Political kleptocrats

Political kleptocrats

How great are the rewards of public office? According to a new list of political kleptocrats of the past two decades, the former Indonesian president Soeharto supplemented his modest official salary with kickbacks worth about US$1 billion ($1.3 billion) a year. Soeharto's top billing in the global corruption survey, however, is unsurprising given the length, and brutal nature, of his tenure. Thirty-one years of absolute power in a resource- rich, populous and rapidly industrializing nation, backed by the persuasive force of the military, is about as good as it gets for dictators bent on personal enrichment. Runner-up, the former Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos, used much the same model with more modest results, creaming off an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 14 years, compared with Soeharto's likely tally of $35 billion.

What is especially disturbing, however, is that four of the world's top 10 political embezzlers were elected to office. The mechanisms of accountability built into the democratic system either failed or were triggered too late.

The Philippines had two entrants in the top 10, published by a Berlin-based global corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI): Marcos and the elected president, Joseph Estrada, who skimmed off about $80 million in 30 months before his impeachment in 2001. Filipinos have been struggling with the Marcos legacy since his ousting in 1986.

The TI 2004 report also highlights another set of problems affecting many mature democracies. In 89 percent of democracies surveyed, legal political donations were found to have a "moderate to high" impact on government policy. TI also found both public and private companies from wealthy OECD nations were willing to use middle men to circumvent anticorruption laws, especially in the globalized industries, with the largest kickbacks in oil, gas and arms. Soeharto, for example, amassed much of his wealth because so many were prepared to pay for preferential access to his nation's resources. This very disappointing reality means many Western companies are an integral part of the global corruption web.

-- The Sydney Morning Herald.