The Biden admin. wants to combat kleptocracy. It should start here.

Hello, and welcome to Oligarchy. We are tracking how Covid-19 and the world’s response to it is affecting the super-rich — and what that means for power and politics. 

US ACTION AGAINST KLEPTOCRACY

It’s been an interesting few weeks for us non-Americans watching President-Elect Joe Biden assemble his team members. As far as I can tell none of them are random grifters who caught Biden’s eye while spouting off on television, so we are already in positive territory, but I was particularly heartened when I read this: a profile of Jake Sullivan, the man who will be Biden’s National Security Adviser (mercifully, it’s not a role that requires Senate confirmation).

The world has badly missed having an American president committed to tackling kleptocracy, and the consequences have been particularly grim in past success stories like Guatemala and Ukraine. Donald Trump’s White House did not completely give up anti-corruption efforts. The Department of Justice, for example, was still making respectable progress on prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, despite Trump’s stated opposition to the law. The two biggest years for corporate settlements in the act’s history have been 2019 and 2020. 

Still though, having a U.S. president who attempted to force a foreign country to investigate his political rival was not a good look. So, it was great to see Sullivan setting as a goal “To rally our allies to combat corruption and kleptocracy, and to hold systems of authoritarian capitalism accountable for greater transparency and participation in a rules-based system.”