The Capture of Corruption

The Capture of Corruption: Complexity and Corporate Culture “Corruption is often discussed in the kinds of language and symbolism reserved for life-threatening diseases’1. This is problematic as no-one seems to have found a definition which is universally agreed. Nor is there absolute consensus on what types of behaviour within a loose definition are harmful. Johnson, however, argues that in some respects there is “too much consensus. The new wave of concern has been driven primarily by business and by international aid and lending institutions. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, their vision of corruption, like any other, is partial.”2 Johnson points out that the major anticorruption players (USAID, World Bank, OECD, UNDP and TI)3 rarely address differences in the societies whose corruption they seek to cure. Noting the way in which corruption and ant-corruption has emerged on to the international agenda, Samson notes; “In the last five or six years, anti-corruption practices have diffused transnationally and have become organised globally. We have seen the emergence of a world of anti-corruption with its own actors, strategies, resources and practices, with its heroes, victims and villains” 4 Samson moots two possible explanations for this powerful recent emergence of the anti-corruption movement “The fight against corruption is virtuous, and those who form part of the anti-corruption community’ are thus ‘integrity warriors’. The second explanation focuses on the need to increase system rationality; fighting corruption, it is “argued, will make market economies more efficient, state administration more effective, and development resources more accessible.” 5 Pointing out that when anti-corruption norms are applied to projects “’global morality’ [becomes] . . . a social process. It is a process by which virtue is transformed into a specific activity called a project- one which includes formulating a funding strategy, approaching donors, analysing stakeholders, hiring consultants, developing NGOs, conducting project appraisals, making evaluations . . . Anticorruptionism . . . is a stage in which moral projects are intertwined with money and power.”6 Because of this “Anti-corruption . . . is not innocent. It can be manipulated to serve the interest of even the most unscrupulous actors.”7 Further, the interdependence of world economies makes the condemnation of certain behaviours one-sided; that is, the behaviour of one set of actors is condemned while those on the other side of the transaction are regarded with complacence. This paper argues that such a system operates in certain tax havens, and will spotlight the British Virgin Islands to put detail on a complex moral phenomenon. 1 M. Johnson’ Political Corruption’, Colgate University 2003. 2 M. Johnson “Comparing Corruption” in Heffernan and Kleinig (Eds)Private and Public Corruption, p276. 3 United States Agency for International Development, Organisation for Economic Development and cooperation, united Nations Development Programme, Transparency International. 4 S. Samson “IntegrityWarriors: Global Morality and the Anti-Corruption Movement in the Balkans” in D. Haller and C. Shore (eds) Corruption, p106 Italics in original. 5 S. Samson “IntegrityWarriors: Global Morality and the Anti-Corruption Movement in the Balkans” in D. Haller and C. Shore (eds) Corruption, p107. 6 S. Samson “IntegrityWarriors: Global Morality and the Anti-Corruption Movement in the Balkans” in D. Haller and C. Shore (eds) Corruption, p109-10. 7 S. Samson “IntegrityWarriors: Global Morality and the Anti-Corruption Movement in the Balkans” in D. Haller and C. Shore (eds) Corruption, p129. Create