Welcome to the One CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
1C A is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings
in people who are current or former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
To contact the show, e-mail us at capodcasting@gmail.com or
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www.civilaffairsassos.org. I'll have those in the show
notes. So basically we developed a
research study, yeah, with the Center for International Private
Enterprise to document what has been developed after or during
the COVID-19 to fight up the corruption.
Today we have Mr. Carlos Diaz from Global Integrity who
interviewed me on anti corruption programs that I've
been working on for Civil Affairs and DoD overall a couple
of times. I also turned the tables on him
to discuss current events and his experiences growing up on
the border of Colombia and Venezuela.
This episode is a little different because I'm the one
being interviewed, but I thought it would make a great show, so
let's get started. Most of my anti corruption work
is foreign facing. And it's looking at adversaries
and their use of corruption as a foreign policy tool to displace
the US national security infrastructure and either place
a illicit. Structure in order for.
Them to be oligarchs and rob a country of all its resources, or
to? Displace international rule of
law in order to build out their own rule of law to where they
make the rules and laws and everyone else follows them.
And The thing is. My work is mostly taking things
like Global Magnitsky and not only using it in the standard
traditional way than name and shame and and sanction.
I try to use it in a way where I give people an option that they
can't refuse. I try to freeze assets.
I try to freeze their financial structures.
I try to go after their families, financial structures,
their friends, anything in their administration that they are
hiding money through. Go after intermediaries.
If they're in a place where I can indict them and remove them
from the playing field so that the oligarch or autocrat are
isolated and then say, hey, actually you can have all this
stuff back if you leave the country and.
And here's a series of reforms we want you to incur so that no
one behind you gets the same idea.
So that's what I worked on during the COVID era, and I sent
you a packet that I had created. It's actually Trafficking
Counter Illicit Trade Task Force.
It was designed for C J's TF HOA, which is in Djibouti.
It's a tactical task. Force underneath.
US Africa Command. And I'll have some time to look
into that. OK the reason I think this is
important is that state has its way of targeting anti corruption
and sometimes it works and. USA is.
Building out a new process where they're trying to energize their
networks, Promoting investigative journalism and
NGO's in a country to feed any instances of.
Corruption. But at least the people who are
entrenched, like when South Sudan broke away from Sudan, one
thought it was a great thing. It was going to be an
opportunity to use that oil to develop the nation, build up the
education, economic structure. But the military leader came in
and took it over, which happens almost every time you have a
revolt. And there's got to be a way to
shape those people, and usually it's by mapping their intent.
What their wants are and then holding up for ransom basically
kind of in a it's not extortion, it's reverse extortion because
they're stealing minerals and they're laundering money and
they're doing everything that illicit actors do.
They're selling anything they can to make money, human
trafficking, doing human slavery, everything, drugs,
whatever they can do. But they're doing it for a
reason. They have an intent, and if you
can target that intent, then you can shape the behavior of that
actor. Most of them are not reasonable
people. These guys know that any day
they could be dead or gone. So they're porting as if it's
the last day of their life in that job.
And so you have to go after that behavior.
You have to go after the things they want.
And once you capture them, then you dangle them and say, okay,
these are the behaviors we want. You're caught.
You know you're going away. This is what we want.
We want you to be the last ruler like this in the country and
you're going to become the Great Reformer.
And we want you to put in these reforms and make it to where no
one else can do what you did, what you achieved.
You played that ego. I'm pretty sure they're showing
you tricks to make sure that no one else can take power, you
know, circumvent the legal system, circumvent the financial
system, and they become a partner and actually reforming
the country. Then they become a hero.
While they take their money and run and that's what I'm trying
to do, I'm trying to weaponize anti corruption so that we can
start using them more effectively against autocrats.
Because right now countries like Russia are having a much better
job at finding corrupt people and placing them in positions
authority versus our ability to find honest people and place
them in positions of authority. The tactic and the angle that
you're laying out, because I haven't heard that right.
