[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 177 (Thursday, October 7, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S7002]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. CARDIN (for himself and Mr. Wicker):
  S. 2986. A bill to require a review of sanctions with respect to 
Russian kleptocrats and human rights abusers; to the Committee on 
Foreign Relations.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to sound the alarm on the 
national security threat that corruption represents and to echo the 
determination made earlier this year by President Biden that corruption 
constitutes a core national security threat to the United States.
  Along with many colleagues in this body, I have worked long and hard 
to fight corruption--which undermines democracy, human rights, and the 
rule of law and is behind so many of the persistent problems that we 
seek to solve.
  The recently released Pandora Papers investigations--coordinated by 
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and involving 
150 media outlets, including The Washington Post and the Organized 
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project--reveal the astonishing extent 
to which questionable financial flows are entering our country and 
those of our allies. This warrants further review. Although we had 
known that such a system of offshore finance exists, it is still 
shocking to see the scale of the corruption, documented in great detail 
by emails, contracts, and other documents. Foreign dictators, their 
associates, and other foreign officials have stolen untold sums--
billions of dollars--and moved that dirty money into our democracies, 
into real estate, bank accounts, trusts, and other financial 
instruments.
  This is a profound threat to our national security. It hollows out 
the rule of law abroad and now it threatens to hollow out the rule of 
law at home.
  Foreign kleptocrats cannot do this alone. Although kleptocrats may 
steal abroad, to taint our political system with that money requires 
the assistance of enablers--American lawyers, accountants, trust, and 
company service providers, real estate professionals, and the like--who 
put aside any moral qualms they may have about working for the enemies 
of democracy to obtain a small slice of the illgotten gains.
  The Pandora Papers make clear that U.S. enablers apparently play an 
outsized role in helping to move stolen assets from dictatorships and 
struggling democracies into consolidated democracies--an appalling and 
corrupt transference of wealth from those who need it most to those who 
have no need at all.
  All told, the papers include documents from 206 U.S. trusts in 15 
States and Washington, DC, and 22 trustee companies. While there is 
obviously much legitimate business to be done in creating and managing 
trusts and investments--and we should be careful about overstating or 
generalizing without careful examination of each case--it appears that 
some Americans may have knowingly played a significant role in 
facilitating corruption.
  The papers include 300 politicians and public officials from more 
than 90 countries and territories--though no Americans and exceedingly 
few Western Europeans. This comes as no surprise. The movement of 
corrupt money runs east to west, not west to east. It is the tragedy of 
the post-Cold War world that corruption has come west along with dirty 
money rather than democracy going east. There are names in the papers 
that also come as no surprise--Putin cronies Konstantin Ernst and 
Gennady Timchenko are both named. Both are included on Alexey Navalny's 
list of 35 human rights abusers and kleptocrats. Timchenko is already 
under U.S. sanctions, though Ernst is not. Now would be a good time to 
consider sanctions on him.
  The Aliyevs of Azerbaijan also make an appearance. They collectively 
own a real estate empire in London worth $700 million. A Chinese 
Communist Party official also was found to have used an offshore 
company to trade in U.S. stocks.
  However, there is good news. It does not have to be this way. The 
triumph of global kleptocracy is not inevitable. We can fight back, and 
we are. Never before has there been an American administration so 
focused on the countering corruption or a Congress so creative and 
aggressive in facing down the threat. President Biden is the first 
President ever to declare countering corruption to be a ``core U.S. 
national security interest.'' Congress has formed a Caucus against 
Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy. The House recently passed no fewer 
than six different counterkleptocracy measures in the National Defense 
Authorization Act, which included bills of mine. Now it is incumbent 
upon us in the Senate to do the same.
  First is the Combating Global Corruption Act that would create a 
public and tiered country-by-country reporting requirement on 
compliance with international anti-corruption norms and standards. 
Those countries in the lowest tier of this report would have their 
leadership evaluated for Global Magnitsky sanctions.
  Then there is the Global Magnitsky reauthorization that would 
reauthorize and enhance these critical sanctions for targeting global 
kleptocrats and human rights abusers--exactly the sort of people 
identified in the Pandora Papers. I am also proposing a new measure--
and I am introducing it today--that would mandate the administration 
evaluate the ``Navalny 35'' for Global Magnitsky sanctions. Russian 
opposition leader Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, in a 
letter addressed to President Joe Biden earlier this year, called for 
the United States to impose sanctions on dozens of Russian oligarchs 
and government officials, whom it credibly accuses of political 
persecution, human rights abuses, and corruption. I agree with the 
Navalny team and urge the administration to move forward on this.
  All three of these measures have been included in the House National 
Defense Authorization Act, and I urge my colleagues to include them in 
the Senate National Defense Authorization Act.
  The Pandora Papers are a wake-up call to all who care about the 
future of democracy. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, it is 
time for democracies to band together and demand an end to the 
unprecedented corruption that has come to be the defining feature of 
the global order. We must purge the dirty money from our systems and 
deny kleptocrats safe haven.
  It will take hard decisions and difficult reforms, but we can do it. 
We already have the bipartisan momentum. Now we only have to see it 
through.

                          ____________________