Corruption is thriving in Latin America, and may keep rising. U.S. fights back | Opinion
It’s no secret that Latin America has long suffered from chronic corruption, but a new ranking of the world’s most corrupt countries shows that the problem in the region is getting worse.
The newly-released global Corruption Perception Index 2023 of Transparency International, a Germany-based, anticorruption think tank, shows that corruption is thriving across the world, but at a faster pace in Latin America.
Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru are among the countries that saw their corruption perception levels worsen last year, the group said. The Transparency ranking is based on 13 data sources, including a poll among experts and business people about each country’s government corruption levels.
Francois Valérian, Transparency’s chairman, told me in an interview that one of Latin America’s key problems is the lack of an independent judiciary in most countries.
“In Latin America, we have anti-corruption laws and we have anti-corruption institutions, but in most countries we’re lacking a judicial system that can combat corruption and punish the crooked,” Velérian told me.
He added,”We need independent judges who have the financial and human resources to fight corruption.”
The ranking of 180 countries lists Venezuela and Nicaragua among the world’s most corrupt. At the opposite end of the index, Denmark and Finland are listed as the most honest ones.
On a scale from 0 to 100, going from the most corrupt to the most honest countries, Venezuela ranked 13, Nicaragua 17, Mexico 31, Peru 33, Brazil 36, Argentina 37, Colombia 40, Chile 66, the United States 69, Uruguay 73, Finland 87 and Denmark 90.
Valérian told me there is some good news on the anti-corruption front,
however.
While the United States continues to be a financial center that serves as a “facilitator of transnational corruption,” President Biden on Dec. 22 signed into law important new legislation that will help fight corporate bribery abroad, he said.
The new law, known as the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, goes after government officials all over the world who demand a bribe from any company that is listed in the New York Stock Exchange. It is “the most consequential anti-foreign-bribery
law in nearly half a century,” Valérian said.
In addition, in January the U.S. Treasury Department started to implement the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, which will make it easier to identify the true owners of shell corporations that are used to hide funds in the United States. “That will be a potent anti-corruption tool,” he added.
But Valérian admits that it will be difficult to make progress in the fight against corruption if countries keep electing authoritarian leaders who weaken independent institutions.
“The abuse of power breeds corruption,” Velerian told me. “And corruption will continue to thrive until justice systems can punish wrongdoing and keep governments in check.”
I’m afraid that we will see more — not less — corruption in the Americas, because there is a growing trend toward authoritarian populist leaders.
In Mexico, democratically-elected president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is seeking to weaken independent anticorruption and election monitoring institutions. Instead of looking into corruption allegations against his relatives and aides, Lopez Obrador is attacking the media for reporting them.
As I’m writing these lines, El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, who proudly defines himself as “the world’s coolest dictator,” is poised to win his country’s Feb. 4 elections by a landslide. Bukele is very popular not only in El Salvador, but throughout Latin America, because he has drastically reduced gang-related violence by putting about 75,000 presumed gang members behind bars.
Problem is, Bukele has assumed nearly absolute powers, packed the Supreme Court with loyalists, and violated a constitutional ban on running for a new term in office. As Bukele takes over virtually all powers, El Salvador is likely to become a fertile ground for even greater corruption.
It’s happening all over the world. Authoritarian populist leaders are winning elections in India, Turkey, Hungary, and — if Donald Trump wins in the November U.S. elections — we could see it happen in the United States.
Most studies show conclusively that to fight corruption, countries don’t need strong men, but strong institutions.
It’s no coincidence that the most honest countries in Transparency’s global corruption index are functioning democracies, while the most corrupt ones are dictatorships. Latin America is living proof that the fewer checks and balances a country has, the more corrupt it tends to be.
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