing in 2103, shortly after Xi came to power, in an article for the Brookings Institution,

noted that

Many watchers of the Chinese leadership have become dispirited by a lack of substantive progress

toward much-needed political reform, while Chinese public intellectuals have been dismayed by

orders instructing them not to speak about seven sensitive issues: universal values, freedom of the

18

press, civil society, civil rights, past mistakes by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), crony

capitalism, and judicial independence (Li and McElveen 2013).

Other corruption trials in Xi’s China have likewise removed established elites and paved the

way for the growing power of Xi Jinping.

Russia: A Classic Case?

Vladimir Putin, the long-term authoritarian leader of Russia, has routinely used high-

profile corruption trials over the past decade to reinforce the position of the power elite. A

recent major corruption trial is emblematic of his anti-corruption approach to strategic

politics. A former economy minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, was convicted of receiving a $2

million bribe from a former close Putin ally, Igor Sechin (DW News, 2017). As a Reuters

correspondent put it in a Chicago Tribune article in late 2017,

Alexei Ulyukayev, the highest-ranking Russian official to be arrested since 1993, was detained

last year at the headquarters of Russia's largest oil producer, the state-owned Rosneft, after a sting

operation by Russia's main intelligence agency. Prosecutors say he accepted a $2 million bribe

from Rosneft's influential CEO, Igor Sechin, for giving the company the green light for

privatizing another oil firm. The circumstances of the case have ignited speculation that

Ulyukayev was caught in a Kremlin power play against Sechin, a longtime associate of President

Vladimir Putin (Vasilyeva 2017).

Except for the foreign speculation, the trial looks like a high-profile case of overt

bribery. Were it not for earlier trials, including the 2013 trial of Alexei Navalny, a

popular opposition candidate for Mayor of Moscow (BBC World Service 2013), and a

second case against in 2017, this case might be thought of as an attempt to rid Russia of

corrupt racists. As Mirovalev (2017) put it in recent coverage of Navalny’s second

trial in the Los Angeles Times, “Navalny's anti-migrant rhetoric, along with his

participation in ultranationalist rallies frequented by neo-Nazis and white supremacists,

alienated some of Russia's liberal democrats.”

The Case of Basil Mramba and Daniel Yona in Tanzania

The Honourable Basil Mramba was a founding member of the ruling Chama Cha

Mapinduzi (CCM), the ruling (and only legal) political party in Tanzania until the mid-1990s.

He was a long-term member of the Bunge (Tanzanian Parliament), former Minister of

19

Finance, former Minister of Industry and Trade, District Commissioner, and by 2008, when

he was arrested for corruption in a gold assaying case, he was a perennial potential political

rival for executive appointment in the CCM, having been close and served as an MP and

government minister under the first three presidents, Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1962-1985),

Ali Hassan Mwinyi, (1985-1995), and Benjamin William Mkapa (1995 – 2005). Although

all presidents have come from the CCM,16 they represent different factions of the party, and

the accession to the presidency of Jakaya Kikwete (2005-2015) represented a far greater

sensitivity to global concerns,17 and perhaps the introduction of a new ruling cadre within the

CCM. Mramba and Daniel Yona’s trial (also a former senior minister in the CCM

government), was based on an assumption that tax-free status granted to a Scottish assaying

firm, one that they had apparently been directed from the presidency to grant, had cost the

country millions of dollars. Although there was no concrete evidence of revenue loss, or

even that any revenue had been lost, the two former ministers were subjected to humiliating

treatment, denial of their rights to produce counter evidence, and regular delays extending

their trial over seven years. The trial was rapidly concluded on the eve of a presidential

election that spelled the end of Kikwete’s 10-year terms in office, the two former ministers

were convicted and then humiliated with an unprecedented public trip in an open vehicle to

prison, and then, on appeal, granted a commutation to community service in a public place,

and further humiliation mopping floors in a hospital. In a country where the elite were

almost universally involved in corrupt practices, this trial set an interesting precedent.

Saudi Arabia: Targeted Anti-Corruption Arrests or the End of a Corrupt Era?

After decades of policy opacity, a new pretender to the throne, Mohammed Bin Salman has

shaken up the court elite with arrests and detention for corruption of 201 suspects, many of

them royal princes.

His unusual methods of dealing with corruption drew the attention of world media when

authorities arrested 201 suspects last November, including 11 senior princes and sitting and

20

former ministers, and locked them up in five-star hotels throughout the country, including the

Ritz- Carlton in Riyadh (OCCRP 2018).

