You report David Cameron’s intention to put the Fifa scandal on the G7 agenda (Corruption must be confronted, 6 June). He speaks of the need to “clean up the game we love” and to “learn a broader lesson about tackling corruption”.
I hope he will also look at what he and his government could be doing at home and more immediately about corruption within Fifa and more widely. The US Department of Justice indictment that first outlined the case against Fifa officials and executives noted the key role of British overseas tax havens (British Virgin Islands, Caymans and Turks & Caicos) and British banks (HSBC, Standard Chartered) in facilitating the transfers of monies in ways designed to “mask the sources and beneficiaries of bribe and kickback payments”.
The use of offshore accounts to facilitate corruption hits poor nations hardest. Christian Aid’s economic justice adviser Joseph Stead has welcomed Mr Cameron’s stance on Fifa “but this would carry more weight” if his government were to take action with its overseas territories to remove “the opportunity for those tempted to engage in corruption and tax evasion” (Report, The Observer, 30 May). There is something here about first putting one’s own house in order.
Dr John Hull
Sheffield
• If David Cameron is sincere about tackling corruption he should start in the UK. Transparency International cites political party funding, the revolving door between business and government, lack of coordinated anti-corruption strategy, money laundering, prisons and weak procedures on looted assets as all needing urgent attention. But what should really alarm citizens is that the radical corporatisation of the British state has been unmatched by any parallel revolution in systems of public accountability, so the biggest opportunities for the abuse of public money for private gain don’t require criminal acts: they are being built in, via the deepening procurement of public services from public service industry oligopolies. But by hollowing out the civil service – historically the only system via which efficient and incorrupt public services were brought into being – this government is set to increase the opportunities for corruption and corporate exploitation of environments chronically prone to market failure while undermining exactly the institutions that might protect the taxpayer.
Mr Cameron could begin by replacing the toothless advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba) with a statutory conflicts of interest and ethics commissioner. The public administration select committee recommended this to his coalition but was ignored. Professor Stephen Wilks has calculated that “revolving out” of the government door between 2000 and 2014 about 600 former ministers and top civil servants were appointed to more than 1,000 different business roles with Acoba’s approval, enabling indeterminable conflicts of interest. “Revolving in” in 2013-14, 30% of full-time senior civil service positions were recruited from the private sector, frequently from interested corporate parties. If governments are not to become dependent on “insider” corporations, with the exclusion of other voices, overpricing and grotesque corruption risks that entails, then the ironclad regulation of lobbying and the re-establishment of disinterested civil and public service capacity should now be on every democrat’s agenda.
Dr Abby Innes
European Institute, LSE
• If David Cameron really wants to clean out the Augean stables of corruption, he should not use international summits to insinuate that corruption is only a foreign problem.
Start by providing the extra investment that the UK police and financial regulators would need to be able to conduct thorough inquiries. Stop the London property market being used as a safe haven for corrupt finance and tax dodgers by rigorously enforcing money laundering regulations. Ensure that as much evidence as possible is obtained and exchanged with all investigators, UK and international.
As the incidents at Fifa seem to have prompted him to set out on his task, he can set a Herculean example by suspending Fifa’s corporate sponsors, as the main sources of Fifa monies and largesse, from public sector contracts in the UK until all investigations have been completed.
Similarly, architects, engineers and construction companies involved in the corrupt and murderous kafala-slavery system in Qatar should also be suspended from public sector contracts pending full investigations.
The prime minister can then divert the river Alpheus into the Kärcher in his own backyard, as aren’t all the seconded “advisers” and lobbyists in government departments and the Conservative party (many still being paid by their companies) just another form of corporate corruption? Begin with the enemy within.
Mick Larkin
London
• In the past there has been more than a suspicion that arms contracts have been facilitated by inducements paid to officials and politicians among the purchasers. If all companies taking part in September’s Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair in London were required to open their books to government inspection that suspicion might be dispelled.
Anthony Matthew
Leicester
• Perhaps Mr Cameron will now reconsider the massive bribe his government is offering the tenants of housing associations in the form of the right to buy. That should guarantee at least another 200,000 votes at the next election. Not really all that different from what Westminster council did a few years ago.
Gunter Lawson
London
• The prime minister criticises the “widespread taboo in pointing the finger at corrupt institutions”. My outstretched digit is pointing directly at the House of Lords, where, I suspect, certain members have taken their seats as a result of their significant financial donations to one of our leading political parties. At least money in football buys only the rights to host tournaments, not the power to affect a country’s legislature. Mr Cameron should be careful about asking Britain to cast the first stone.
Colin Burke
Manchester
• David Cameron might begin his crusade against corruption by reactivating the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Saudi arms deals by BAE systems, an investigation stopped in December 2006 at the behest of the then prime minister, Tony Blair, on the grounds of “public interest”.
John Pickard
Brentwood, Essex
