Emerging economies and corruption

BRICS was first launched by Goldman Sachs in 2001, to describe the world’s most dynamic emerging economies with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

But Brics do have corruption in all five countries, graft in the centre of politics as both in South Africa and Brazil have seen presidents booted out of office by corruption scandals with Jacob Zuma compelled to resign in South Africa this year and Dilma Rousseff being impeached in Brazil in 2016. In Russia, the ruling United Russian Party is rumoured as the party of crooks and thieves.  Narendra Modi in India during his election pledged to crack down on corruption among the elites and has since abolished 80 per cent of the country’s currency, to squash the black economy.  In China, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has seen over 100, 000 officials arrested.

The globalisation of business and finance revealed opportunities to make corrupt profits in fast-growing emerging economies, natural resources and infrastructure particularly become lucrative targets. There are contracts to be awarded and development projects that need official approval often the money for bribes can always be deposited offshore.

Strong Independent prosecutors and judges such as Brazil’s Sergio Moro and South Africa’s Thulisile Madonsela have done excellent work to successfully conduct anti-corruption investigations.

The Panama papers which detailed the offshore financial affairs of several prominent politicians were in fact a result of an international journalistic project and based on hacked documents.

Western bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, PR firms are all often too willing to share in the proceeds of corruption.