By all accounts this does not appear to be a power play. Salman is already ensconced as the

pretender to the throne, and there appears to be a genuine attempt to balance a budget in

deficit by recapturing vast sums of resources. There is very little evidence of prosecutions of

elites for corruption in Saudi Arabia, and, in fact, once resources have been recaptured it

would appear unlikely that there will be any in this case. Saudi Arabia’s high level of

development and strongly authoritarian system would appear to attenuate the need of power

contenders to use corruption trials for political purposes.

Rankings as a Measurement of Corruption in an Age of Show Trials

Examining national rankings in the general area of secrecy and openness (via the

Press Freedom rankings), the quality of life and development (via the UNDP Human

Development rankings), and perceptions of corruption (via TI’s CPI), none of which have

maintained internally consistent algorithms or a consistent number of countries in the

rankings over the past decades, presenting a computational challenge. The following three

analyses, then, will the countries’ rankings and total rankings computed in each year,

followed by the division of the ranking by total countries ranked by year (to gain a percentage

of the position of the ranking in the whole set), and, in two cases, subtraction of the

percentage (expressed decimally) from 1.0, to provide a higher scores for lower press

freedom, for rankings by year in the CPI, and for lower UNDP development levels. The idea

is to provide the basis for a comparable index based upon international rankings in these three

areas.

The first two tables examine rankings in selected years of the CPI. Table 2.0 examines

the division of each CPI ranking by the total number of countries ranked that year with a

view to establishing the percentage (expressed decimally) of each score.

21

TABLE 1.0 Corruption Perceptions Index Ranks of Select Countries, by total Countries

CPI

Country

Rank

2000

CPI

Country

Rank

2007

CPI

Country

Rank

2012

CPI

Country

Rank

2015

CPI

Country

Rank

2017

Tanzania 76/90 94/179 102/174 117/167 103/180

Brazil 49/90 72/179 69/174 76/167 96/180

China 63/90 72/179 80/174 83/167 77/180

Russia 82/90 143/179 133/174 119/167 135/180

India 69/90 72/179 94/174 76/167 81/180

South

Africa

34/90 43/179 69/174 61/167 71/180

Saudi

Arabia

n.d. 79/179 66/174 48/167 57/18

Source: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results

Table 2.0: CPI Ranking Divided by Total Rankings

Tanzania Brazil China Russia India S.Africa Saudi

Arabia

CPI 2000 0.84 0.54 0.7 0.91 0.77 0.38

CPI 2007 0.53 0.4 0.4 0.8 0.4 0.24 0.44

CPI 2012 0.59 0.4 0.46 0.76 0.54 0.4 0.38

CPI 2015 0.7 0.46 0.49 0.71 0.46 0.37 0.29

CPI 2017 0.57

0.53 0.43 0.75 0.45 0.39 0.32 Source: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Tanzania Brazil China Russia India S.Africa Saudi Arabia

Figure 1.0--CPI Ranking Divided by Total # of Countries in CPI Survey (higher score = comparatively higher

perceived corruption)

CPI 2000 CPI 2007 CPI 2012 CPI 2015 CPI 2017

22

TABLE 3.0 World* Press Freedom Rankings

COUNTRIES Press Freedom

Index Rankings

2002

Press Freedom

Index Rankings

2007

Press Freedom

Index Rankings

2011-12

Press Freedom

Index Rankings

2018

Tanzania 62/139 55/169 34/179 93/180

Brazil 54/139 84/169 99/179 102/180

China 138/139 163/169 174/179 176/180

Russia 121/139 144/169 142/179 148/180

India 80/139 120/169 131/179 138/180

South Africa 26/139 43/169 42/179 28/180

Saudi Arabia 125/139 148/169 n.d. 169/180 *In 2007 the name was “Worldwide Press Freedom”

Sources: Reporters without Borders, World Press Freedom Index, 2002: https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2002

Reporters without Borders, Worldwide Press Freedom Index, 2007: https://rsf.org/en/worldwide-press-freedom-index-2007

Reporters without Borders, World Press Freedom Index, 2011-2012: https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-20112012

Reporters without Borders, World Press Freedom Index, 2018: https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Table 4.0: Press Freedom Rankings Divided by Totals Minus 1 Press

Freedom

Index

Ranking by

Total 2002

Press

Freedom

Index

Ranking by

Total 2007

Press

Freedom

Index

Ranking by

Total 2011-

12

Press

Freedom

Index

Ranking by

Total 2018

Tanzania 0.55 0.68 0.81 0.52

Brazil 0.61 0.5 0.45 0.48

China 0.01 0.04 0.03 0.02

Russia 0.13 0.15 0.21 0.18

India 0.42 0.29 0.27 0.23

S. Africa 0.81 0.75 0.77 0.84

S.

