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Corruption court wins support

Forty-two former presidents and prime ministers have added their signatures to a growing list that calls for the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court, citing both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and losses of coronavirus funding to fraud as new evidence of the ill effects of grand corruption.

Among those signing the declaration are former leaders of Argentina, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and many others, according to an announcement by the non-profits Integrity Initiatives International and Club de Madrid.

Grand corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation’s leader – ‘‘has global dimensions and cannot be combated by the affected countries alone’’, said Danilo Tu¨rk, president of Slovenia between 2007 and 2012 and the current president of Club de Madrid, a forum for former elected world leaders.

Though the court was first proposed made a decade ago, some of the signatories are now explicitly linking a potential court to growing anger in Western capitals over the impact of dirty Russian money ahead of the invasion of Ukraine.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown and others have added their names to a declaration that includes more than 250 high-profile figures from more than 75 countries.

Sitting governments in Canada and the Netherlands have made establishing the court part of their official foreign policy, pushing its creation as a vital international issue.

‘‘Corruption among public officials isn’t just a financial problem – it also undermines democracy and the rule of law in a country, and exacerbates inequality among its people,’’ Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Wopke Hoekstra told a meeting of European Union foreign ministers last month.

But Hoekstra also emphasised that the Netherlands, which houses the International Criminal Court (ICC) in

The Hague, could only establish an anti-corruption court with the support of many other nations.

No former United States president has signed the declaration, though it was first proposed by Mark Wolf, a US district judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan who founded Integrity Initiatives International.

The US, home to a number of secretive tax havens, is considered one of the key facilitators of international corruption.

The US has long had a fraught relationship with the ICC, with US critics citing concerns about sovereignty and fears that Americans could be targeted for prosecution.

After the court moved to open an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan in 2019 – the first ICC investigation that could involve US troops – the Trump Administration sanctioned a variety of court officials. The Biden Administration dropped the sanctions.

The ICC has also developed a complicated reputation in Africa, since many of the cases it has brought have been against current or former African leaders – in part due to the difficulty of bringing cases against more powerful nations.

The invasion of Ukraine might have led to a new perspective on international justice in countries that were once sceptical.

The invasion has led to new moves against corruption in Western capitals once known for accepting suspect Russian money. ‘‘Oligarchs in London will have nowhere to hide,’’ British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in February, despite the fact that many Russians accused of corrupt gains had been hiding in the British capital for decades.

Though 189 countries are already party to the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the treaty only requires them to have domestic laws criminalising corruption. Though many do, such laws are often unenforced, while the sprawling, international nature of modern financial systems makes corruption an international issue.

– Washington Post

World

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2022-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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