Peter Hain calls for an international anti-corruption court to be set up

Martin Shipton

Former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain is calling for the establishment of an international anti-corruption court following an investigation he has undertaken into the extent of such criminality worldwide.

Lord Hain, who was the Labour MP for Neath from 1991 to 2015, has just published his latest book Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail. It argues there is a continuum between colonial era corruption and latter-day criminality on a global scale.

According to Hain, coordinated action on an international basis to combat the scourge of corruption is vital.

Haunted

Asked by Nation.Cymru what it was that brought him to write the book, Hain said: “Having been involved in the anti-apartheid struggle and supporting other liberation movements, I just became haunted, particularly by what happened in South Africa under former President Zuma. It was a thoroughly corrupt decade in which basic institutions were hollowed out, including the tax agency and utility services.

“There were repeated power cuts. The water system was completely neglected, looted, instead of investing in maintenance and dealing with polluting rivers. The basic water supply was brought to the verge of collapse.

“At the same time I became more and more aware that the Sandinista leader in Nicaragua Daniel Ortega, who’d been a pin-up on every radical student union wall in the Seventies and Eighties, had become deeply corrupt, nepotistic and determined to cling on to power, come what may.

“It made me question why freedom movements that had stood and proclaimed these fantastic values of social justice, equal opportunities, human rights and integrity had become like the venal regimes they had replaced.

“These ideals, epitomised by Nelson Mandela, for which my parents had fought, been jailed, banned and forced into exile were our rallying cries. These were why liberation movements commanded such broad support amongst radical political and student activists. And then to see the result made me wonder whether there was something wrong about our support in the first place. The answer was no but then why did this happen? It’s not good enough to simply say that Zuma had personal failings and that Ortega clearly developed over decades from an inspiring liberation leader to a corrupt dictator. That’s the issue I started to research properly and write about, and the book was the result.”

Corrupt element

Asked at what stage he had become aware that there was a corrupt element in the African National Congress (ANC – the party led by Mandela that came to power after the end of apartheid). Hain said: “Probably later than I should have done. After standing down as an MP in 2015, I was invited out to South Africa to teach and became more and more aware of this. Then in 2017, in the middle of teaching at Witwatersrand, my Dad’s old university where he studied architecture in the late 1940s, I was invited to an event with senior ANC figures who were backing Cyril Ramaphosa [now the President of South Africa] who were trying to get rid of Zuma and cleanse the party of its deep, almost endemic corruption.

“They asked me to expose the international complicity of the banks and the global corporates that enabled the corruption. I told them I couldn’t do this on my own – that I needed well researched, absolutely gold standard material. Then I’d be prepared to expose it under parliamentary privilege in the House of Lords. But unless it was absolutely solid, the answer was no.

“I think when they asked me to do it, they thought I could research it all by myself. And I said, no way. A lot of people, even well-informed people, are not aware that as a peer you get a desk, a computer and an iPad and that’s it. You don’t have any staff or research support in the way that MPs do. So they’d have to serve this up. And I had a Deep Throat source who I’ve never named who provided me with draft speeches that I then edited. It was absolutely gold carat stuff.

“Then I got involved in supporting South African initiatives, which culminated in me being briefed on and coming to support the international Anti-Corruption Court idea, So that’s really my personal journey on it.

“I knew then what I wanted to write about – for example about the way Gandhi’s Congress Party in India had changed from a non-sectarian secular party that came into power on a wave of enthusiasm after independence from British colonial rule, then became deeply corrupt.

“And I’d always been worried about one party rule, which was, of course, in its Marxist incarnation in eastern and central Europe and the old Soviet Union very much an influence on guerrilla struggles and liberation movements.”

Colonial times

The book traces a continuum from the corruption that existed in colonial times to the corruption that exists today in post-colonial nations.

Hain said one important factor was the way well-known banks and other corporate institutions had enabled corrupt rulers like Zuma to benefit hugely from corruption: “A lot of the looted money, the Zuma money, the Gupta brothers [business associates of Zuma who fled to Dubai] who did a lot of the direct looting and many of the other kleptocrats across the world invest their money not in their own countries, but in London and in UK overseas territories.

“A lot of the money that Zuma and the Guptas looted came through British based banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered and other global corporates, a lot of them headquartered in London or New York. Others based in Beijing or Moscow are culpable too. So it’s not just about politicians who are morally questionable. It’s also about international global corporates who have been complicit in all of this as well.”

At the end of the book, after describing in detail the corruption that has taken place, Hain writes a call to action, suggesting greater regulation over banks and other institutions that trade on a kind of spurious respectability.

Bain and Co

He said the global management consultant firm Bain and Co were, in his view, the worst culprit, condemned by two independent judicial commissions: “On the express orders of Jacob Zuma, meeting in his presidential home, not his office, where it might have been monitored and recorded, Bain had 17 meetings with him to disable the South African Tax Agency. Could you imagine a British Prime Minister calling for advice from a global management consulting company on how to dismantle HMRC? It was deeply, deeply evil. And yet they did that and got money for it. So this is a picture of global complicity, including in this country.”

Asked what kind of additional legislative arrangements could be introduced to attack corruption, Hain said: “I’ve been urging, for example, the Labour government that I support and campaigned for to suspend Bain from any public sector contracts. I’ve written to and met Cabinet ministers to this effect. It was, I think, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office Secretary of State at the time, who wanted to do this, but he couldn’t because of legal advice, and his officials were opposed to it because of the time that had elapsed since their involvement with Zuma and the fact that it occurred in another jurisdiction..

“I would like all of these corporates to be pursued, but it requires action from the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Indian government, as well as the British, American and European governments to do this. And there’s no sign that that’s happening.

“The second issue I’ve campaigned on is the establishment of an international anti-corruption court. We have the International Criminal Court (ICC), but that deals with things like genocide and the International Court of Justice, but they don’t have the power or the remit to deal with corruption. That’s, in my view, why you need a separate international court. The former foreign secretary David Lammy has gone on the record supporting that. But there’s a rather mealy mouthed stance amongst Foreign Office officials. I hope Yvette Cooper, his successor as Foreign Secretary, will support it, but that remains to be seen. I would want Britain leading this, especially a British Labour government with a former international lawyer at its head. There’s a growing momentum behind it, even though Donald Trump wouldn’t support it. In fact, he suspended provisions of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act under an executive order when he came into office to say that it no longer applied to American businesses abroad.

“But America’s not part of the chemical and biological weapons treaty. I don’t think it’s part of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It’s not a supporter of the ICC. It’s had an antagonism to signing up to these multilateral institutions. And Trump, of course, is bitterly hostile to them. But we will see.

“There’s no reason why the rest of us should do nothing because of America’s position. I’m sick of people saying they’re against corruption and then doing nothing about it.”

Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail by Peter Hain is published by Policy Press at £19.99.