Corruption, and those who practise it, is in the news at the moment. This is the best place for the problem, as the practitioners do not like scrutiny. It is remarkable, however, that when corruption is discussed, it is at a national level. David Cameron, when he made his famous gaffe, told the Queen that Nigeria and Afghanistan are two of the world's most "fantastically corrupt" countries. The Afghan delegate to the Anti-Corruption Summit responded by pointing out that:
"...clumsy Western intervention in Afghanistan allowed corruption to flourish...We inherited...a fantastically corrupt system...".
Even more remarkable, in the light of Cameron's remarks, is the fact that an Anti-Mafia Italian journalist, Roberto Saviano, has told an audience at the book festival in Hay-on-Wye that Britain is the most corrupt country in the world. He said:
“If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it’s the UK...It’s not the bureaucracy, it’s not the police, it’s not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital. 90 per cent of the owners of capital in London have their headquarters offshore".
For me, though, the greatest surprise was to find that there is actually a league table of corruption, but without divisions, as in the Football League. Run by Transparency International, its Corruption Perception Index of 2015 lists 168 countries in order of least corruption down to the worst. Denmark ranks at Number 1, while the bottom ranking of joint 167 is held by North Korea and Somalia. Britain ranks 10th and the USA 16th. As might be expected, countries at war feature heavily in the lower rankings, and to be fair to David Cameron, Nigeria ranks 136th and Afghanistan 166th. It would be grossly unfair to suggest that the populations of these countries are happy with this situation. There is a weary resignation to the fact that corruption is rife. As Raymond Bonner has said of the Philippines (number 95 in the table):
"The Philippines is a country in which a man of morals can't be president, in which a politician who hasn't been linked to any wrongdoing isn't assumed to be honest, but merely better at hiding his corruption."
The CPI was compiled by experts, but the Global Corruption Barometer of 2013 was compiled from direct research in 95 countries by asking samples of people: "Have you paid a bribe in 2013?". Australia, Denmark, Finland and Japan scored lowest, with only 1% of interviewees admitting to bribery, while in the UK, 5% replied "Yes", below Georgia and the Maldives. Sierra Leone was bottom of the table, with 95% of their sample owning up to bribery. 7% answered "Yes" in the USA; Russia is strangely absent. David Cameron was no doubt gratified to see that 44% of Nigerians and 45% of Afghans replied in the affirmative, and I was happy to see that only 12% of Filipinos confessed to greasing palms. Just how honest the responders were in these countries is open to question.
Corruption on the scale it exists in so many countries is unbelievably harmful, as it deprives native populations of desperately needed resources. Remarkably, though, corruption is seen by many people as being entertaining. We see this in the success of scandal-raking tabloid newspapers, and some very successful TV series. The Sopranos, Spiral, and many other crime series are immensely popular with a worldwide public, even if the "good guys" are really only the lesser of a number of evils. One such series as this is the BBC series "The Peaky Blinders", where you are hard put to it to find a single honest, upright character. The writer, Stephen Knight, himself a "Brummie", based his programme on a Birmingham street gang of the early 20th century. The hard core of the gang - in the TV series - is the Shelby family. The head of the gang, and undisputed mastermind, is Tommy Shelby, a decorated WW1 hero who welds his rabble of street scruffs and psychopaths into a highly efficient organized crime unit over the first two series, using all manner of violence, bribery and intimidation to dominate Birmingham and London. The third, and current, series sees them involved in a vicious gang war with an Italian gang (who kill Tommy's wife) and Tommy's involvement in a plot to arm Russian anti-Bolsheviks, which brings him into conflict with dark, unseen, sections of the security services. The Blinders have now become so strong that they can force the sacking of Socialist and Communist trade union officials. They may rob from the rich, but never seem to get round to giving to the poor, even if Tommy scores a victory for the working class by becoming intimate with an exiled Russian countess.
I have to say that the programme is very entertaining, with authentic scenery, convincing plots (fortunately fictional), red-hot sex scenes and sparkling dialogue, even though the heroes are anti-heroes who seem to want to join the ruling class. "The Peaky Blinders" is a "Threepenny Opera" for the 21st century, with Tommy Shelby as an up-to-date Captain Macheath.
So what is it about corruption that entertains? Is it a secret yearning on the part of the viewer to engage in such activities, or is it a kind of catharsis? I know that I feel glad to return to normal after watching such programmes - even if I do watch the next episode!
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I haven't watched Peaky Blinders: it has simply never appealed to me. Corruption isn't a straightforward problem. It is multi-layered and affects people differently and often forces them into collusion, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly. It includes:
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2. People in lowly administrative positions, the police or the army, often poorly paid, who see the demanding of bribes for services as a supplement to their wages. Still culpable, but less so.
3. People who see no option to pay bribes to obtain the services they require, or to avoid being fitted up for an offence which they may or may not have committed.
It follows then that in countries where a high proportion of people have said they've paid a bribe in the last year, they are probably more victims than corrupt as often they have no choice. It's not too extreme to argue that many of these people have been subject to extortion.
Corruption can happen anywhere. Our MPs' expenses scandal, although small scale compared to some international examples, just shows that, given the chance, even people who call each other 'honourable' can develop a sense of unjustified entitlement if there aren't adequate controls in place.
Here in the UK, we don't generally have 'in your face' corruption that some regimes practise, such is ripping off aid money, state industries, tax revenues or demanding massive kick-backs from any outside company that wants to invest. Lawful off-shore investments with 'light-touch regulation' (i.e. as little as possible) mean that our mega-rich can avoid taxes in this country with no risk of facing the embarrassment of ending up in court. As the American businesswoman Leona Helmsley once said: “We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”