The Best Way to Fight Corruption In a Dangerously Corrupt Structure

THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT CORRUPTION

IN A DANGEROUSLY CORRUPT STRUCTURE

(NOTE FOR LEADERS)

Addis Wolde Bonger

26^th April, 2017

H.H. Patriarch Matthias I of Ethiopia

At Timket celebration Jan. 19, 2014 Addis Ababa (REUTERS)

One may be put in charge and become vested with some headship powers of a certain organizational structure which unfortunately may be found to be extremely corrupt to the depth that it is virtually impossible for any good to happen or any genuine leadership to be exercised in that kind of structure. What I called here ‘a dangerously corrupt structure’ is not a corrupt structure that makes big destruction and wastage, but one that does more than just that and additionally retaliates or responds very hazardously on anyone who makes any attempt to tamper with the corrupt system.

In these circumstances, the brand new person in charge of directing that structure may experience vulnerabilities ranging from taking all blames for ill governance by stakeholders, the media and the public to lack of trust by the ultimate body who vested power, attempts on life etc. Considering the desire that many people have to realize some miraculous developments in any organization they are put in charge, this may not be an entertaining experience.

In such circumstances, the very first task of the person entrusted with the responsibility of heading that organization shall be being extremely wise, slow and tactful in acting to eliminate the dangerously corrupt practice and pacifying the institution so that the development and transformation fantasized can be achieved.

Therefore, the risk we are running in a dangerously corrupt structures, is that these attempts to eradicate it not only fail frequently, but also expose the person in charge of heading the war against corruption to various hazards ranging from emotional attacks resulting in ultimately losing or repudiating office to hazards of assassinations and murder. 

Corrupt officials, although with comparatively lesser official powers on the paper than the person heading the structure, often have adequate hold of the factors enabling them to demolish the office and the person of the headship of that institution. Also as newly appointed head, one may apparently have lesser de facto official capabilities than the persons who spent ages in those offices and are best rooted in the system. Thus, in many cases such leaders may only possess paper powers, while the actual life of the entity is headed by these.

So, what can the newly appointed head of that entity do to combat the dangerously corrupt system effectively and set out a favorable environment for the proper leadership of the organization? Here are a few suggestions from my side.

YOU HAVE THREE ASSIGNMENTS BASICALLY:

I classify the solution points into three main activities that need to be accomplished to render a better outcome. First is preparatory activities, secondly the best first shoots and in third place things that have to be done along the way - from beginning to end. The first are things that one should do in preparation before any member of the corrupt system is alerted of the counter-corruption campaign. The second is the most decisive shots taken at the beginning in that the opening fire has to be fatal, decisive and damaging as much as possible. And the third is things to be considered across the campaign in looking at the general picture of the campaign, the synergy of one tasks with another etc.

Let us begin with the first.

A.   PREPARATORY ACTS BEFORE TAKING ANY ACTIVE MEASURE:

The first activities are those that the newly appointed head shall do without taking any active measure. These activities are extremely confidential and shall necessarily be kept secret from the entire structure because, the dangerous band of robbers must never be alerted towards a developing anti-corruption campaign. 

Often newly appointed heads of a structure commit mistakes when they openly criticize wrong-doers and corrupt officials and that they will strive endlessly to eradicate corruption. This will alert the dangerous bandits and create a tense environment which makes it extremely hazardous for the newly appointed head to act in any manner against the evils. Proclaiming across the town that you would pose danger to a certain subject will inevitably make the subject more prepared than it is before. In all respects, your dangers have to shock everyone in surprise and must be executed at circumstances where it is very difficult if not impossible for the subjects to respond actively.

1.       Keep silent and take some time to become a household

You may need to take some time without showing any interest fighting corruption at first. Just do not look bothered about the issue, do not mention it in your interviews, big meetings, ordinary conversations etc. Wait until you are a household in the organization, not a stranger anymore, because any decision you take at the first days of your office are subject to deep scrutiny by the entire members of the institution, the media etc.

Whether people are good angels or bad devils, everyone is interested to know your ways and approaches, the way you deal with scenarios, events, persons etc. You are the best subject of research and private investigation by virtually everyone including your band of corrupt crooks. Everybody would wonder how your ways, decision and decision patterns as well as styles would affect their individual business in that organization.

If your ways would appear to be such that can make a dynamic change to the way the organization operates, the first persons who would start to look at you with red eyes would be your band of corrupt members in the structure. You do not want for this to happen. Perhaps, this is the worst outcome you would desire to achieve. You do not want to wake your enemies before you are set to pose dangers that are irresistible for them. Therefore, keep silent about your anti-corruption intents and do the second thing instead which is the following.

