Recent history means South Africa must back this anti-corruption court
After the infamous state capture decade and the failure to bring such looters as the Gupta brothers to justice, surely it is a no-brainer for South Africa to lead the campaign to create an international anticorruption court (IACC)?
Corruption and money laundering is a growing global cancer, costing about $2-trillion (about R38-trillion) a year — the equivalent of 10% of global GDP — enough to feed the world’s hungry 80 times over.
Of this, $100bn is stolen from Africa annually, a quarter of the continent’s GDP. Even after inward aid flows, that makes Africa a net creditor to the rest of the world: not so much rich countries supporting the poor, but the poor supporting the rich.
It has been estimated by Global Financial Integrity that developing countries lose more than 10 times more in illicit financial outflows than they receive in foreign aid. Southern African countries would be performing far better for their citizens were it not for brazen corruption by politicians and their complicit business cronies.
In South Africa, the state capture decade under former president Jacob Zuma and the Guptas erased one-fifth of GDP, triggering huge cutbacks in public services, crippling daily electricity cuts and contamination of the water supply.
That this occurred in Africa’s most modernised nation, with the best infrastructure on the continent, perhaps the best constitution in the world and world-class financial regulation, is salutary indeed.
Kleptocrats have also ravaged populations with the help of global corporates and banks, most based in New York and London, such as Bain & Co, McKinsey, KPMG, SAP, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Baroda Bank, the stolen money often flowing through the notorious money-laundering hubs of Dubai and Hong Kong.
Illicit billions have been invested in the real estate market in London — the city infamous for money laundering by oligarchs and others, despite the pious rhetoric of UK Tory ministers. UK overseas territories — from the Caribbean to Gibraltar — are also money-laundering hotspots.
Globally, grand corruption and money laundering are on the rise, and a radically new approach is needed.
But why create a new court when the International Criminal Court (ICC) already exists? Because the ICC focuses on such atrocity crimes as genocide and war, not corruption.
Countries with entrenched kleptocracies (such as Russia or Zimbabwe) may resist joining the new court, but kleptocrats frequently conceal their illicit assets in other countries such as the UK. The IACC would be able to freeze and recover stolen assets, even where kleptocrats evade arrest by staying in their home countries or depositing their stolen gains in safe havens.
Moreover, if they travel to an IACC member state or a country with an extradition treaty, they face the risk of arrest, trial and imprisonment, helping ensure the efficient recovery and repurposing of stolen wealth for the benefit of victim populations, particularly those in the global south.
All our governments must also do much more. It’s no good British and South African ministers condemning corruption while in practice turning a blind eye to it.
But before the establishment of another multilateral institution, it is imperative that legitimate concerns about Western bias are addressed. International organisations such as the UN Security Council, the ICC, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation are often perceived as serving Western interests against those of the global south.
Which is why former judge Richard Goldstone, vice-chair of Integrity Initiatives International, is heading a globally diverse group of leading international jurists, lawyers and anti-corruption experts to begin drafting a model IACC treaty.
Participants come from such countries as Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria, Brazil, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Mexico, the US, Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
The state capture decade erased one-fifth of GDP. That this occurred in Africa’s most modernised nation, with world-class financial regulation, is salutary indeed
Eminent figures, including former presidents, prime ministers, Nobel laureates and legal experts such as senior US District Court judge Mark Wolf back the initiative. Integrity Initiatives International has already mobilised support from governments in Canada, Ecuador, Moldova, the Netherlands and Nigeria, as well as the European Parliament.
With a likely change of government in the UK later this year, it is encouraging that Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has endorsed it.
The IACC will prosecute not only corrupt public officials, but also those who pay the bribes and those who launder the stolen funds — bankers, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and other financial service providers — many of whom are based in the financial centres of the global north.
Over a year ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa made a promise in response to the Zondo commission that “there will be no place for corrupt people, for criminal networks, for perpetrators of state capture to hide”. Yet numerous individuals responsible for various aspects of state capture continue to sit at senior levels of the ANC, including in his cabinet.
As chief justice Raymond Zondo warned recently: “The levels of corruption in our country have reached completely unacceptable proportions, and unless something very drastic and effective is done soon, we will have no country worth calling our home.”
Of all the countries in the world, South Africa should be leading the campaign to establish an IACC. Although it could not eliminate corruption, it would substantially strengthen the existing international framework designed to prevent it, and help reduce the widespread impunity associated with financial crime.
The IACC is not just a legal necessity but a moral imperative towards a just and transparent world, promoting the principles of fairness, equality, and accountability, and helping to ensure that corruption has no place to hide.