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Of that tangled web of corruption
Tuesday, 7 August 2012 - 11:50 AM SL Time
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Opposition and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe struck a responsive chord with the right thinking public when he called for a probe into offshore accounts of Sri Lankans, the other day. He wants the identities of all ruling party politicians, their kith and kin and cronies with Swiss bank accounts revealed to the public. He accuses government politicians of having bled the country dry and smuggled their wealth out of the country.
The Opposition Leader`s demand has provoked Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara to urge him to desist from wasting his time and energy on futile endeavours and try to achieve what is attainable Nanayakkara has dared Wickremesinghe to launch a campaign to have local bank vaults where a great deal of black money is believed to have been stashed away opened. The UNP-led UNF government, it may be recalled, had a bundle of certificates of deposit in a bank vault belonging to the late Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatte seized.
Wickremesinghe and Nanayakkara, in spite of their ideological differences, seem to agree on one thing banking secrecy has stood the corrupt in good stead. This kind of privilege has made a mockery of the much flaunted principle of transparency that the global North has been trying to shove down the throats of the developing countries. It is only wishful thinking that the international banks will compromise their rules, customs and traditions for the sake of transparency. For, they are dependent on others` ill-gotten wealth tainted with corruption, narcotics and blood, for survival.
Let`s not dupe ourselves into believing that even if the Swiss banks were to reveal the names of their customers by any chance, hey presto, Sri Lankan crooks with secret accounts would get exposed. They certainly are smarter than we think they are they know better than to keep all their stolen eggs in one basket. They invest their dirty money through various fronts and operate several offshore accounts each. The four largest British banks, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and RBS are said to have about 1,200 subsidiaries in tax havens. A recent US Senate report on money laundering serves as a damning indictment on HSBC. This shows how complex the situation is.
The western banks have collectively created a mammoth black economy which sustains the international corporate elite as offshore banker turned campaigner against corruption, John Christensen points out in a well-researched article, Dirty Money: Inside the Secret World of Offshore Banking in the book, A Game as Old as Empire The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (2007) edited by Steven Hiatt with an introductions by John Perkins of the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man fame. Christensen says `at least USD 500 billion in dirty money flows each year from poor countries into offshore accounts managed by western banks, dwarfing the amount those nations receive in foreign aid. The sources of this money range from tax evasion, kickbacks and capital flight to money laundering and drug trafficking`.
This tangled web, coupled with byzantine banking laws biased in favour of racketeers, functions as an effective safety net for corrupt politicians in the developing world besides drugs czars, tyrants and terrorists. There is absolutely nothing that a small country like Sri Lanka can do to change this well-established, corrupt system. Therefore, instead of chasing rainbows and hoping against hope, our self-righteous politicians should opt for what is possible in trying to tackle the vexed problem of corruption in this country. Let them be urged to campaign for the strict enforcement of the laws that require politicians to declare their assets and liabilities periodically.
Never mind banking secrecy and allegations that some of the western banks are involved in money laundering and masking the nether world of crime and drugs! Sri Lankan politicians must explain why they do not account for their campaign finances and reveal the identities of their financiers. This kind of secrecy has created a situation where a great deal of black money finds its way into the hands of politicians, especially during elections, leading to a quid pro quo which results in corruption and enables moneybags to sway governments. Will Wickremesinghe and Nanayakkara tell us how much the UNP and the UPFA received as campaign funds for the last general election in 2010?
Above all, in 1994 political parties including the SLFP and the UNP sank their differences and shamelessly joined forces in Parliament to render the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) toothless by stripping it of powers to initiate investigations on its own without waiting for complaints. Today, the CIABOC has no alternative but to make do with a set of dentures!
So much for the credibility of our politicians on an anti-corruption crusade!
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