2.       Do not appear like a fatal anti-corruption combatant.

Demonstrating your commitment for anti-corruption activities may have the advantage of inspiring many in your structure to ally with you and may have multiple other benefits as well. However, never attempt to do this before you are ready to engage in many ways and you ensure that you have better bargaining powers than your enemies.

Specially, do not do this before you have enforced an equitably powerful structural network of loyal aids within your organization. At this point in time, you should be very certain that once up on the coming days, your organization would turn out to be an extremely fatal battle ground, cover the newspaper stories and run headline over the media. You need an equally equipped network of combatants on your side as your enemies in virtually all respects.

You may need to have lawyers who are extremely loyal to you and consulting you in this specific plan of yours, management experts, technology consultants, financial and economic consultants, human resource consultants and also senior officials taking offices in your organization, loyal experts filling out posts, officers across the hierarchy of your organization. You may not directly engage in assembling loyal members at the lower layers of your structure, but leave that to your loyal members at the top of your management when you feel content that these understand your causes and can execute it.

One way or another, you need to have at least comparably thrilling structural weight and appearance with your enemies. Before you ensure you have this, you shall not appear hostile especially against the crooks.

3.       Spot the most vital kick points.

Every dangerously corrupt network has its own systematic linkages and netting patterns. There are always a few vital officials at the upper most layer of the structure who are networked with multiple others on the second layer and it goes as such to the lowest layer in the hierarchy. The further down you descend over the hierarchy, the more populous the hierarchies are with corrupt experts, officers and other personnel.

Your first task is spotting the most vital corrupt officials which are usually located at top few layers of your administration. Usually, taking down one or two of these prominent individuals would cause massive destruction on the whole network.

However, you should not engage in any active solution other than spotting them and taking a good note of how to attack them and strategizing the attack trail with respect to those officials and their manners of corruption. Do not do anything, but simply study and make yourself familiar and well versed on their techniques, strategies, strengths and weaknesses. Find the best terms to explain why they are successful in their evil doings and define the good things one does that can devoid them.

While doing these, also give some proper assignments for everyone in the hierarchy and make the organization a little busy atmosphere. Make some places in that organization war zone where everybody is up on their toes working in a lot of pressure, rather than relaxing. Ask why certain activities are not accomplished and put a lot of pressures on the corrupt officials as well.

When you do these, do them carefully only to the level that your new post as the head of that organization seems to naturally entitle you to direct. Or do these to the level that anyone cannot say why you are asking these weird tasks to be done, but in a way how you can remain defended by saying this is what you are assigned to do. You must not forget that already because of the change in leadership, corrupt members are left to wonder whether they are to continue with old privileges or not and expect slightly more hostile environment disallowing the old ways. Focus on the most primary functions of your organization to create the activities meaning you rightfully expect people the very task that they are assigned on.

This will have two effects. One, it shall keep the persons busy and put their resources at doubt that much cannot be available for wastage. Two, you would be able to take enough records of ill performances which would serve a pretext to fire some at later stage as we will discuss below. For whatever reason you fire a corrupt official, it is always a relief when you do not have a corrupt official working anymore in your structure.

4.       Spot the most vital substitutions and install solid aids within structure.

You cannot afford to lose any aid on your side. You need to make use of every aid you can get from the most loyal persons whom you can trust. Be careful in allowing newly admitted persons to the structure. The structure needs your most vital attention now than ever before or later and needs to be shielded against any new coming bandit.

No body shall be allowed into the structure or take any office before you shall scrutinize. You cannot afford to allow more robbers into the structure. Already you have a dangerous band of crooks who are giving you a nightmare and you shall not enable them and make them stronger by giving them more criminals.

You must take equal care not to allow other people to leave office and go out also because you cannot afford to lose any loyal member who are striving in what is yet dangerously corrupt structure, if any.

These persons know the structure well and also know the persons well, probably more than you do. If this is not true, at least these are the best persons with a workable data and information helpful to your secrete campaign. You need to retain these because later on when you start firing people from their offices and your anti-corruption marching is on the news, these would be your first allies who can give you a hand. Therefore, when a person wants to leave the office at that time, be certain that it is a person whose being there is of no help at all or dangerous to give a go ahead. Otherwise, if they are loyal persons whom you can rely on, keep them inside the structure.

In some cases, you may need to engage directly to convince people to stay and tell them that it is because “you have a long way ahead of you and you can’t afford losing such important members in such an important point in time”. This would give them the hope that yours would be a better administration than previous counter parts and that you have some kind of hope in them. This would ready them for your upcoming quest for their assists when your campaign goes headline in the morning news and you need their help more than anytime.

