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12/09/2022 11:20 PM EST
Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State
Washington, D.C.
Omni Shoreham Hotel
ASSISTANT SECRETARY ROBINSON: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this fireside chat where we are honored to be joined by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and three recently announced Anti-Corruption Champion awardees: Rozina Islam, Janet Zhou, and Stevan Dojcinovic. We are thrilled to have you all here with us, as we begin to wrap up a very successful week of events here at the ICC.
Over the last few days, we discussed the threat that corruption poses to the rule of law and good governance as well as anti-corruption’s role in building a fair and sustainable future for all. We’ve also discussed best tools in combatting criminal networks and kleptocrats, and what the fight against corruption may look like in the future. During this session, we will discuss what that fight looks like on the ground with the three brave anti-corruption defenders, who just this morning, were conferred with the U.S. Department of State Anti-Corruption Champions Award.
This award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated leadership, courage, and impact in preventing, exposing, and combatting corruption. Before I introduce the Secretary and our three champions on stage, I would like to take a moment to recognize all of the 2022 Anti-Corruption Champions who are with us today in the audience. The 2022 ACCA awardees, would you please stand up? (Applause.) Thank you for the tireless work that you do every day to further the fight against corruption.
I will now introduce our fireside chat participants, beginning with the Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Antony J. Blinken is the 71st U.S. secretary of state. He previously served as deputy secretary of state for President Barack Obama from 2015 to 2017; and before that as President Obama’s principal deputy national security advisor. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for joining us today. (Applause.)
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY ROBINSON: I now introduce our Anti-Corruption Champions, beginning with today’s awardee from Bangladesh, Rozina Islam. Rozina is a fearless special correspondent for the daily Prothom Alo newspaper and has broken major news stories exposing corruption and abuse of power by Bangladesh’s ruling party. (Applause.)
Her investigative reports exposed how corrupt government officials looted public money, during COVID-19, by using loopholes in the health system, and how health officials offer bribes to recruit doctors, and how lifesaving equipment worth millions of dollars piled up at the airport waiting for customs clearance while the health officials stood by.
In a country where democratic space is shrinking, press freedom is under serious pressure from state agencies, and where few women choose and practice journalism as a profession, Islam is an inspiring exception.
Next, we are pleased to welcome Stevan Dojcinovic, who along with his anti-corruption investigative outlet KRIK has exposed significant corruption in Serbia and shone a light into the murky networks of organized crime in Serbia and the Western Balkans – and their corrupt connections with government. He and his team have uncovered massive drug smuggling operations and provided the basis for police actions in the Western Balkans, with substantial downstream impacts on the drug trade in Europe and beyond. KRIK was the only outlet in Serbia that exhaustively researched allegations stemming from the 2021 Pandora Papers, which ensnared numerous high-level Serbian officials in allegations of money laundering and other financial crimes. Welcome, Stevan. (Applause.)
Finally, I am pleased to introduce Janet Zhou, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development. Janet has led successful efforts to increase citizen agency to demand – to increase citizen agency to demand accountability and transparency in Zimbabwe. Through the #HowFar campaign, Janet has raised awareness of the government’s constitutional and legal responsibilities, encouraged the government to prosecute corrupt officials, and advocated for government engagement in public discussions on transparency, and the use of public funds.
Among her achievements, Zhou’s advocacy resulted in a public audit of the government’s COVID-19 and Cyclone Idai expenditures, which exposed the abuse of resources by state entities.
Thank you all for joining us. Kudos for your intrepid – (applause). Kudos for your intrepid efforts, and we look forward to hearing more about your work. And with that, I will hand it over to you, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Todd, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Good to be with you. I can’t see you, but it’s very good to be with you. (Laughter.) So, this is supposed to be a fireside chat; I’m not sure where the fireside is, but we’ll do our best. (Laughter.)
In all seriousness, it is an honor and a privilege for us to be co-hosting with Transparency International this year’s conference. And I’m particularly glad that we have so many people with us this evening from government, from civil society and NGOs, from the private sector – all of whom are engaged in the fight against corruption – the fight for transparency and for accountability.
I think you’ve heard over the course of the day from many of my colleagues, including the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the Administrator for the Agency for International Development Samantha Power both about the Biden administration’s first-ever anti-corruption strategy and the progress that we’re making in actually implementing it. And I know what you’ve heard from them as well as other colleagues is the centrality of this mission for us and for this administration. Simply put, we see it as a national security challenge as well as a challenge in many other domains.
