Undermining the fight against corruption
Larry Elliott
... Four weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency have put at risk four decades of progress in the fight against corruption and gladdened the heart of every kleptocrat around the world.
What’s happened is this. Both houses of Congress have voted to gut a law that would have forced US oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their royalty, licensing and other payments to foreign governments. The law was a bipartisan initiative between Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and former Republican Senator Richard Lugar, and formed an amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the law designed to clean up Wall Street after the financial crisis.
The Cardin-Lugar law compelled America’s financial watchdog – the Securities and Exchange Commission – to draw up tough transparency rules for energy and mining companies.
Unsurprisingly, the big oil companies were strongly opposed to revealing what they were up to at such a granular level. The American Petroleum Institute, one of the biggest and best resourced lobbying groups on the planet, has opposed Cardin-Lugar from the start, but decided to play a long game ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/12/donald-trump-is-undermining-the-fight-against-corruption
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