Aside this, you also need to spot important individuals, capable at leadership and influence, experts at something that may be glad to accept office at your leadership. Most importantly, these should be people with equal anti-corruption commitments as yours. It is highly imperative that the most vital persons should be aware of your target from the beginning and are more than willing to march along with you all the way.

Your band of crooks may see any new comer to the structure, especially in vital positions and immediately attempt to baptize them with their evils and turn them against you. That is a disaster and that is the reason why these people you choose should be ones whom you can trust with your life. First, look at the existing structure and try to identify any such persons within and then your current connections elsewhere. If you run out of such people in your current connections, refer to your past life and think of people whom you greatly admired, invite them and make them aware of your target.

You should not make mistakes choosing persons here. You should not trust people in vain because later on you may find them to be equally destructive as the ones already in your system. Therefore, find persons who are extremely loyal to you, persons whom you think would never betray you in any circumstances, persons whom you are certain that they have very influential capabilities in leadership, and can run complicated bureaucracy.

These should be persons with very good instincts and very good judgments and those who can be indomitable figures when later on your anti-corruption ammunition are launched and your organization becomes a fatal battle ground between your party and the enemy. Therefore, have an equally thrilling network of loyal combatants in your side.

You may invite such people in official posts in the organization or may be persons who act independently outside of the structure. You need both of these and you need advice as to how to execute this specific plan from administration and management consultants and strategists who understand your aim and are loyal to you as well. You must have enough people inside your structure at all hierarchies though and this is not subject to debate or refutation. You must have persons inside your structure because you need people who can legitimately claim actions and resolutions when the battle is public.

You can imagine yourself being in court or in front of a government official in some instances where you need to be requested to justify some of your actions later on and yes! that’s true. It is likely to happen at some point. In that case, persons within your structures are the best to consider and are presentable than outside who can only aid in advice and consultancy but are not official and legitimate figures. It would be the actions of your inferiors which are to be considered than persons outside of your structure who are irrelevant.

5.       Install technology and methods to make bribery traceable.

Install technological ways and/or efficient methods of finance, administration, human resource etc. that you think help fight corruption in your organization and do these slowly. You do not want to wake your enemies with these unpleasant additions as well.

Your new methods shall not have a sudden effect on the criminals. It should not block their way of corruptions at once. In fact, in many ways, I do not encourage ways other than those which can only have the effect of leaving traces and records of corruption and ill governance. I encourage methods that do not block corruption, but produce enough evidences.

Don’t take any actions. Simply make it possible for corruption to be recorded and known once it is made either by direct evidence or by circumstantial evidences. Get legal support on this after you find very loyal experts as has been discussed already.

Once you are confident that you have best allies across the organization that can back you in your battle when it becomes official, you can employ more concrete technologies or methods without caring much about how much the crooks would buy those methods.

B.     BEST PLACES TO BEGIN SOLUTION:

For your solutions to come up with the desired results, they should be genuinely and wisely set forth.

Care should be taken not to be victimized with the hazardous system. This is to mean that if the first solution does not come up with the anticipated results and does enough harm with the corrupt system, it would have a wakening effect on the system to cause harm on you. In many cases, we know persons who stood firmly against corrupt systems assassinated and also every other kinds of dangers.

Another concern may also be the effectiveness of the solutions themselves. For your solutions to earn you results, they have to be sudden, unanticipated, paralyzing the members of the corrupt members making them devoid of any more energy to retaliate or respond in any defensive manner. The following may be viable options to follow:

1.       Use other reasons to kick the corrupt members.

Once you are confident that you have significant loyalty within your structure and thus enough bargaining power for upcoming battles against the crooks, you can start firing the highest dignitaries of your structure’s corruption networking.

Although you have to take careful record of proofs for their corrupt practice and governance, you should however, use other pretexts to fire them as publicized reasons apart from corruption. If you say you fired somebody because of corruption, you would alert others to start to take care, to destroy evidences, to fight back strongly, retaliate etc. Therefore, fire the officials, but for reasons entirely different from corruption.

This would give the other corrupt members the impression that as far as they keep away from those other reasons for being fired, they are fine.

2.       Fire many at once.

When you get the opportunity to fire corrupt officials, you should fire as many as you can at once. Firing one and leaving the rest of the bandits alive makes them hostile on you because the network would suffer significant damages as a result of the fired official’s absence which always has a detrimental impact on a network and the others may be induced to actively engage in warfare with you if they keep their official seats intact at the same time. You do not want to have a legitimate thief in your structure, that is the worst enemy for you to combat against.

Firing officials at the top of the corruption network and cleaning your layers at the top at once would be a very good accomplishment because the lesser layers have lesser structural competitive advantage on you and would bother you lesser for any danger.