And so my question for you and the work that you do is how do
you identify new Windows of opportunity for the corruption
efforts during that COVID-19 time?
Well, the biggest shift I saw with COVID was the movement over
to a digital workspace and digital exchanges because no one
wanted to touch many and yet we all needed food, but we didn't
want to touch anyone or get too close.
And I think that that accelerated both good and bad.
I mean, accelerated remote work to where people can be in more
comfortable spaces and do their job more effectively.
But it also opened up avenues for things like rampant
cryptocurrency that was so far ahead of regulation that it was
just a Ponzi scheme. Digitization of the global
marketplace and people really accelerated and that's been a
great thing, but now we got to catch up with the regulations.
You read that you identify with this opportunity to add
corruption initiatives. The actions of the digital
economy exposed a lot of the corrupt action practices.
It was harder for people to travel, therefore corrupt actors
had to use. Intermediaries to get things
done, but they became more visible because the digital
footprint was a lot better because you couldn't just walk
into a bank. And so it put a lot of exposure
on the issue. So yeah, I found a lot of
opportunity and it really helped to track foreign asset flows.
It's given an advantage. The problem is to accelerated
things like cartel financial systems to where now.
They move so much cash through casinos and into the digital
currency world that it's a wildfire.
It's amazing how much goes through those things.
Yeah. And let me make an additional
question on top of that. Was this more the way that you
identify the opportunity? Was it more like in a gut
feeling or do you have like a formal criteria to approach?
A lot of it was interviews with people that I know that work in
the trades. Folks that were financial assets
and counter fraud and just talking to them, that's the
majority of where I learned what was going on.
And then listening to Bloomberg and Financial Times about some
of the trends going on and and kind of doing it a cross
reference between behaviors motive and current trends.
That's when we started finding out about tumbling people would.
Use tumblers to to wash their cryptocurrency from illicit
trade and make it come out clean.
But also, you know, by raising that issue, it allowed white hat
hackers to actually crack those things and track where the
illicit finances go. Let me just post another
question. What type of factors do you
think contributed to your ability to identify these
opportunities to be? Understanding more of these new
ways of corruption or how the funding was moving or as you
mentioned, power dynamics in certain countries.
In 2013, how was the State Department leave for counter
Taliban influence? And part of that was
understanding the networks that supported the Taliban and also
building both counter governance model to break down the
Taliban's efforts to build a shadow government but also.
Build up the local government and local leaders so that they
had good governance in the area. From that I.
Went on to AFRICOM where I work, strategic communication and they
spent a lot of time on things like Ebola and counter ISIS, but
I also spent a lot of time at OECD, that kind of illicit trade
and trafficking task force focusing on things like.
Free trade zones and the question that goes through and
how to respond to counterfeit products and trade practices,
how financial movements were avoiding taxation and other
things. So it's kind of the part of my
style of forensics because I've just observed it for so long and
and been a part of it. So that type of skills that you
have. Definitely works well in
different contexts because you're mentioning that you work
with different country contexts and for that you need to connect
with people on the ground and be strategic on the different type
of trades or exchange of products to understand schemes.
So definitely having that set of skills play, it's an ability to
identify or take on an opportunity that opens.
For instance, when elections come or power dynamics are, you
know, doing their moves. Right.
My job and and career is both communication and influence.
So it's all about knowing what sways people where their intent
is, whether their core values and then how I can work with
them to align with their core values.
Do you find more or less opportunities to implement?
And corruption efforts done before the COVID-19.
I found it was hard at first because everyone was locked
down. It was early on and most people
were taking shelter and just figuring out what's going on.
The corrupt practices also slowed down because people
couldn't get banking done, they couldn't get international
transactions done. It all kind of lulled, but then
as the restrictions loosened up. Things like cryptocurrency, as
I've already mentioned, and illicit trade and trafficking,
and now nations that have part of their foreign policy, illicit
trade, trafficking or part of their economic structure really
put it into practice. The PRC.
To me, their economic model is not the same as ours.
We should not be comparing GNP to GNP.
