Also apart from civil society raising awareness and generally making some noises, this I think is where MoonKi Western Allies can really help. Most of the grand corruptions happen internationally.Obama can make a name for himself by going for them in US, in Europe and in any of those financial hubs where the money get stashed...it easy for them to seize the assets of the corrupt...as illegal proceeds and remit back to Africa.
First: Obama's government has in fact been doing something about that and in 2010 took a step that no previous US government had taken: the
Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. And they are using it in novel ways: no matter where the money is, if it went through a US financial institution, they will go after it.
Here are a couple of examples of the initiative in action:
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http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-freezes-more-458-million-stolen-former-nigerian-dictator-largest-kleptocracy-forfeiture"
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http://www.compliancebuilding.com/2014/10/20/kleptocracy-asset-recovery-initiative/---
Second: It is far from easy to just go out and grab the stolen assets. Many of those countries where the stolen money is stashed have functional legal systems that require some proof that the money was stolen. There mere fact that everyone and his dog "knows" that it was stolen and "knows" who the identity of the alleged thief are not enough.
- The thieves have the sort of money to buy the kind of lawyers (in those same countries) that will give the government a hard tackle.
- More importantly, the concrete evidence required to support a case usually has to come from the country that was robbed, and too often that country will not supply the information.
Do we, for example, expect the current GoK to provide evidence that would corner Moi? Moi is in fact a good example---very good example:(a) The
current Anglo-Leasing nonsense in Kenyan courts, which will go nowhere, is in fact a smokescreen to convince the Swiss that Kenya is serious about Anglo Leasing. And why is that smokescreen necessary? Because the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland is after Moi's criminally obtained money:
http://star.worldbank.org/corruption-cases/node/18486It remains to be seen whether or not the Swiss will be fooled. Even if they wanted to look aside, Obama's US government has made it clear that it will no longer accept Swiss banks doing "business as usual".
It is very important to keep in mind that the current Anglo-Leasing "heat" in Kenya is not the result of GoK suddenly deciding to do the right thing. Nor is merely the fact that the Swiss have suddenly realized that they banked stolen money from Kenya. One should look at the heat that the USA has been putting on the Swiss folks, on many fronts.
(b) What is the current GoK attitude to tackling Moi? One can get an idea in the US tribunal matter concerning World Duty Free. GoK had an interesting line in that one. Part of the claim was that Moi had eaten chicken in the matter. One would have expected at least a few words going the other way. But, on the contrary, GoK argued that it had every right to screw World Duty Free precisely because Moi had eaten money in the deal and Kenyan law (being upright!) insists on not supporting criminal activities. Wow.
The tribunal, quite naturally, was astounded:
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It remains nonetheless a highly disturbing feature in this case that the corrupt recipient of the Claimant's bribe was more than an officer of the State but its most senior officer, the Kenyan President; and that it is Kenya which is here advancing as a complete defence to the Claimant's [World Duty Free's] claims the illegalities of its own former President ."
http://star.worldbank.org/corruption-cases/node/18487-----
Third: Even when the money has been seized by others, it is not necessarily easy to return it.
-- Sometimes those whose money has been stolen will not ask to get it back because that would mean admitting that currently powerful people are thieves. Nigeria, for example, has sometimes shown that it would rather cut deals with the thieves than try to get back all of its stolen money that has been recovered.
-- The current US government seems to believe that simply returning stolen money so that it can be re-stolen is not helpful; they would prefer to know (i) what will be done to the thieves, and (ii) how the stolen money will be used. For that reason, I don't see the USA quickly returning the money they have cornered. On (ii), last I heard, the Nigerian had paid some fancy lawyers & associated types to suggest that it could be given to a US NGO or some similar lot in Nigeria to spend wisely.
The Nigerian "public" too seems to have its doubts about simply returning the money; they have been there before:
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Despite its inability to adequately explain how the more than $500 million Sani Abacha loot recovered from Swiss authorities was spent, the Federal Government has filed an application at a Washington DC District Court requesting that another $500 million (N75 billion) stolen by the late military dictator, recently frozen by the United States Department of Justice, be repatriated to the country.
In February, the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said the money recovered from Switzerland was used for rural development projects but failed to name specific projects the money was used for."
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/161251-nigeria-asks-u-s-return-500-million-abacha-loot-country.htmlI support the USA on this one: as long as Nigeria goes there begging for aid, why burden US taxpayers? Might as well give them Nigerian money.
