Anti-Kleptocracy

Floor Speech

ANTI-KLEPTOCRACY -- (Senate - December 01, 2009)

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, on November 16, 2009, the New York Times published an article entitled ``A U.S. Visa, Shouts of Corruption, Barrels of Oil,'' that describes corruption in Equatorial Guinea, which is a major oil producing country. Specifically, the article highlights the comings and goings of Teodoro Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea's President, who is also the country's agriculture minister.

Mr. Obiang has been a regular traveler to southern California, where he owns an estate reportedly worth some $35 million. He also, according to the article, owns a private jet and various luxury automobiles.

How, one might ask, did he acquire such extraordinary wealth, in a country where many children die before the age of 5? Perhaps he is an exceptionally talented businessman, as Equatorial Guinea's Washington lobbyists have suggested, who, when he isn't running the agriculture ministry on a modest government salary, is earning huge profits that can be legitimately explained. It is fair to say that at least, and probably more, likely is that he has used his family connections to steer a portion of the country's oil revenues into his own pockets.

Mr. Obiang's case is not unique. To the contrary, it is a common practice in countries where the extraction of natural resources--whether oil, gas, timber, or minerals--is the primary source of income. From Angola to Kazakhstan, government officials and their families have abused their power and influence to enrich themselves by siphoning off a portion of the proceeds of the revenues from concessions and leases for the extraction of natural resources, and from the sale of the crude oil or raw timber or minerals.

Billions of dollars that could otherwise have been used to meet the basic needs of the people in these countries--health and education--have instead gone into foreign bank accounts, including in the United States. The beneficiaries have enjoyed lives of comfort and privilege, while their people live in squalor.

The land where oil is drilled, or where gold, cobalt, columbite-tantalite, and other valuable minerals are mined, or where the forest is cut down, is often left in ruins. Soil and water poisoned by oil spills and other toxic chemicals, and drought from deforestation, is left for those who have nowhere else to live, and for future generations.

It is often also the revenues from the exploitation of natural resources that fund the purchase of weapons that fuel civil wars over control of those same resources in these counties. The protracted conflict in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where thousands of civilians, and particularly women and girls, have been brutalized, is a prime example.

Those who have protested this type of corruption, environmental destruction and waste, and exposed the theft by government officials of income from natural resources that is rightfully owed to the people of these countries, have often been harassed, arrested, tortured, and even killed. I remember Ken Saro-Wiwa, who courageously led peaceful protests against the environmental devastation caused by oil spills and gas flaring in Nigeria's delta region. He was ultimately hanged, despite last minute appeals from people around the world, by the corrupt and cruel dictator Sani Abacha. That was in 1995, but the corruption, waste, and abuses continue today in countries where too often the rule of law does not apply to those in power.

In 2004, President Bush issued Presidential Proclamation 7750, which suspended entry to the U.S. of current and former public officials whose corrupt acts have or had serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.

In 2007, I included a similar but more targeted provision in the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, currently section 7086 of Public Law 111-8, which requires the Secretary of State to deny admission to the United States to any foreign government official and their immediate family members who the Secretary has credible evidence have been involved in corruption related to the extraction of natural resources.

The purpose of the law is clear: If you, as a government official or a member of your immediate family, are involved in the corrupt exploitation of natural resources, you are not welcome in the United States.

Unfortunately, despite, I believe, well-intentioned people at the State Department who support the goals of the law, it has not been applied as vigorously as it could and should be.

They do not have the resources to conduct their own investigations, so they rely on other agencies like the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which do not always share information and have their own standards of proof. The fact that someone like Mr. Obiang is traveling freely to and from the United States, I believe makes a mockery of the law.

This is not a partisan issue. Senators of both parties have spoken out about the corrosive effects of corruption. We saw the effects of it in our own assistance program in Iraq, where no-bid contracts and lax oversight resulted in enormous fraud and waste of taxpayer funds, and we are witnessing the effects of rampant corruption in the Afghan Government.

It is overdue for the State Department to apply section 7086 with the vigor that Congress intended. It is about promoting good governance, the rule of law, the sustainable use of natural resources, and stopping the squandering of revenues from the extraction of those resources that are urgently needed to help reduce poverty. It is time to apply the law in a manner that resonates far and wide in support of each of those goals.

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