Obviously, if you fire the corrupt Chief Compliances Officer (CCO) of the organization once, you would experience a lot of peace because the corrupt legal officer at a lower hierarchy cannot pose a big retaliation danger on you. But if you fire the corrupt legal officer at a lower layer for corrupt activities, you would alert the chief officer against you who has a better hierarchical standing than the legal officer.

Therefore, if you are able to clean your top layers at once, you should consider that a trophy. Then your structure would only be a corrupt structure and not a dangerously corrupt structure making your campaign capable to descend further low and clean the entire structure comfortably.

C.     THINGS YOU SHOULD ALWAYS DO:

Your specific tasks and activities to wards championing the campaign shall make a firm consideration of the interrelation of one activity with the other. These activities are synergized with each other meaning you should not only specifically focus on only one task at a time, but should oversee the combined effect and the general plan along the way.

You should design the timeline of actions to ensure that corrupt members are always overwhelmed and caught in total surprise whenever each action is executed. The entire list of actions you have to take herein shall leave no room for readiness, shall anticipate possible resistance and shall be prepared themselves.

1.       Always rate your bargaining power and competitive advantages.

Always calculate the magnitude of dominance and the gravity of the danger that can be lodged on you by your enemies as long as you are on your anti-corruption campaign. Know your capabilities in comparison with the capabilities of your enemies and act accordingly. You shall not open fire, when you know for sure that your enemies have more ammunition at the moment and are armed far better than you are. Engage yourself in earning more strength in all respect and meanwhile, wait for the right time.

2.       Befriend yourself with the enemies

Give your enemies something, some favor with you, some reason why they like you. Give them the impression that you may not be the kind that can hurt them anyway.

You do not need to present yourself as smart along the way. The dummier you appear to be, the less prepared your enemies would be for you and the more sudden and sever your dangers would be to them.

Make sure that they feel comfortable with you being around and sometimes this may even cost you to ignore their trespasses. You should however be careful not to be guilty of complicit or support or ill supervision of persons beneath you.

They may also attempt to baptize you with their evil and try to win you for the corrupt circle. Do not allow that to happen and keep that kind of attempt distant at all times by limiting the chances of these discussions. You can also overlook offers, because usually, these would not be straightforward and can be ignored or diverted by you in any way.

Finally, if you do not appear a very smart and thoughtful leader, as suggested above, it is likely that the corrupt members would prefer to by-pass your powers by proxy than to make you ally with them. The second is always not a favorite choice for these people because as much as possible they tend to operate in a narrow circle with limited members than uncontrollably many.

3.       Ally with law enforcement in various ways and bargain with these with a state of a quid pro quo.

Allying with the police, law enforcement and the government would make more horror to your enemies. In some cases, these corrupt officials themselves may have established informal ties with corrupt members of the police or law enforcement already. This has great disadvantages on your campaign. I recommend that you always now the dangers posed by your enemies in this respect because in many cases everything you do here may not matter, if they have best connections with the best persons in the government and law enforcement and if their corrupt system is a government-backed one.

Your options would be to set out equal leverages for you as well in this respect and create competitive advantages. Set out close relationship with the more important government officials’, get support and keep very good, formal relations with them before you engage in any of those active measures herein. Government also may be interested in your anti-corruption passions.

Here also, you may want to have best, loyal allies in the media, may be journalists etc. and use them genuinely at the correct timing to complement lack of support and secure the best results. 

If your enemies in the organization do not have the above strengths, however, you are safe and need to go out and secure the best support you can have quickly.

4.      There is no going back if you fail at one stage

In some cases you may be faced with the challenge that one of your actions did not result in outcomes that are anticipated in this recommendation either for improper execution by you or ungenuine assumptions. You should not go back and try to mechanically execute corrections. Just proceed with the next task on the timeline.

For example, if you fired top corrupt member once in the wrong timing, you should not go back on timeline to set out good allies in government etc. You should go forward and fire the other top corrupt officials and if you have doubt, you can also fire persons whom you suspect to be corrupt as such even though you do not have good evidences and pay every price for this. You should move forward as if you are on the correct timeline and prepare contingencies for the anomalies you created.

In all circumstances, it is better to preserve immediate results than allowing the pursuit of the integrity of you plan cause corrupt members to be alerted and respond actively.

D.     FINALLY

What you should not forget is that as the legitimate head of that entity, you are most likely to be in the best position to earn more support; government, public or otherwise and you should energetically make use of this with a lot of persistence and zeal.

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Addis Wolde Bonger is a lawyer and an interested Christian - follower of the Orthodox faith.