Political Report # 1060 Combatting Corruption for the Sake of the Economy: The Afflictions of Oil-Rich Latin America By Eliza Davis, Research Associate at COHA

Featured Photo: Brazilian President Lula da Silva on the launch of the P-52 oil Platform From: Wikipedia By Eliza Davis, Research Associate at COHA

On June 19, leaders of the two largest construction firms in Brazil, Marcelo Odebrecht of Odebrecht SA and Otávio Marquez Azevedo of Andrade Gutierrez, were arrested as part of an extensive corruption probe into the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Petrobras has been accused of various forms of malpractice including bribery and money laundering. While in the past, corruption in oil companies has led to blatant inaction-partly due to highly institutionalized venality-this probe has led to the indictment of over a hundred individuals affiliated with the company and has implicated dozens more. Bribes involving construction firms alone have totaled $2.1 billion USD[1] and the scandal has cost the company over $16 billion USD.[2] Accusations of corruption against Petrobras are emblematic of a larger problem across oil industries in the region, especially in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Each new allegation seems to come with an increasingly dramatic loss of funds. Tackling corruption in an industry that has remained so crucial to the health of the Latin American economy is one method of helping to eliminate institutionalized corruption in other industries equally vital to economic success and to further augment political and economic credibility for the region. Corruption is not uncommon in Latin America. Global Financial Integrity reported in December of 2014 that the average annual percentage of illicit outflows from Latin America is equivalent to 3.3 percent of Latin America's GDP. [3] Meanwhile, the Institute for International Finance (IIF) reported in February that annual GDP growth for all of Latin America in 2014 was only 0.4 percent and forecasted that growth for 2015 will only be 0.2 percent.[4] This means that the amount of money spent on corruption is over eight times that of region's annual growth.

Political Report #1046 AELN Commander Manrique Dies: What Is Next?

By Eliza Davis and Michael Paczkowski, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

On Sunday, June 14, 2015, the Colombian military announced the death of prominent ELN commander José Amín Hernández Manrique in the northern department of Antioquia. The Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army; ELN) is a left-wing guerilla movement, operating under a Marxist platform with the aim of liberating Colombia. The death of Manrique, also known as "Marquitos," illustrates the rising tensions between the Colombian government and its left-wing guerilla adversaries, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revoluationary Armed Forces of Colombia; FARC) and the ELN. Colombia has been plagued by widespread violence for more than 50 years, which has produced some 220,000 deaths and another 5 million refugees. The Colombian government and the FARC, the largest and oldest guerilla group in Colombia today, renewed peace negotiation talks-the fourth such attempted in the past 30 years-in December 2012 in Havana, Cuba. So far, the parties have agreed upon three terms of agreement: land reform, political integration, and drug trafficking. Consequentially, Bogotá and the FARC have yet to agree upon the reparations for the conflict's victims, the disarmament of the rebel forces, and the methods of implementation once a finalized agreement has been signed. While the ELN has had only a minimal presence in the Havana negotiations, the FARC has repeatedly encouraged a greater ELN participation in the discussion, facilitated by Bogotá's recent lift of the 182 arrest warrants against FARC Commander-in-Chief Rodrigo Londono Echeverri.[1] >>>To continue reading this article, please click here

.