Washington panel discusses Azerbaijan`s dirty money and why it now poses a U.S. national security threat

Top U.S. and European analysts on global kleptocracy and money laundering challenges debate over how to stop Azerbaijan's dirty cash entering the western capitals and threatening their political, economic interests.

"Do we think it is okay when the kleptocratic states like Azerbaijan, access our political institutions and lobby here in a same way as our allies can?" asked British journalist Ben Judah, the author of a new report called "The Kleptocracy Curse: Rethinking Containment," at a panel organized by Hudson Institute in Washington. D.C.

The report explains how kleptocracy became a pervasive global threat to democracies and their national securities.

"We think globalization has been working in the West's favor. In fact, it has been hijacked by kleptocratic regimes," Judah told TURAN's Washington correspondent. "Unless we contain kleptocracy, our democratic institutions will be taken over - look at Azerbaijan and the Council of Europe [CoE]."

According to the report, Azerbaijan was admitted to the CoE in 2000 in the hope that membership could transform its political culture - instead, it has transformed the Council of Europe in its very image.

"A kleptocratic takeover has not paralyzed the Council’s ability to criticize Azerbaijan but manipulated this venerable institutions’ official bodies into denying the existence of political prisoners, systematic ballot fraud, and entrenched autocracy in the country."

Baku, rather than suffer criticism from the CoE, chaired the institution in 2014, and hosted the president of the European Court of Human Rights and a series of international conferences. "Many members of the Parliamentary Assembly, lawmakers in their own country, have been won over to Baku’s view that there are no human rights issues there worth examining."

For Ben Judah, unlike the UK, the U.S. can overhaul the system:  Washington needs to start paying attention to what has happened to the world economy. Across the world, money laundering on an epidemic scale is undermining American foreign policy: crippling development, threatening democracy, damaging Western soft power and fueling state collapse.

"Gigantic sums of money are now traveling the world incognito. This has turned globalization into the golden age of money laundering," he said.

For panelists, it is in power of U.S. and Europe to pass laws enabling them to disregard bogus declarations that stolen wealth was obtained legally.

"Kleptocracy is a national security issue - but it is also a way of fundamentally undermining who we are as a democracy," said Hudson Institute's Hannah Thoburn.

For McCain Institue's David Kramer, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state dealing with post-Soviet countries during the George W. Bush administration, Azerbaijan is "a perfect example" how kleptocratic regimes engaging in gross human rights abuses, find their ways into the western capitals and challenge their democracies.

"We make a huge mistake if we think we can turn a blind eye to corruption while focusing on security cooperation," he said.

For Kramer, kleptocracy and authoritarianism "go together" - the more corrupt they become, the more they crack down.

To beat kleptocracy, panelists said, "we have to look in the mirror. We need a change of culture... We need to clean up our complicit way of doing business."

A.Raufoglu

Washington, D.C.