They have a whole arm of government solely focused on.
Fentanyl, precursor production and distribution, money
laundering, human trafficking. John Cassara has a great book
that has about 7 different indictments of what China has
been doing. The problem is we don't compare
that part of their GNP to the rest of it.
We don't add it together to see what their total global economic
income is, because I think they're actually on par with us
if you add that on. So that's where I see that,
COVID. Has kind of reshuffled the deck
for a lot of countries, Myanmar COVID allowed the military
government to stay in power a lot longer because there wasn't
an international response. But it was hard to get
international pressure on that nation because of COVID.
And so it allowed them to build PRC, supported fentanyl
precursor factories in the country, and start building up
casinos right there on the Chinese border.
And it allowed that nation to rulers to get a step ahead of
the international community. It just depends on each country
and its players. Yeah.
So I was just going to say that did you find more or less
opportunities? I think the answer was less
opportunities in the beginning, but more opportunities later on.
Yeah, it went rampant later on. And how do you prioritize or
determine which opportunity to pursue?
By the most risk to the international.
Rules based order. So what is the most risk to the
international rules based norms Drug cartels launder their money
through? China to me is the biggest
financial risk to international rules based norms because it
takes networks that are both governmental and criminal and
ties them together and. Those networks run through every
country in the world, which means that those networks can
also transport weapons, people and resources to where you don't
know what's going on in a country.
And we've seen some of this in places like Transnistria, where
Russian illicit networks were bringing in supplies and support
for troops in case the Russians went into that area during the
war. So it's that whole global mafia
network that is just under visibility but is everywhere
it's permeating that gives me concern because it can displace
the global financial system. Well, moving away from the tales
in the China, I just want to know how do you prioritize the
way of pursuing an opportunity? Geez.
It's hard. It depends on.
Where I've got. Access and and influence.
I mean, there's a lot of great opportunities.
Like I've recently tried to help kick start the Ukraine
reconstruction planning and NGO support and I keep getting the
door slammed in my face. It's just so early that a lot of
people don't see the value in planning for Ukraine
reconstruction while others are holding their cards so close
because they don't know what a right step is.
That they're not taking calls, they're not discussing and
planning opportunities. So to me that missing an
opportunity to build a country out after the conflict ends to
where it's very structure doesn't need corruption.
It'll be so wealthy and empowered and financially
stable, politically stable, that corruption is not necessary.
Everyone has a good job, everyone's getting paid well,
the taxes are going into the coffers, structure is running
great. But.
I'm afraid that we're going to all fight inwardly about who's
going to be the lead and who's going to be the funder, and
we're going to end up waiting till the last second and it's
going to be this crazy rush to rebuild Ukraine.
It's going to look like hell. Well, yeah, it's a tough one.
Especially because I sort of disagree on the length of the of
the conflict. Just a small parenthesis
because. Each party thinks they're going
to win some point. They feel like they're doing the
part, but I don't see any. Well, that's a different
conversation. But so going back to to what
what you were saying, Jack. So definitely it depends on the
access or refills that you have on on an opportunity.
Let me ask you in the COVID-19, let's say from 2020 to 2022.
That was the case, right? So if you took action and thing
that you were doing for work, it depended on the influence or the
information or access to that information, right?
Yeah, the paper I sent you, it's a real page Turner, but the
concept behind that in the slides are what I've been
working on the entire time and then supporting other efforts
like. Editing documents from OECD USA
just to help spot risks in their concepts that they weren't
looking at. But yeah, my prime has been the
reverse. Extortion.
Oligarch targeting or kliptocrat targeting.
It's been my effort. OK.
Definitely. I'll take a look.
Sorry if I that's OK. I have it here.
And yeah, it definitely highlights transnational way of
doing things. Sure.
I mean, it's written for the Army, so I apologize for.
It's pretty interesting, the things that you're saying around
the laundry money cartels, because I live in Columbia and
I'm from a small town really next to Venezuela.
Yeah, definitely. Networks are connected.
