UN Corruption Trial Underway

Amid all the attention being paid to kleptocracies around the world preying on national governments, it’s important to remember that international and global governance organizations are also quite susceptible to corruption and graft. Reuters reports on a bribery trial, now underway in New York, that implicates high-level UN officials:

A billionaire real estate developer from Macau spent years corrupting United Nations officials so they would support his effort to build a huge conference center in the gambling destination, a U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday at the start of Ng Lap Seng’s bribery trial.

Ng, 69, who has pleaded not guilty, has been accused of funneling roughly $2 million of suspect payments to John Ashe, a former General Assembly president and ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda, and Francis Lorenzo, a former deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic.

It’s arguably very difficult to enforce legal standards at institutions like the UN, FIFA, and IOC, which direct vast quantities of money and interact with governments and business interests and nonprofits from all over the world with wildly different norms and practices when it comes to corruption and graft. Furthermore, the international space isn’t subject to the same kind of media scrutiny as domestic governments or mega-corporations.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s the problem doesn’t exist, and isn’t critical. It’s very good to see the Department of Justice taking this case seriously. Unfortunately, this case is just the tip of the iceberg…

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