Category: anti-corruption

‘Kleptocratic conspiracy’ pushing Guatemala toward authoritarianism

     

Hundreds of peasant farmers and indigenous Maya blocked a major highway in Guatemala’s western highlands on Monday, demanding that President Jimmy Morales reverse a policy aimed at forcing a U.N.-backed… Read more »

As unrest flares, could more inclusion repair Iraq’s fractured democracy?

     

Iraqi security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition Wednesday as demonstrators took to the streets for a third day in the southern city of Basra. One person died and 21… Read more »

How Western ‘enablers’ import corruption and strengthen authoritarianism

     

Certain elements within the legal, financial, and influence communities, seeking new markets, clients, and profits among an emerging global class of super wealthy actors with fortunes of dubious provenance, have… Read more »

‘Kleptocracy Curse’ undermines democracy, threatens global security

     

Federal investigators in Brazil have uncovered corruption at the highest levels of the government and in the country’s largest corporations, according to a Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder by Claire Felter and Rocio Cara… Read more »

South Africa’s civil society halted kleptocratic state capture

     

South Africa’s fragile democracy was protected from kleptocratic state capture by the “galvanizing action” of a vibrant coalition of civil society groups, including organized labor, say the authors of a… Read more »

Why the West must confront Putin

     

Recent events have only strengthened hedge-fund manager Bill Browder’s case against the Kremlin, a prominent Moscow-based journalist writes. In order to advance the now-celebrated Magnitsky Act, Browder approached the Helsinki… Read more »

Can Romania recapitalize trust in democracy?

     

Fifty years on from the crushing of the Prague Spring and almost 30 years after the 1989 revolutionary upheaval, Eastern Europe is experiencing a vicious return to authoritarianism, according to… Read more »

Corruption the ‘soft spot’ of post-Cold War authoritarians

     

The corruption of mafia-like elite circles are the soft spot of post-Cold War authoritarian states, argues AEI analyst Clay R. Fuller. “All authoritarian states are kleptocracies because by definition, authoritarians maintain an artificial monopoly on… Read more »

West’s Iron Curtain ‘would be most effective tool against Putin’s kleptocracy’

     

There is a major difference between former Soviet leaders and senior Russian officials today, including Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov, whose families are abroad, former… Read more »

Anticorruption: How to Beat Back Political & Corporate Graft

     

A universal asset in efforts to combat kleptocracy and corruption is the fact that “the anti-corruption ideal is common to all nations, all traditional cultures,” according to Robert I. Rotberg… Read more »