United States President Joe Biden's administration on Monday announced the country's first-ever strategy to counter corruption, a plan that focuses on preventing bad actors using the US and international financial systems to cover assets and launder massive amounts of money.
The American federal government unveiled a 38-page plan to crack down on local and international corruption ahead of the virtual Summit for Democracy. The event is where the Biden administration will be hosting on Thursday and Friday and will be attended by more than 100 participants from governments, civil society, and the private sector.
Anti-Corruption Strategy
Authorities announced five pillars to guide the strategy's implementation, including modernizing efforts to combat corruption by prioritizing intelligence collection and analysis and boosting cooperation between industries. The five pillars also prevent illicit finance through routes such as issuing beneficial ownership transparency regulations.
The strategy hopes to identify bad actors and enact first-of-its-kind regulations covering real estate transactions. This could reveal when real estate is taken advantage of to hide illegal cash or to launder criminal profits, The Hill reported.
In a statement earlier this year, Biden said that corruption in the United States was threatening the country's national security, economic equity, global antipoverty, and development efforts, as well as potentially damaging democracy itself. The Democrat said that if the federal government could prevent and counter the issue, it could provide a critical advantage for the US.
The government announced the strategy after federal departments and agencies conducted a review to "take stock of existing US Government anti-corruption efforts and to identify and seek to rectify persistent gaps in the fight against corruption." The document explained that the strategy is built on the review's findings and planned out a comprehensive approach to counter the issue.
Types of Corruption
Under the strategy, there are five types of corruption; grand corruption is when political elites steal massive amounts of money from the public or otherwise take advantage of their power for personal or political advantage. Administrative corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain in interactions with citizens and the private sector, Fox Business reported.
Kleptocracy is where officials who use political power to appropriate the wealth of their nation control a government. The fourth, state capture, is when private entities improperly and corruptly influence a country's decision-making process for their advantage. The last is strategic corruption when a government uses corrupt practices as a principle of its foreign policy.
The situation comes as the Biden administration is planning to expand reporting requirements on all-cash estate deals to support the strategy against corruption. On a notice posted on Monday, the Treasury Department sought public comment for a potential regulation that would address the issue, which is a vulnerability in the real estate market.
Title insurance companies in 12 metropolitan areas are required to file reports identifying people who conduct all-cash purchases of residential real estate only if the transaction exceeds $300,000, the Associated Press reported.
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