Addressing corruption

Apr 15, 2015 Editorial

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Interesting developments are unfolding on both sides of the earth. It is reported that Chinese police have “quietly travelled” to the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia to “persuade” one of their compatriots to return and face bribery charges in China.
According to the report, it is believed to be the first confirmed account of Chinese officers travelling to a Western country to deal directly with targets of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expanding “Operation Fox Hunt” campaign, aimed at repatriating corrupt officials and seizing their hidden assets overseas.
It is said that two officers were sent to Australia in December last year to negotiate directly with the suspect who is said to be a naturalised Australian citizen.
An individual with direct knowledge of the investigation believes that the lawmen had travelled in an unofficial capacity, raising questions as to whether Australian police or diplomats were notified of the repatriation efforts being carried out on Australian soil.
He said that when first contacted from China, the suspect didn’t quite believe what they were saying over the phone, and said it would be best if they spoke “face to face”.
The high priority that the Chinese leader has given “Fox Hunt” and its sister campaign, “Sky Net”, has raised incentives and pressures for police officials at all tiers of Chinese government to bring fugitives back home and uncover hidden assets.
His “fox-hunting efforts” have led to the extradition of 290 alleged fugitives from 69 countries, according to official figures from December. But those efforts have reportedly been frustrated by cautious government responses in Western nations including Australia, which is commonly listed as a top-three destination for Chinese fugitives.
Chinese police have attempted to work around diplomatic obstacles by raising the importance of “persuasion work”, which typically involves applying pressure upon family members who remain in mainland China.
”A fugitive is like a kite, the body is overseas but the thread is inside China – through family and friends, [we] can always find them,” the team leader of Shanghai police’s economic crimes unit stated.
Chinese authorities say 390 alleged fugitives had returned “voluntarily”, according to the December figures.
And closer to us, our neighbours to the south have a scandal that has taken on worrying proportions.
Prosecutors in Brazil are alleging that contractors of the multinational energy corporation Petrobras were permitted to pad their contracts and remit the excess as kickbacks to the oil company, which passed hundreds of millions of dollars to politicians and, importantly, President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party.
The scandal keeps growing.
A point has been made in an informative Wall Street Journal opinion piece that as the details unfold—allegedly involving hundreds of millions of dollars, stolen from not only Petrobras but also from other state-owned enterprises—there is a danger that Brazil will miss the most important lesson.
The author stresses that “law enforcement must hold individuals accountable, but the state’s oversize role in the economy is what led to the mess. Replacing the players with individuals who seem more honest will not eliminate the cause of corruption”.
“State-owned companies are controlled by the political class. The temptation to use the companies like cookie jars, particularly when commodity prices are booming and large quantities of money are sloshing around, will always be great. To expect politicians not to try to get at those resources is like trusting a fox to guard a fattened hen.
Whether Ms. Rousseff is being honest when she says she did not know about the kickback scheme matters little to most Brazilians. Her problem is that the allegations have put the legitimacy of her narrow victory—by a margin of around 3%—in doubt. Her party is fighting the charges but meanwhile Ms. Rousseff is in no shape to lead.
The scandal is likely to drag on because of its size and complexity.
One problem may have been that a procurement process closed to international bidders invited collusion. Prosecutors have charged four former Petrobras executives and nearly two dozen other individuals at a handful of large Brazilian engineering firms with money laundering and corruption. Almost 50 politicians from a variety of political parties are also under investigation.
The outcry against corruption is an indication of the vibrancy of Brazilian civil society.”
The two instances mentioned above deliver two clear messages: corrupt individuals are now being hunted beyond any boundary and civil society must play its role in addressing wrongdoing.

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