[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

[[Page S5163]]

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.
                                 ______