Nikki Haley: UN Security Council must stop ignoring corruption

International leaders must recognize corruption as a key driver of conflict in hotspots around the globe, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, argued Monday.

“[N]ine out of the ten countries that Transparency International considers the most corrupt in the world are on the Security Council agenda,” Haley told council. “But instead of reflecting on why this is the case, the United Nations is too often willing to ignore corruption.”

Haley, who holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of September, convened a panel devoted to the the relationship between corruption and geopolitical instability. The session featured testimony from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and activist John Prendergast. But the anti-corruption panel proved controversial, marked by the recurring clash between Russia and the United States over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

“Examples of corruption leading to conflict are all around us,” Haley said. “The estimates of how much the corrupt government of Victor Yanukovych stole from the Ukrainian people run as a high as $100 billion over the course of less than four years ... And when Yanukovych was eventually ousted for his crimes, the ripple effects were global. Russia occupied Crimea and began the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.”

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