Madelaine Drohan’s thoughtful review of The Poverty of Corrupt Nations, informed by her familiarity with the world of international finance, further highlights the challenges of global corruption.
Drohan makes the point that in addressing the problem of global corruption, my book may focus more attention on corrupt officials in the developing world than on individuals and organizations in the more advanced economies that actually pay the bribes. Because these are the two hands on the same dollar, if not the opposite sides of the same coin, clearly both problems need to be tackled simultaneously. Countries such as Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden are ranked by Transparency International as the least corrupt countries in the world because they do not offer a receptive environment to would-be bribe payers, and in most cases corrupt offers would be spurned by Danes, New Zealanders and Swedes. The ultimate challenge is to create this culture of doing business honestly in the world’s most corrupt nations—countries such as Haiti, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.
In addition to tougher sanctions and the prosecution of bribe payers that Drohan calls for in countries such as Canada, developed countries can do much more to thwart the laundering of corrupt money. They can also assist more constructively in the repatriation of stolen corrupt assets that have found their way into bank accounts in these countries, and return them to their rightful owners—the citizens of the countries where the corrupt activities occurred. I describe in detail in The Poverty of Corrupt Nations how this is a priority for the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), and an initiative that I lead. Drohan gives an example of how Canada appears to be “let off the hook,” but as R.W. Baker documented in his 2005 book, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, Canada has done a better job than the United States and Europe in “removing the difference between what constitutes money laundering, whether the illegal origin of the proceeds is domestic or international.”
More must still be done to attack the laundering of corrupt funds, which is one of the reasons I wrote this book, as a call to action with specific implementation strategies.
For example, on the question of enhanced transparency and accountability in the reporting of natural resource revenues, GOPAC is currently urging the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board “to demand more transparency of natural resource revenues in the public accounts of nations and sub-national governments.”
We must fix this problem of corruption, through avenues that Madelaine Drohan, I and countless others are pursuing, not as idealists, but as activists and pragmatists in curbing poverty, ending the destruction of resources and seeing that abuse of power is met with justice.
Honourable Roy Cullen, P.C., C.A.
Victoria, British Columbia