Arabia

0.1 0.12

0.07

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Tanzania Brazil China Russia India S. Africa S. Arabia

Figure 2.0 Percent Ranking by total Minus 1Higher Scores = Higher Press Freedom

Press Freedom Index Ranking by Total 2002

Press Freedom Index Ranking by Total 2007

Press Freedom Index Ranking by Total 2011-12

Press Freedom Index Ranking by Total 2018

23

Table 4.0: UNDP Human Development Index Rankings by Total Rankings

COUNTRIES 1990 Human

Dev. Index

Rank

2000 Human

Dev. Index

Rank

2016 Human

Dev. Index

Rank

UNDP

Profile of

Political Life

Rank, 2000

HDR Report

Access to

Information

Flows UNDP

Human Dev.

Report 2000

Tanzania 95/130 156/174 151/188 156/174 156/174

Brazil 50/130 74/174 79/188 74/174 99/174

China 64/130 99/174 90/188 99/174 99/174

Russia n.d. 62/174 49/188 62/174 62/174

India 93/130 128/174 131/188 128/174 128/174

South Africa 62/130 103/174 119/188 103/174 103/174

Saudi Arabia 66/130 75/174 38/188 75/174 75/174 Sources: Human Development Report 2016; Human Development for Everyone:

http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf.

Human Development Report 2000; Human Rights and Human Development: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-2000. Human Development Report 1990: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/219/hdr_1990_en_complete_nostats.pdf

Table 5.0: Human Development Index Ranking Divided by Totals Minus 1 1990 Human

Develop. Index

Rank/Total

Minus 1

2000

Human

Develop.

Index

Rank/Total

Minus 1

2016

Human

Develop.

Index

Rank/Total

Minus 1

UNDP

Profile of

2000 Pol

Life Rank

by Total

Minus 1

UNDP Dev

Index rank

by total

Minus 1

Access to

Info Flows

by Rank

UNDP

Human Dev.

Report 2000

Tanzania 0.26 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.1

Brazil 0.62 0.57 0.58 0.57 0.43

China 0.51 0.43 0.52 0.43 0.43

Russia

0.64 0.74 0.64 0.64

India 0.28 0.26 0.3 0.26 0.26

S. Africa 0.52 0.41 0.37 0.41 0.41

S.

Arabia

0.49 0.57 0.8 0.57 0.57

24

There are a number of possible interpretations of the data listed in the Figures and

Tables (above). Higher Development Index scores plus lower press freedom scores seems to

correlate with higher perceived corruption scores and a tendency for corruption show trials

for political purposes, although a good deal more work should be done on this, and these

appear likely to some extent in all higher corruption settings.

Conclusions: Intensifying Corrupt Practices through Anti-Corruption Activities?

The secretive nature of corruption makes it very difficult to measure, and even more

difficult to prosecute. Major high-level corruption trials typically take the tact that they have

privileged information that is grounded, if not thoroughly verified, and that the court, and the

wider population of interested observers, should “trust” them. When press freedom is

relatively weak and, as in the seven countries observed herein, declining, that trust is easily

exploited. In an ironic twist, we find ourselves examining evidence that implicates

unenlightened self-interest as the real defendants in many of these prosecutions. Politics,

what Harold Lasswell identified as “who gets what, when and how,” seems to explain many

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Tanzania Brazil China Russia India S. Africa S. Arabia

Figure 3.0--UNDP Rankings by Total Minus 1Higher Number = Higher Rank

1990 Human Develop. Index Rank/TotalMinus 1

2000 Human Develop. Index Rank/Total Minus 1

2016 Human Develop. Index Rank/Total Minus 1

UNDP Profile of 2000 Pol Life Rank by Total Minus 1 UNDP Dev Index rank bytotal Minus 1

25

of them. Global pressures to show progress in prosecuting corruption, then, may lead to

further corruption. Some patterns seem to emerge, however, as Table 6.0 suggests:

Table 6.0: Making Sense of the Corruption of Anti-Corruption

Authoritarian System with

high development rankings

Authoritarian and/or Limitied

Democracies with mid-level

development levels

Authoritarian of limited

democracies with very low

development rankings

Higher

Perceptions

of Corruption

(CPI

Rankings)