We know that corruption makes even more difficult and exacerbates virtually every global challenge that we have to work on – from war and conflict to figuring out how to end pandemics to disaster response. We also know and see that in our efforts to strengthen democracy around the world, nothing is more corrosive, nothing does more to undermine citizens’ trust in their democracy, than corruption. That’s one of the reasons why corruption was one of the pillars of the Summit for Democracy that we had last year and will continue to be at the heart of that effort going forward.
Now, this morning, as you heard from Todd, I had an opportunity to hand out some of our own awards, including to the three remarkable colleagues who are sitting with us onstage; and also some of their colleagues who are with us in the audience tonight. And one of the things that struck me in doing that. and as we were talking about what they had achieved, is that there are a number of common denominators that each of them brings to the table. And I just wanted to cite them quickly and then I’d love to get into a conversation, because mostly what we want to do this evening is to hear from you. And, actually, it’s great for me because I usually have to answers the questions; now I get to ask them. It’s going to be a lot better. (Laughter.)
But one of the – a few things really stood out as we looked at their stories, the stories of the other awardees, in terms of common denominators. One is the innovative use of technology to uncover graft, uncover corruption. And I think you’ll hear a little bit about that this evening.
The second is the efforts that they’ve made to raise awareness about impunity and its impact on peoples’ daily lives. This is a crucial step to really raising consciousness among the public, and in turn the demand for change. That’s a common denominator.
We’ve seen each of them in different ways mentor rising generations of anti-corruption activists. That’s vitally important because it can’t be just about one person, one leader. And, of course, this is an enduring combat, and so doing that has been a powerful thing.
I think each has demonstrated, in different ways, that pockets of transparency and accountability can actually be nurtured, and we may hear a little bit about that this evening.
The fifth common denominator that we found is that defending the rights of underserved and marginalized communities, disproportionately impacted by corruption, has been a hallmark of much of this work, and that’s something that really stands out; and also, shining a bright light on how graft undermines the ability of governments to actually meet peoples’ needs. There, too, in terms of raising awareness, raising understanding about how corruption actually saps at the ability of governments to deliver for their citizens, that’s a powerful common denominator.
And two other things I wanted to mention. We’ve seen that the efforts have really brought long- overdue justice to victims and to their families. That’s very powerful.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, I think if you asked each of our awardees to talk about their work, they’d probably tell you that at some point they were overcome with doubt, with the feeling that the hill was just too high to climb, that they couldn’t get there. And yet somehow, some way, they found the energy, the determination, the will to carry on. Maybe it was a supportive note, voice – something. And I think that’s hugely important because I suspect each and every one of you, who’s involved in this in one way or another, has moments of doubt about the ability to actually succeed in carrying this fight forward. And the fact that the people that we recognize today each had their own moments, overcame them, and carried on – to me, is very, very powerful.
With that said, we’re really here to hear from you. And if it’s all right, what I’d love to do is just ask a few questions maybe to get the conversation started to really hear from your own experiences and what you can tell us from that. And Janet, maybe let me start with you, and we can just go down the line.
I mentioned that one of the hallmarks that we’ve found across much of the work that’s done is some innovative way of looking at the problem, approaching it with a different tool, technique, from a different perspective. If you can, tell us about how you’ve looked at something, how you did something differently, used innovation in some way to carry on this – the combat against corruption.
MS ZHOU: Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, and good evening, Secretary Blinken; and good evening to the participants, to this conference, and all the guests and everyone who is in here. And that is a very good question, because many times when we talk about innovation, we think about some complex designing of some sort when you are engaging with citizens, when you are addressing a problem. But the innovation that I learned and what we had to apply in the campaign that is being referred to here, the How Far Campaign, was actually that simplicity is the best sophistication when it comes to engaging with the citizens.
I’ve spent years in the civil society in Zimbabwe speaking technical language when it comes to public accountability, speaking technical language when it comes to corruption. I would use words like embezzlement, I would use graft, illicit financial flows, in trying to build the movement and the urgency, but it never came. But one day we decided the best innovation was to use the language that the citizens themselves use, their street language. It was about going to the places and the spaces where they dwell, where they spend their time.
