Centre for the Study of Corruption

By Sue Hawley, Policy Director of Corruption Watch UK and SCSC Practitioner Fellow

When FATF released its evaluation of the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing regime in December 2018, giving it almost full marks, civil society organisations were dismayed. Global Witness accused the review body of being ‘asleep on the job’. RUSI questioned “the relevance” of the evaluation given the UK’s repeated role in global money laundering schemes.

FATF – the global anti-money laundering body – is one of the most feared and respected review bodies on the international stage. Unlike equivalent review bodies such as the OECD or UN, FATF has the power to blacklist non-cooperative jurisdictions – a sanction that could seriously impact a country’s credit ratings and ability to access international finance.

Lacking transparency and stakeholder input

Unfortunately, FATF also happens to be one of the least transparent and participatory of the international review bodies, with very little public or civil society input into its reviews. It meets primarily with governments and the private sector, including civil society groups only to discuss one specific recommendation (8) on measures to prevent non-profit organisations being susceptible to terrorist financing, and then only a narrow set of CSOs. UK civil society groups asked the UK government and FATF several times to meet with evaluators to discuss broader money laundering policy issues – unsuccessfully.

The result of only meeting a narrow range of stakeholders is that FATF evaluators only hear the narrative of the government under review. Voices with good evidence that might question that narrative, such as civil society and academia, are effectively excluded. FATF’s UK evaluation is a perfect example of this.

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Prof Dan Hough proudly reports on the first set of students to graduate from the University of Sussex’s LLM in Corruption, Law and Governance in Doha, Qatar

The University of Sussex is based in the tranquil settings of the South Downs in the UK, faculty members and students nonetheless are acutely aware that many of the problems that get discussed there are global in nature and scope.  That is nowhere more evident than in the international fight against corruption.

The University of Sussex, via the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption(SCSC), has developed an impressive portfolio of undergraduate, postgraduate study and research in this area.  Undergraduates in the Department of Politics, for example, are able to specialise in analysing the corruption challenge via bespoke modules. That can include analysing corruption in international business or more putting more political types of corruption under the analytical microscope.

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Former Sussex students, Jonathan Benton and David Ugolor, are now actively taking the anti-corruption fight forward in Nigeria. They explain more about their work here.

We’re into the third year of President Buhari’s term in office, elections loom. For those not familiar with Nigerian politics, President Buhari was elected fair and square on an anti-corruption ticket. The last lot were awful. I (Jonathan) know, I investigated the person who was undoubtedly the most powerful woman in Nigeria (at the time), Diezani Alison Madueke, the former oil minister. Former Central Bank Governor, now the Emir of Kano State, Saraki, put the loss in oil revenues from corruption during her term in office at US$40bn. That’s right, $40bn!

David and I were post-graduates under Prof. Dan Hough and Dr Liz David-Barrett’s tutelage. Prior to Sussex, we were both active anti-corruption professionals, Sussex honed, tamed and educated us. David has over a quarter of a century of anti-corruption campaigning under his belt. I was a Scotland Yard detective who landed the best job in the world, head of the UK’s grand corruption and illicit money flows enforcement unit – the Proceeds of Corruption Unit, later the International Corruption Unit. It was such an amazing job I stayed there for nearly a decade.

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What do you get if you cross anti-corruption activists with mathematicians? It’s no joke. This was exactly what we did in Cape Coast, Ghana, recently, bringing these two groups together to analyse procurement data for evidence of corruption ‘red flags’ in a two-day hackathon at AIMS Ghana.

By Liz Dávid-Barrett (University of Sussex) and Mihály Fazekas (University of Cambridge).
Follow us on Twitter @corruption_red

The anti-corruption world has a tendency to pin its hopes on transparency as a solution, and recently in particular on the idea that big data will revolutionise the fight against corruption. The logic is compelling. Whereas we always relied heavily on subjective perceptions to measure corruption, big data allows for more objective evidence about how – and how much – administrative procedures are subverted and manipulated.

But some profound obstacles remain. The most obvious is that, before data can be analysed, it needs to be collected. Yet many governments – especially in developing countries – struggle to collect relevant data of a reasonable quality.

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Former Sussex student Juan Leopoldo Martinez explains why investigative journalism really does need to be at the forefront of the anti-corruption fight 

When facing state, judicial or parliamentary inertia or a lack of effectiveness in fighting corruption, investigative journalism is one of the main tools societies have left to fight graft. However, investigative journalists face two main problems when trying to do justice to this honourable aim.

The first is the overflow of information in societies that receive important news minute by minute. This becomes an obstacle to in-depth research; there is no time for details, only for the next major event that happens somewhere in the world.

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When does an anti-corruption campaign do enough to justify the claims made of its supporters? How, in other words, can we know that anti-corruption campaigns really are about tackling corruption? SCSC Director Dan Hough outlines how we might begin to see the wood for the trees.

Anti-corruption campaigns are once again in the news. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (or MbS, as he is often known), the ambitious heir to the Saudi throne, is at the centre of the most recent attempt by a country to root out high-profile corruption. MbS heads up a new, powerful anti-corruption committee that, within hours of its creation, prompted the arrest of a clutch of rich, powerful and previously untouchable Saudi princes and assorted others. Even close family members of King Salman have not been exempted; two of the King’s nephews have been detained as has the brother-in-law of the late King Fahd (who passed away in 2005). 30 plus members of the ultra-elite are now in some form of custody. MbS appears to mean business.

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