Centre for the Study of Corruption

At every turn, and all around the world, the covid-19 crisis has created new corruption risks. As we enter a new phase of vaccine roll-out, CSC Director Liz Dávid-Barrett looks at how corrupt and criminal actors are likely to exploit this and how can we head them off.

Looking around the world, many individuals have exploited the covid-19 crisis for corrupt and criminal ends. News emerged early on of dictators abusing emergency powers to clamp down on civil society. Countless contracts for Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare workers have been awarded to political cronies, often meaning that PPE was substandard, late or never arrived. And even where PPE was delivered to healthcare providers, some of it was siphoned off and sold on the black market.

The vaccine rollout is likely to see similar behaviours, which threatens to undermine the vaccine’s ability to curb the spread of the virus and allow economic recovery to start. If vaccines do not reach healthcare workers, that will make it harder for them to provide care. If vaccines get siphoned off and sold on the black market, many vulnerable people will be unable to access them, and the much-needed herd immunity will not be achieved.

But equally, if people start to worry that the vaccines they receive might be substandard or counterfeit, that could undermine trust and feed the ‘anti-vaxxer’ rhetoric. That would also have very detrimental consequences.

So, how can we get a step ahead and prevent these corruption risks occurring?

First, many countries are creating special commissions for vaccines at national level, which invest in research and development of vaccines or make deals with vaccine providers. While it may make sense to centralise power from an efficiency point of view, it is important that such commissions are staffed by high-integrity figures appointed through meritocratic procedures, and that their decisions are transparent and open to scrutiny. Any special vaccine commission should also have a mandate to reduce corruption risks in the supply and distribution of vaccines as one of its key performance indicators.

Second, the vaccine rollout is going to involve a lot of public procurement – a key risk area for corruption. It is not just vaccines that will need to be procured, but also services for bringing them to a country and distributing them. Planning is the key to good procurement. These contracts should be given out through established framework agreements or streamlined open competitions. And bidders should be vetted to check that they are not receiving advantages as a result of links with politicians or public officials. Contracts should be published, to allow the public to scrutinise the prices.

Third, the government should protect vaccine distribution networks.  They should ensure that there are sufficient storage facilities to keep vaccines at appropriate temperatures and prevent degradation. But they should also provide security for the delivery companies. Criminals will be keen to intercept vaccine deliveries and steal supplies so that they can sell them on the black market. Steps must be taken to prevent this.

Fourth, clinics that are vaccinating patients should be required to keep records about which patients have received a vaccination. These should be regularly audited to ensure that medicines are reaching the intended beneficiaries.

Fifth, governments should invest in communicating clearly about who is entitled to a vaccine and how to access it. This will empower individuals to ask questions should they be denied access, and will make it clear that black-market providers are not part of the regulated system. Buying on the black market brings risks that you might be buying a substandard product, and should be discouraged.

The vaccine has the potential to bring an end to the tragedy and disruption caused by covid-19. Let’s make sure that corruption does not snuff out the light at the end of the tunnel!

NB. Liz discussed many of these issues in a conversation with Onyi Ough, Executive Director of Step Up Nigeria, earlier this week. The podcast is available here.

Fighting corruption is a tough gig. It requires fighting on many fronts simultaneously, against opponents who often don’t play fair, and it takes a long time. But, on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day, CSC Director Liz David-Barrett argues that there are at least five reasons for anti-corruption activists to be cheerful:

1. The Biden administration promises to put global leadership back into the fight against corruption.  Biden’s victory brings an end to four excruciating years in which President Trump rode roughshod over democratic norms, undermining the global fight against corruption by providing cover for kleptocrats and authoritarianism elsewhere. Biden promises to reinvigorate democracy globally and, at home, is taking on the critical area of campaign finance. He also plans to end the practice of anonymous shell companies, a huge step that will make it much harder for kleptocrats to hide their ill-gotten gains.
2. Investigative journalism is back with a vengeance. A few years ago it looked like journalism was dying out: everyone was making their own news on twitter and nobody wanted to pay for the long-term research needed to uncover misconduct. But recent years have seen the emergence of a new form of global governance institution – the informal networks of investigative journalists (the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Finance Uncovered) that brought us the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and many other exposés of misconduct and kleptocracy. Despite scanty resources, this group has consistently collected and analysed a vast body of evidence that has helped to hold leaders and industry to account all over the world.
3. Law enforcement is cooperating like never before. Corruption is a transnational crime and tackling it requires cross-border cooperation among anti-corruption agencies and law enforcement bodies. That is working better than ever, with initiatives like the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre in London, donors ploughing major funds into building capacity in this area all over the world, and the recently announced Riyadh Initiative set to fill in some gaps and speed up learning among anti-corruption agencies.
4. Corruption has become a topic in pop culture. This is partly a consequence of the proliferation of scandals, but it has brought debate about corruption into popular culture and got everybody talking. TV series and movies about corruption abound (a couple of my recent faves are Line of Duty and Spotlight). They increasingly tell nuanced stories about how anti-corruption tools can themselves be infiltrated or misused as weapons to discredit opponents and undermine accountability, and they also highlight the courage of those who work to uncover and expose corruption. If anti-corruption professionals are showing up on tv and in the movies as glamorous heroes, that is a sure sign that norms are changing.
5. The global network of anti-corruption professionals is growing fast. There are swelling cadres of anti-corruption professionals in the public and private sector of many countries, with in-depth expertise about how to tackle complex problems. Some people snipe that anti-corruption should not be its own ‘industry’ like aid or human rights, and as a relative newcomer we should certainly learn lessons about the need for contextualisation. But the presence of a community is especially important to anti-corruption work, because knowing that you are not alone in the fight is critical to overcoming the collective action problem. We see this with our own students on the CSC’s MA programmes and our PhD researchers: our alumni support each other around the world and swap ideas on what works in fighting corruption. That is a big reason to be cheerful!

