[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 114 (Thursday, July 14, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5161-S5163]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. CARDIN:
S. 3210. A bill to identify and combat corruption in countries, to
establish a tiered system of countries with respect to levels of
corruption by their governments and their efforts to combat such
corruption, and to assess United States assistance to designated
countries in order to advance anti-corruption efforts in those
countries and better serve United States taxpayers; to the Committee on
Foreign Relations.
[[Page S5162]]
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, there is growing recognition in the United
States, and around the world, that corruption is a serious threat to
international security and stability. We have all seen the headlines--
from scandals in Brazil and Malaysia, to the doping by Russian athletes
and their subsequent ban from the Summer Olympics, to the Panama
Papers. It is becoming clear that where there are high levels of
corruption we find fragile states, or states suffering from internal or
external conflict--in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq,
Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan.
The problem of corruption, and the dysfunction that follows it, can
be difficult to address because it is like a hydra, with many corrupt
actors that can include government officials, businessmen, law
enforcement, military personnel, and organized criminal groups.
Corruption is a system that operates via extensive, entrenched networks
in both the public and private sectors.
But we must address it. We can't throw up our hands and accept
corruption as the status quo, because the costs of not addressing and
rooting it out are too great. Corruption fuels violent extremism,
pushing young people toward violence, because they lose faith in the
institutions that are supposed to protect and serve them. Corruption
feeds the destructive fire of criminal networks and transnational
crime. Citizens lose faith in the social compact between governments
and the people. Terrorist groups use corruption to recruit followers to
their hateful cause. It's a vicious cycle.
The human cost of corruption is substantial. Across the globe,
millions of men, women and children are victims of modern day slavery.
Corruption enables their trafficking within and among countries.
Corruption is a constant companion to modern day slavery and the
suffering that it brings. We also have seen this play out in the
refugee and migrant crisis, with thousands drowning in the
Mediterranean, victims of trafficking networks and corrupt government
officials who facilitate this illicit business. Make no mistake,
corruption is big business--one news report estimates that traffickers
made 5 to 6 billion dollars in 2015 alone in bringing approximately one
million refugees and migrants to Europe.
Let's be clear-eyed--any fight against corruption will be long-term
and difficult. It's a fight against powerful people, powerful
companies, and powerful interests. It is about changing a mindset and a
culture as much as it is about establishing and enforcing laws. As my
colleagues and constituents know, my attention has long been focused on
fighting corruption. I introduced S. 284, the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act, to target human rights abusers and corrupt
individuals around the globe who threaten the rule of law and deny
fundamental freedoms. But the problem is so big--we simply have to do
more.
This is why I am introducing the Combating Global Corruption and
Accountability Act. We must meet the scale of the problem of corruption
with greater resolve and commitment. To do that, I believe we must
focus on four things.
First, we must institutionalize the fight against corruption as a
national security priority. In my bill, the State Department will
produce an annual report, similar to the Trafficking in Persons Report,
which takes a close look at each country's efforts to combat
corruption. That model, which has effectively advanced the effort to
combat modern day slavery, will similarly embed the issue of corruption
in our collective work, so that we hold governments to account. This
bill establishes minimum standards for combating corruption--standards
that should be part and parcel of every government's commitment to its
citizens. These include whether a country has laws that recognize
corrupt acts for the crimes they are--violations of the people's
trust--along with appropriate penalties for breaking that trust.
Whether a country has an independent judiciary for deciding corruption
cases, free from influence and abuse. Whether there is support for
civil society organizations that are the watchdogs of integrity against
would-be thieves of the state. This bill, hopefully, will build
anticorruption DNA into the foundations of government action.
Second, in the United States, our whole-of-government effort must be
better coordinated. Right now, we work across multiple agencies and in
multiple offices to combat corruption. There is much information and
many best practices that can be shared--we've got to do better at that
and take advantage of those areas where we have been successful. The
State Department and the United States Agency for International
Development have done great work, but the vast nature of the problem
requires that we improve our ability to tackle it. In this bill,
agencies and bureaus and our missions overseas will have to prioritize
corruption into their strategic planning as an essential part of our
foreign policy work--a step that I believe will foster greater
cooperation.
Third, we must improve oversight of our own foreign assistance and
promote transparency. The U.S. taxpayer has a right to know how our
foreign assistance is being spent, and also should feel confident that
we are doing the kind of risk assessments, analysis, and oversight that
ensure our assistance to other countries is having the effect we want
it to have. My bill consolidates information and puts it online, where
citizens can see the numbers and the programs. That kind of
transparency is in and of itself good, but in my experience it has the
effect of making us better at self-policing our work. We can use the
data to capture redundancies and analyze trends, which I believe will
make our decision-making better. The bill embeds oversight into our
foreign assistance programs overseas, maintaining the flexibility we
need to meet our goals rapidly while also holding government to
account.
In fact, it is a natural complement to the Foreign Assistance
Transparency and Accountability Act, a bill Senator Rubio and I co-
sponsored that looks at our foreign aid and ensures that our foreign
assistance programs are tracked and evaluated adequately and
appropriately.
I am a believer in the power of example. This ``one-two'' punch of
the Combating Global Corruption Act and the Foreign Assistance
Transparency Act strengthens our foreign assistance policy,
demonstrates that we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and shows
other countries that we are committed to this fight.
Finally, we have to find ways to resource anti-corruption work.
Corruption is big business and big money. We should look for ways to
use seized assets and ill-gotten proceeds to build civil society
capacity to fight corruption, and make it easier to transfer these
assets to the appropriate effort. The Obama administration has built on
the efforts of those before it to improve our ability to go after the
big players, and there have been some great successes by the Treasury
and Justice Departments in winning judgments and recovering assets. So
we will look at the resources and the training and the intelligence
needs, and we will make sure we have the tools and skills to continue
those kinds of successes.
I want to close with a few words about something that is hard to
capture in legislation. It is something that I grappled with when
drafting this bill. It is something that perhaps, more than anything,
will dictate if we win this struggle against corruption. And that is
political will.
At the end of June, after six long years, the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission issued a final rule to implement Section 1504 of
the Dodd-Frank Act, known as the ``Cardin-Lugar provision''. This
provision requires that all foreign and domestic companies listed on
U.S. stock exchanges and involved in oil, gas, and mineral resource
extraction must publish the project-level payments they make to the
foreign countries in which they operate. This was a watershed moment in
which the United States reclaimed its position as a leader in the
effort to increase global accountability and transparency. Six years.
That is the length of a term of a U.S. Senator. It is college and a
Master's degree. It is the length of the horrific conflict in Syria.
Six years for the United States to achieve greater revenue transparency
in the extractives sector because we know secrecy breeds corruption and
corruption can breed instability and perpetuate poverty in resource-
rich countries. It took that long
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because some people believed that less transparency is a good thing.
Some groups believed that accountability should take a back seat to
profitability.
I am under no illusion that this global fight against corruption will
be easy. It will make the work of our government agencies more
challenging. It will make our diplomacy more challenging. It will
require political will. But political will finds its source and its
strength in our values. Political will is created when we embrace those
values. Political will endures in good governance, accountability, and
transparency and those values that are at the core of the compact
between the government and the governed.
As this bill moves forward, I urge my colleagues to find the
political will to combat global corruption, ensure accountability, and
keep our commitment to the best of American values.
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