52 Middle East & Africa The EconomistOctober 12th 2019
2 derstoodIslamist-linked insurgencyhas
terrorisedlocalpeoplesince2017. Ithas
alsoled toan influxof private security
firmstoprotecttheinstallationsthatwill
tapvastoffshorereservesofnaturalgas.
Thisyear 184 peoplehavediedinattacks,
estimatesJasmineOpperman,ananalyst.
MrNyusiclaimsthesituationisunder
control.Itisnot.Violencehasincreased
sinceelectioncampaigningofficiallybe-
ganonAugust31st.OnSeptember23rdten
peoplewerekilledina singleattack,which
alsosawthelocalfrelimoofficeseton
fire.Thearmyis“totallyill-equipped”,says
MsOpperman.
Thediscoveryofgasoughttobegreat
newsforMozambicans,62%ofwhomlive
onlessthan$1.90perday(adjustedforpur-
chasingpower). Butthereis nothingin
frelimo’srecordtosuggestthatthepro-
ceedswillbeevenlyshared.Noristhere
muchsignofpeacefuldemocracy. 7L
ight-fingered tyrants are looking
back wistfully. In past decades they
could stash their illicit wealth in the West.
Friendly lawyers, banks and middlemen
were on hand to park the loot. Sani Abacha,
the military dictator who ran Nigeria in the
1990s, deposited billions of dollars in
banks across the rich world, no questions
asked. Western governments often seemed
equally unfussed. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing,
a former president of France, attended soi-
rées in chateaux owned by the late Emperor
Jean-Bedel Bokassa of Central Africa. Mr
Bokassa would slip his guest diamonds to
thank him for France’s support.
Such brazenness is becoming a bit hard-
er to get away with. Anti-corruption cam-
paigners and muckraking journalists have
busied themselves trying to uncover stolen
assets. Western governments, tired of see-
ing aid money stolen, have toughened up
money-laundering and bribery laws.
On September 29th Swiss authorities
auctioned a fleet of sports cars seized from
Teodorin Obiang, son and heir apparent to
the president of Equatorial Guinea. The
$27m raised is to be returned to Mr
Obiang’s benighted people. Days earlier
San Marino confiscated €19m ($21m) from
accounts linked to Denis Sassou Nguesso,
the president of Congo-Brazzaville.
Yet so much has been pilfered from Af-
rica that tracking it all is tricky. Chatham
House, a British think-tank, estimates that$582bn has been stolen from Nigeria alone
since it won independence in 1960. Brit-
ain’s International Corruption Unit says its
investigations have led to the confiscation
of £76m ($117m) in laundered loot since- Another £791m has been frozen
worldwide thanks to its work. Yet that bare-
ly makes a dent in the £100bn of illicit
funds which Steve Goodrich at Transpa-
rency International, a watchdog, reckons
enters Britain every year. “Seizures are still
the exception,” says Jason Sharman, an ex-
pert in international corruption at Cam-
bridge University. “Dirty money still gets
through most of the time.”
The best way to hide and move stolen
wealth is to set up a raft of anonymous shell
companies and bank accounts. Question-
able payments linked to Mr Sassou
Nguesso’s son passed through Cyprus, Po-
land, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, Glo-
bal Witness, another watchdog, reported in
August. The eu is trying to make this sort of
thing harder by forcing member states to
publish registers disclosing the beneficial
owners of companies.
Britain has introduced another innova-
tion. Unexplained Wealth Orders allow
courts to order “politically exposed per-
sons” to explain why their assets are so
much larger than their salaries back home.
The first was issued last year.
Yet tough laws do not work unless
everyone imposes them. “If there is a gap,
then the money-launderers will find it,”
says Max Heywood, Transparency Interna-
tional’s global advocacy co-ordinator.
Willing and effective implementation
is vital. Some surprising places, such as
Switzerland and Jersey, have grown more
robust in this regard. But America leads the
way. The Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initia-
tive at the Department of Justice has seized
stolen loot not just in America, but abroad.
“The usis aggressive in enforcement,” says
Matthew Axelrod, a former dojofficial now
at Linklaters, a law firm. “Penalties are very
high and prosecutors are insulated from
political interference.”
Europe lags behind. Its law-enforce-
ment agencies are often under-resourced.
Investigators struggle when dirty money is
held in several countries. Britain has spear-
headed the International Anti-corruption
Co-ordination Centre, created in 2017. Its
head, Rupert Broad, says pooling intelli-
gence has led to the arrest of five senior of-
ficials in four African states.
The most important thing, campaign-
ers say, is to take steps to stop dirty money
arriving in the first place. Banks are becom-
ing better at reporting dodgy deposits. Pur-
veyors of luxury goods are less alert. Boat
dealers in the Netherlands are supposed to
flag suspicious purchases. But of 40,959
suspicious-activity reports to Dutch au-
thorities in 2015, just three came from
yacht-dealers, Transparency found.
African states also complain that little
of what is recovered is ever sent back.
America, Britain and Switzerland have had
some success. More than $1bn seized from
Mr Abacha’s bank accounts has been re-
turned. But many African states have not
helped their cause, often because thieving
politicians are still in charge. When Swit-
zerland returned $500m of Mr Abacha’s
money, most of it disappeared again. The
World Bank has programmes to guard
against such things, but some Western
states remain wary, and rightly so.
James Ibori, a former governor of Nige-
ria’s Delta State, served a prison sentence in
Britain after admitting to plundering $79m
from the public purse. His lawyers have
managed to frustrate efforts to repatriate
most of the funds frozen in his British bank
accounts. Displaying a cheerful shame-
lessness, Mr Ibori is again active in Nigeri-
an politics. In August Ifeanyi Okowa, the
state’s present governor, called Mr Ibori “a
true patriot” and praised him for his “un-
compromising posture on...good gover-
nance”. There are surely better ways of
showing that Africa is doing its bit than
heaping plaudits on a felon. 7NAIROBI
Kleptocrats are finding it tougher to
stash their cash in the WestAfrica’s money-launderersCatch me if you can