They end up running most part of the system, basically.
Yeah, well, the thing about Colombia, it's a good news
story. The violence has reduced.
And there is cooperation now, it seems, between the government
and the FARC, but also with the cartels that are still running
cocaine out of the country to where they know that if they
start getting into violence again, it's going to bring in
international response. So kind of like Mexico, they've
learned to keep everything down below and whenever a a local guy
or woman gets. Into the business and they start
becoming too aggressive. They're they're doing a good job
of policing their own and making sure that the locals are treated
decently. And this is what I'm finding.
And especially in areas where there's not a lot of governance.
In areas that have a lot of governance, there seems to be
some weird cooperation under the table.
And I can't speak a lot about Colombia, but from what people
have told me though. Is that it does seem to be much
more calm and stable and people are able to do their lives
without getting hit up on all the time.
Is that a reasonable position? Definitely.
It's just that after the peace process half of the guerrilla
FARC turning their guns and the other stay arm and and yeah, but
because, I mean they're motivated by trading coke with
the cartels. And right now there is another
peace accords moving on with ELNLANA.
Yeah, that's difficult to manage because there is no cease of
fire during the those talks. So it's every every week we
heard attempts to kill police or army.
So it's kind of like a tense environment, but the peace
process is still moving on, for instance yesterday.
A really big head of the rights. How do you call that out of the
fences? It's like really right movements
that partner with army that they were in the illegal side of
things. They started talking about their
their connections with the government and the really
powerful families in the government here.
And that's like blowing people's minds because you know it's.
People telling the truth and you know, that's the the way of
things. They were in the 90s, you know.
Yeah. People that have power of
defending themselves by financing illegal groups to
fight the other illegal groups. So, but yet again, yes,
situation is much better. I mean you sort of feel like a
different environment for tourism and investment despite
all things, you know. And also, you live on the border
of Venezuela, so you've probably had a few refugees come over as
well A. Few thousand, yes.
I lived there for a while so yeah it's it's it is pretty
tense and also that they moved to Colombia and then down South
to Chile and then up north to Mexico trying to cross the
border. Sure you US is sending airplanes
full of migrants. You know, they're defenseless.
They don't have money. They're all papers.
The ones with money made it in. There's whole hotels in Miami
full of Venezuelans that are living there, just waiting for
the coup or whatever to stabilize.
The funny thing is, I think COVID actually has extended the
life of or Maduro. Also, I think Ukraine conflict
has benefited. Venezuela, because they have
oil, and even though their infrastructure is terrible,
because all the money is being tucked away in people's pockets,
it's a resource that is vital right now.
Yes. And our government is hearing
and approaching Venezuela. As you know, they were best
friends. So, yeah, president of Colombia
was recently with Biden trying to bridge the relationship
there. Yeah, the things are moving
around that and as fellow president that he's willing to
stay for a long time. So going back to one answer, you
said that you did not act on a particular window opportunity.
So the first question was if you identify windows of opportunity
and you say yes because of the context and but when we asked in
the survey if you took action or not.
To take advantage of those windows of opportunity opening,
you said no. Yeah, the only thing I did was
write about the White House his memo on corruption as a threat
to national security. I revised an older article I had
written with Jodi Vatori and published it again to highlight
the memo and how that is opening up opportunities for.
The agencies to build out a formal anti corruption platform
that targets foreign policy which is what I'm still working
on. That's actually why I'm building
these weaponized systems for DoD so that it can be involved.
And now that state and aid have got plans for on ground field
operations, DoD needs to do the same thing so that then.
We can all start to plan together on using either AIDS
model of atmospherics and reporting or states model of
negotiations or sanction, or then Dod's model for the really
sticky characters of influence and leveraging.
Can you hold on a second? Sorry, give me a seizure.
Hey, sorry, my wife is going to an Alicia Keys concert.
Congratulations. That sounds great.
Just asking me for money. I don't carry cash anymore.
No, no one does. See, that's what COVID did.