Corruption trials have

tend to be very rare

and may not have

political or power

struggle implications

even now: Saudi

Arabia and Russia

Following a multitude

of unprosecuted

corruption scandals,

introduction of

corruption trials as an

increasingly vital part

of the chaotic political

contest: Brazil, China

Periodic pressures to

engage in corruption show

trials, periodic episodes

leading to institutionally

mandated, politically

chaotic ‘scandal clusters’

and consequent trials (the

‘Watergate syndrome’):

Tanzania, India Lower

Perceptions

of Corruption

(CPI mid-

range

Rankings)

Corruption trials

introduced with anti-

corruption agencies

(fear of Pandora’s Box

Syndrome)

High-profile corruption

trials designed

primarily to remediate

corruption: South

Africa

There are also undoubtedly positive side-effects in the manipulative use of anti-

corruption prosecutions to remove political rivals. Although the cynical employment of such

legal prosecutions direct attention at, and immediately undermine rival politicians, they also

focus attention on corrupt practices and the need for the remediation of wider corruption.

Recent events in Malaysia, where ultra-conservative prosecution of alleged corruption and

sexual crimes led to the imprisonment of a former prime minister, the tables were turned after

several years, and the arrest and indictment of that opportunistic politician once out of office

has set a precedent, at least in this case. The road to hell may well be paved with good

intentions, as the saying goes, but it must be added that a proliferation of such “good

intentions” does not necessarily change that route.

26

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ENDNOTES

1 It is admitted by some critics of corruption that it can serve a positive developmental role in some cases. See,

for example, Friedrich, 1972: 128. 2 As Bauhr noted, “the need and greed distinction challenges the basic assumption of the central traditional

theoretical understanding of the problem of corruption, the principal– agent framework” (Bauhr 2012: 69) 3 One of them relies on the perceptions of a panel of academics. 4 Lambsdorff and others have emphasised that it is business people who first and most intensely feel the

pressures of corruption, and hence are the best indicators (through their perceptions) of the relative level of

corruption in a given country. 5 An expectation of gift-giving, in fact, can be translated facilely into a rationalisation of bribery. Taito Philip

Field, the first New Zealand MP to be convicted and imprisoned for corruption, proclaimed at his trial that New

Zealanders simply did not understand the time-honoured Pacific tradition of gift-giving. The Supreme Court,

which later unanimously rejected his appeal, said that any gift-giving to officials with the power to influence a

relevant case represented corruption. 6 Mary Anne Thompson, in her 2008 immigration department scandal, was found to have practiced criminal

nepotism in attempting to gain residency to New Zealand for her Pacific island family members. 7 By virtù, Machiavelli actually meant the ruler’s ability to think and act effectively and intelligently to get what

he wanted, presumably survival. As Machiavelli noted, a prince cannot do good if he/she does not survive. 8 Following the collapse of the auditing/accounting wing of Arthur Andersen in the Waste Management scandal

of 1998.

31

9 Only two countries as of late 2017 had failed to ratify, or sign an intent to ratify, the UNCaC: Barbados and

Syria. 10 E.g., the (Texas) Waste Management Scandal of 1998, the Enron scandal of 2001, the WorldCom scandal of

2002, the Tyco scandal of 2002, the HealthSound scandal of 2003, the Freddie Mac scandal of 2003, the AIG

scandal of 2005, the Lehman Brothers scandal of 2008, the Bernie Madoff scandal of 2008, and the Satyam

scandal 2009. 11 Arthur Andersen LLP was formerly one of the “Big Five” global accounting firms, along with surviving

members PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, and KPMG, and was obliged to

end its role in international accounting of public companies following its key participation in the 1998 Waste

Management scandal. The remaining companies have actively advocated for compliance with anti-corruption

legislation. 12 In the post-WWII era, rampant corruption has not been evident in the major economic powers until now. 13 Minus South Africa, which was added to the BRIC countries, by invitation from them, in 2010. 14 India has largely been spared. 15 As many as half of the members of Congress, including the Vice-President, José Temer, were facing possible

corruption charges, making it rather awkward for them to charge a largely uncorrupt president with corruption. 16 The precursors to the CCM, the Tanganyika African National Union on the mainland and the Afro-Shirazi

Party on Zanzibar, were merged in 1977 to create the CCM. 17 Kikwete had played an important role in negotiations between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic

of the Congo in 2013, for example. He was the first president to have had military training as well as education

at the University of Dar es Salaam, a school noted for its activism.