So, we did a lingo hack, as we would call it, of the How Far Campaign, of the “how far” as a statement that in my country every citizen, old and young, uses when they want accountability over an issue. They will ask you – if you owe them some money and you meet with them or they give you a Coke, they will say “How far?” And you know you have to tell them when you are paying back their money, and they expect it that way.
So, we did that. We started using that language, the very simple language, daily language that the citizens use, and we realized that it had so much traction. It could filter, because the citizens could relate with it. We started making use of it, and connecting corruption now to lack of service. So, it goes to the social soccer platforms, it would go to church choirs, it would go to schools, it would go to different places – cooperative gardens where women are watering their vegetables and they are asking the question to their leaders.
So, for me, the best innovation really is in messaging. You have to message it in a way that the citizens understand. You have to make it be relatable, break it into chewable bites, and just desist from using words that discriminate, that exclude, that will make the citizens not know how it relates to them. It’s the same as if I talk about in debt in Zimbabwe and link it, debt and corruption, people will not understand how the national debt, public debt in Zimbabwe affects them. But if I start engaging with them with the language that they understand in terms of you do not have water and this is the situation, this is where the money is going, it really starts to relate. So, I would say the best innovation is in simply sitting and engaging with the citizens at that level. (Applause.)
SECRETARY BLINKEN: That’s a great insight. Great insight.
Rozina, what struck you? Any different ways or any insights that you had that are – that have helped you tackle the challenge?
MS ISLAM: Okay, good evening. I’m little bit nervous because we are used to ask question. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY BLINKEN: It’s so much better the other way.
MS ISLAM: Not giving the answer. So. first time, like, the big audience is there. Assalamu alaikum. Actually, you were a journalist. As a hard – you know our struggle, so when we do struggle and we do our job, our family also struggle the same way. So, what can we do, actually? We journalists, we can write only. Writing is our, like – we can write, and we can expose the corruption. We can do only that one. If we write against the corrupted people, they never liked me. Like last year, I was – like I was arrested for my COVID reporting and mismanagement.
So, they confined me eight hours in health ministry. So, they sent me to the jail. And then how I came out from there and how I got (inaudible), like international community. So international community, like CPJ, RSF, and others on the radio, they have supported me. And then, again, I started my journalism. That (inaudible) I got, that’s the way we can help others.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, it’s also a great story to hear for everyone in this audience, to know that their support, their voices also – makes a huge difference in the work that you’re doing to make sure that when those who are shining a light through whatever means on corruption are getting into difficulty, the fact that there is a strong community there to support them makes a big difference.
MS ISLAM: Yes, I need the support. You already encouraged us today, so now – when we are in danger, we need support from worldwide.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Stevan, tell us, is there anything that strikes you in the work that you’ve done and any kind of different approach that you’ve taken to exposing corruption?
MR DOJCINOVIC: Well, in KRIK, my media KRIK, but also in OCCRP network where – which KRIK is part of, we tend to use lot of new tools of technology basically to do our own investigation. Like for instance, OCCRP created Aleph database, which is database that consists of many other databases, who we managed to get it online on one place. And it’s perfect tool for reporters to actually search and find leads for their stories. But we also use artificial intelligence that help us, like face recognition. So, we tend to use as much as we can technology to do our investigation, and we have actually big tech team in our newsroom.
But when it comes to tell the stories to reader, I agree with my colleague that basically, in the end, it comes to story be well written and strong story, and like we come to the old school journalism telling really compelling story. Only our angle is that we never try to look from local perspective, because we understood that organized crime and corruption is actually not local matter. It’s like international matter. And like we always try to understand and tell to readers who these people really are, because they start understanding that all of these crime networks are connected in some way. They cooperate between each other but also corrupted leaders, autocratic leaders, they are also connected. So, we try to see it from like wider perspective and what effects it has on human lives, and actually to present to our – in our story.
And, of course, we add some stuff which kind of attracts readers, like in Serbia in KRIK we do a lot of cartoons, so we’re also presenting our story through cartoons. And that’s pretty popular, so our readers really love this. Also, what we do we understood that nowadays kind of like a reader doesn’t really like just to – things be told to them. They want to have some kind of experience, to research among themselves, you know? So, what we do, we allow them not just to read our story, but we usually publish documents. We publish sometimes not the story but like databases – we have database of politicians in Serbia and judges – so readers can do their own research through our database. And that is the way how they get more involved, and they more trust to the story when they have their experience of like basically doing journalism work. So, we present everything to them.