It moved us closer to what Japan does, where you can take your
phone and wave it in front of a Coke machine and it'll pop out a
soda for you. Right.
I'm sorry, I interrupt you. So you you were basically saying
that you as a way of acting, write down an article help DoD
to, you know, build this platform, right?
But I was ranting on reflecting, reflecting, reflecting.
That's a great way to say ranting.
No, I was just saying that this is attempt to become more
effective in the field, just like aid and state are starting
to do. They're realizing that you can't
just sit at the policy level and send out dictums on
antichruption and and make a difference because they go to
the embassies and the embassies passing to the partner nation.
They go, yeah, this sounds great, we'll run it through
parliament, They run it through parliament, they pass a piece of
paper and then they stick it on a wall and they do nothing with
it. So we're all realizing you can't
just. Do big thought victims.
We actually have to do actual accountability and tracking and
influence to get things done. And what do you think about the
enablers that I? Had a nice conversation with an
enabler from Zimbabwe. He talked about he he's a banker
financier guy who does. Cryptocurrency for Zimbabwe.
And he runs money and he's got companies around the world for
handling financial assets. And he was a perfect target.
He was exactly what I was, you know, I've been browsing about
for about these enablers who hide under the covers and enable
dictators to keep power because they don't have the limelight
that causes the target to be placed on them.
They're they're business people, so usually you can turn them,
you know, for me and law enforcement, I see them as an
opportunity to have a meeting with them and give them an offer
to start turning over evidence quietly so that they can keep
the wealth they have and normally they'll do it.
If they won't, then you can start freezing their assets and
finding a way to stick them in jail.
Something related to getting closer to the outcomes of
actually fighting cat corruption.
We have used it and it was effective and.
That model anymore? I've written it up, but I've
never seen it used again. Basically there was an election
for a major African country, the president, he was going to throw
the election and stay in power. And the US Treasury and the UK
Treasury went to. The ruler and his administration
had basically made an offer, said we're going to freeze your
billion dollars in personal assets and all your abilities to
exchange commodities unless you run peaceful, free and fair
elections, lose the election and have a peaceful transition out
of the country. And so the the guy, his
administration took the money and they had a peaceful, free
and fair election and transition.
Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It never did because. There was an agreement under the
table like most power brokers do in these countries that were for
the benefit of the country versus the benefit of a
particular person. You know, commercial companies
do this all the time. What I'm proposing is we stopped
looking at those things from a high handed position and
realized that the world does run that way and we need to start
performing at that level as well if we want the outcomes.
That we want, which is stable governments, stable regions, an
accountable economic system. Then we have to get dirty.
We have to get down there. We have to make sure that what
happens in the the back door also is reasonable and doesn't
allow for somebody from the military to take over our
country and just run it for their personal gain.
You mentioned in the survey that you felt somewhat confident
related to a positive outcome after efforts being done during
COVID-19. So could you tell us why you
feel this way? I felt that way because the
White House released that memo on corruption as a threat to
national security, and the US Helsinki Commission expanded the
Magnitsky Act and then also implemented the Global Magnitsky
Act additionally. The UK started doing
transparency laws to make it to where shell companies had to
reveal who their beneficial owner was.
Canada and the US started looking at that as well.
So there was a real groundswell of accountability that would
help with the national security side of corruption, foreign
actors who use corruption as a national security weapon.
And so I was, I was feeling confident about that.
As these tools grow and mature, now we need to bring in the more
tactical things, which is what I'm trying to build.
Thanks so much Jack. I mean it has been a wonderful
talk and and thank you for sharing your experiences and and
insights. Appreciate and and yeah but so
far thank you for your contributions and and looking
forward to to share with you these findings.
Yeah. Does that mean any time?
Thank you. Take care.
Okay bye. Thanks for listening.
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Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
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I'll have the e-mail and CA association website in the show
notes and now most importantly to those currently out in the
field working with a partner, nations, people or leadership to
forward US relations. Thank you all for what you're
doing. This is Jack, your host.
Stay tuned for more great episodes, One CA podcast.