US, Britain Share Blame for 'Pandemic' Corruption at London Summit
LONDON—
Thursday’s world summit on fighting corruption was a time for Britain and the United States to look at their own policies and their role as shelters for billions of dollars stolen by corrupt politicians in developing countries.
The London summit shifted the focus on global corruption, turning the spotlight of blame away from African generals, oligarchs and corrupt dictators and toward the rich countries, whose banks and real estate brokers have been the benefactors of the stolen wealth of nations.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said tens of billions of dollars in stolen money - funds that that could be used for education or building bridges in underdeveloped lands - instead are hidden in banks “in countries including ours.”
“We are fighting a battle - all of us - for our states, for our countries, for our nation state. Corruption is as much of an enemy because it destroys nation states as some of the extremists we are fighting,” Kerry told delegates at the summit.
"The extremism we see in the world today comes in no small degree from the utter exasperation that people have with the sense that the system is rigged," the top American diplomat said. "And we see this anger manifesting itself in different forms in different elections around the world - including ours."
'The world has changed'
The one-day meeting drew leaders from Afghanistan, Colombia, Nigeria and other countries. British officials said the aim was to step up global action to expose, punish and drive out corruption at all levels of society.
“If we were having this anti-corruption summit 10 years ago, we would have been talking about African kleptocrats, the theft of state assets from the people,” said Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group. Now, he said, the world has changed.
“We’re really thinking about the providers of the financial secrecy that don’t just facilitate but actively drive corruption of different sorts all around the world,” he told VOA.
US, Britain Share Blame for 'Pandemic' Corruption at London Summit
