Like evil spirits, corruption haunts human civilisation. The Rig Veda, Old Testament and Quran warn against bribery. The Arthashastra lists 40 ways how bureaucrats embezzle. China had its Book of Swindles. The first recorded cases go back 5,000 years to Egypt, when bribery, embezzlement and nepotism were rampant in the judiciary. In Greece, politically ambitious families bribed the Delphic Oracle. As former British prime minister David Cameron said, “The evil of corruption reaches into every corner of the world.”
Corruption is criminal but also political. Left-oriented socialists view corporate influence, foreign interference, dark money, fat-cat donations and tax-avoiding schemes as corruption. Right wing conservatives see corruption in voter fraud, union meddling, graft in bureaucracies, deep-state conspiracies and left-wing bias in public institutions that misuse or waste taxpayers’ money. This ideological divide exists in all democracies from Australia to the US. Whatever the form, corruption destroys both faith and state.
These days, corruption masquerades as “foreign lobbying” and “the US is the Mecca of dirty money”, says Ben Freeman, author of The Foreign Policy Auction. Criminal cases of bribery are sensational but account for a tiny portion of foreign influence operations in the west. He says, “Every year, foreign interests—many of them autocracies—spend millions of dollars on lobbying, public relations firms, think tanks, universities and sports franchises. There is a massive and thriving foreign influence industry operating in the US—entirely non-criminal in nature—24 hours a day, seven days a week, every week.”
Imaging: Deni Lal
Two-thirds of American think tanks take overseas funding. “Foreign governments pay lobbyist firms to promote their interests. It doesn’t matter if they are tyrannies or autocracies, to lobby legally, they just need to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” says Freeman. Like finance in Wall Street, lobbyists are concentrated in Washington, D.C.’s “K street”. K, by the way, doesn’t stand for kickbacks. All activities are legal—except taking sanctioned oligarchs as clients.
The Archbridge Institute economist Justin Callais says, “Powerful interests can shape the law itself to suit their own purposes.” Ironically, from 1869, American officials have been trying to ban foreign lobbying. In the UK, the three top Tory donors are Russian kleptocrats-turned UK citizens who made their fortune through corrupt oil, property and security deals. Neither shady pasts nor massive donations to Tories are illegal.
China and Russia were the traditional big players. A 2017-21 study showed Russian spending on foreign lobbying grew 584 per cent, Chinese by 476 per cent. But sanctions have hurt their business. The biggest foreign paymasters now are the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia—the latter’s influence operations skyrocketed after 9/11 when 15 of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudis. Spending millions on lobbyists, universities, gaming industry and Hollywood, the UAE also sponsors prestigious sports leagues, events and trophies.
At a New York-based Human Rights Foundation’s (HRF) event, activists accused these countries of “sportswashing”, “buying favour” by whitewashing their human rights image. The countries say they are rescuing bankrupt sports clubs and see no harm in building their “soft power”.
The reins on corruption loosens. John Jamesen Gould, editor of The Signal newspaper that partners with HRF, says, corruption “has been happening for years. It’s been getting worse. And now it’s getting worse still”. He referred to the US department of justice scaling down anti-corruption enforcement—dropping high-profile cases, firing anti-corruption prosecutors, disbanding Task Force KleptoCapture, and unwinding efforts to enforce sanctions against Russian oligarchs. A presidential order suspends the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Notes Gould, “Corruption isn’t a legal but a moral language.” When donation-receiving lawmakers make the law, law is neither about justice nor ethics.
Pratap is an author and journalist.