Three Professors at the Centre for the Study of Corruption have collaborated with a group of eighteen professors of governance, corruption and public integrity from across the UK, to publish a letter in the Financial Times.  CSC Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice Robert Barrington looks at their concerns.

Why do a group of professors get together to write a letter to the FT?  It’s simple: we can discern a very clear decline in UK standards and adherence to the Nolan Principles, illustrated by the Prime Minister’s failure to follow the Ministerial Code, the Covid-19 procurement ‘chumocracy’ and multiple other examples.

The list of run-ins with the Nolan Principles and Ministerial Code over the past year is too long to put in full: legislating to break international law in ‘limited and specific ways’; the resignation of the Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministerial Standards over the Priti Patel bullying; multiple sleaze allegations relating to Robert Jenrick; the threats to the judiciary, the media – notably the BBC – and of a ‘hard rain’ falling on the independent civil service; the political capture of the notionally objective public appointments process; and much, much  more.

Many of these cases and government attitudes have precedents.  What is new is the number of cases and the apparent lack of concern by the government and individuals over what would formerly have been scandals or resignation offences

The eighteen professors who have signed the letter, all experts at major UK universities, are sounding the alarm bell for the UK – a decline in governance standards results in negative impacts for the economy, for national security, for democracy and for a fair society – levelling down not levelling up.  And it does not stop there.  The damage extends to the UK’s international reputation, and therefore its influence in the wider world.

Here is the letter in full:

Letter: It’s time the UK recommits to the Nolan rules
From Professor Elizabeth David-Barrett and othersFinancial Times 08/12/2020
As a group of scholars who specialise in the areas of governance, public sector integrity and corruption, we are writing ahead of tomorrow’s UN International Anti-Corruption Day to express our concern at the apparent reluctance of the current UK government to uphold the Nolan Principles, the seven principles of public life established in 1995: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

We have studied this subject throughout the world, and what is happening in the UK today has alarming similarities with what we have witnessed elsewhere.

The pattern of ignoring standards of openness, attacking key accountability institutions and subverting governance norms is often the forerunner to a rapid rise of corruption and the self-enrichment of those who hold power.

The UK is by no means immune to this, especially if formal and informal checks and balances in the system, such as the independence of the judiciary and civil service, are compromised or undermined.

Studies elsewhere have shown that diminishing governance standards result in negative impacts for the economy, for national security, for democracy and for a fair society. Rather than “levelling up”, evidence tells us that it leads to “levelling down” with consequences that can span generations.

The chair of the committee on standards in public life recently noted that public standards make the UK a more attractive commercial environment, yet the rating agency Moody’s has cited “the weakening in institutions and governance” as a factor in its recent downgrade of the UK.

With multiple reports of potential conflicts of interest and unaddressed breaches of the ministerial code (Report, November 21), we too feel it is important to sound a warning bell for the UK.

Professor Elizabeth David-Barrett Professor of Governance & Integrity, Director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex Professor

Paul Heywood Sir Francis Hill Professor of European Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham

Professor Mushtaq Khan Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, School of African and Oriental Studies

Professor Heather Marquette Professor of Development Politics, International Development Department, University of Birmingham

Professor Jason Sharman Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

Professor Robert Barrington Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice, Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex

Professor Martin Bull Professor of Politics, School of Arts & Media, University of Salford

Professor Nic Cheeseman Professor of Democracy, International Development Department, University of Birmingham

Professor Amrita Dhillon Professor of Political Economy, Department of Political Economy, Kings College London

Professor John Heathershaw College of Social Sciences & International Studies, University of Exeter

Professor Sam Hickey Professor of Politics & Development, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Professor Dan Hough, Professor of Politics, School of Law, Politics & Sociology, University of Sussex

Professor Alena Ledeneva Professor of Politics & Society, School of Slavonic & Eastern European Studies, University College London

Professor Nicholas Lord Professor of Criminology, Centre for Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Manchester

Professor Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling Professor of Political Science, School of Politics & International Relations, University of Nottingham

Professor Mick Moore Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

Professor Christian Schuster Professor of Public Management, Department of Political Science, University College London

Professor Dominik Zaum Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation) and Professor of Governance, Conflict & Security, Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Reading