CORRUPTION IN LAOS: THE CLOSER YOU LOOK, THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 06 VIENTIANE 000139 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR MLS (EDWARD BESTIC) INL FOR INL/AAE (CHARLES BOULDIN) JUSTICE FOR OPDAT (CAROLINE AIELLO) COMMERCE FOR MAC/ITA (HONG-PHONG PHO) E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/19/2017 TAGS: KCRM PGOV KFRD CASC SNAR LA SUBJECT: CORRUPTION IN LAOS: THE CLOSER YOU LOOK, THE WORSE IT APPEARS REF: A. 05 VIENTIANE 1232 ¶B. 05 VIENTIANE 1298 ¶C. 06 VIENTIANE 275 ¶D. 06 VIENTIANE 596 ¶E. 06 VIENTIANE 632 ¶F. 06 VIENTIANE 646 ¶G. 06 VIENTIANE 674 ¶H. 06 VIENTIANE 804 ¶I. 06 VIENTIANE 1046 ¶J. VIENTIANE 121 Classified By: Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach for Reason 1.4 (d) ¶1. (C) Summary. Corruption in Laos is endemic. At a recent governance and anti-corruption workshop in Vientiane, sponsored by the World Bank, donor and non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives met to discuss the current situation. While there are some positive trends, such as the willingness of senior leaders to discuss the problem publicly, and the recent (2005) passage of Laos' anti-corruption law, the overall situation is negative. Low civil-service pay, a culture of official corruption, the Communist Party's resistance to transparency, the central government's weakness vis--vis the provinces, and the absence of effective institutions to counter abuse (such as a strong civil society) means corruption remains a daunting problem. The representatives at the World Bank meeting reached consensus that with regard to corruption in Laos, the closer one looks, the worse it appears. End Summary. Positive Indicators in the Battle against Corruption -------------- -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Although corruption is a severe problem in Laos, the situation is not entirely bleak. The Government of Laos (GOL) has highlighted the problem of corruption since 1999, when it issued its first decree directed at this problem, something it had previously ignored. GOL leaders now fear that corruption is impeding development; Laos has signed the UN Convention against Corruption and passed an anti-corruption law, demonstrating some commitment on this issue. Unfortunately, insofar as we can tell, they have yet to publish implementing regulations or publicly prosecute anyone under the law. The GOL is also taking steps to restructure its decentralized revenue system, which facilitates corruption and gives provincial governments enough independence to ignore the central government's reform initiatives. ¶3. (C) The GOL is now willing to confront the reality of corruption in Laos, something it was totally unprepared to do in the past. A number of observers have noted that several years ago government officials would not discuss corruption, but this attitude has changed markedly. Senior Politburo members have now begun to address the problem in an open and public forum. The GOL keynote speaker for the December 2006 commemoration of the International Day against Corruption was Deputy Prime Minister Ansang Laoly, an ironic choice given his well-established reputation for corrupt activities. Throughout the Lao bureaucracy, only revenue and customs officials still seem reticent to acknowledge that corruption remains a problem, perhaps because doing so would directly threaten their own pocketbook. ¶4. (C) As previously reported (ref C),the GOL is now taking action against senior officials implicated in corruption. At the 8th Party Congress in March, 2006, the Communist Party Central Committee forced out several governors and former governors accused of corruption. Both the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Industry and Handicrafts were sacked for the same reason. The Foreign Minister stated at a press conference following the Congress that some former Central Committee members had been involved in corruption and narcotics trafficking, but that this would no longer be tolerated. The Congress also increased the power of the Party Inspection Authority, headed by Deputy PM Ansang Laoly, to act proactively to preclude corruption within the party's senior ranks. Those removed from the Party's Central Committee, however, were not subsequently prosecuted for their offenses; the GOL prefers to transfer errant officials to less prestigious (and lucrative) positions rather than send them to jail. ¶5. (SBU) At the policy level, the GOL perceives corruption VIENTIANE 00000139 002 OF 006 as a major impediment to development that could help to derail its stated goal of graduating from least-developed country (LDC) status by 2020. Fortunately the GOL has a good implementing vehicle to help bring about the type of fundamental changes it needs in its National Socio-Economic Development Plan for 2006-2010. The plan calls for the GOL to make fighting corruption a priority, establish the organizations and legal framework it needs to control corruption, and enforce anti-corruption statutes vigorously. International pressure, from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),the World Bank, and possibly Vietnam, has given added impetus to Lao anti-corruption efforts. ¶6. (U) In May of 2005, the Lao National Assembly adopted an anti-corruption statute. The new law moves Laos toward full compliance with the 2003 United Nations Convention against Corruption, which the GOL signed in December of 2003. Under the new law, acts that constitute corruption are: -Embezzlement of state property or collective property -Swindling of state property or collective property -Taking bribes -Abuse of position, power, and duty to take state property, collective property or individual property -Abuse of state property or collective property -Excessive use of position to take state property, collective property or individual property -Cheating or falsification relating to technical construction standards, designs, and calculations -Deception in bidding or concessions -Forging documents or using forged documents -Disclosure of state secrets for personal benefit -Holding back or delaying documents ¶7. (U) Among other things, the law specifically calls for an end to nepotism, senior official asset declarations, and the establishment of a national anti-corruption organization with similar bodies at the provincial level. However, the law itself is sparse and clearly in need of detailed implementing regulations, a common problem for the GOL, which lacks the resources and expertise required to produce the comprehensive legal structures it needs to support its policies. The law also establishes severe penalties, ranging up to 25 years imprisonment, for serious violations. These enforcement provisions are in addition to existing laws that cover some but not all of the violations listed in the new statute. ¶8. (SBU) One reason that the GOL has been ineffective in curbing corruption is its inability to exert influence over the actions of provincial governments. Following passage of the anti-corruption law, there were major efforts to educate provincial officials. Although in theory the Lao state is highly centralized, in fact the central government has traditionally been weak in comparison to the provinces. The majority of revenues are collected by the provincial governments, which provide only a portion of what they take in to support the national government in Vientiane. Obviously, this does not give the GOL much leverage over the provincial governors. The revenue structure made the implementation of national policies difficult and allowed the provinces to impede national initiatives promoting transparency and discouraging corruption. ¶9. (SBU) Fortunately, the new budget law, passed in December 2006, is designed to correct some of this imbalance by centralizing revenue management through consolidated tax operations. In addition, Laos will introduce a national value added tax (VAT) designed to replace customs revenues being phased out as part of bilateral and regional free-trade initiatives. The VAT is also intended to reduce the opportunities for corruption within the customs collection system. In theory, all revenues will now come to the central government before they are reallocated to the provinces; however, provincial governments will remain responsible for implementing the new tax codes, and significant challenges will have to be overcome if the system is to function as intended. In practice, provincial governments are likely to continue holding substantial non-declared assets, and the national government will likely remain unable to rein in corruption in the provinces. Both the new budget law and the VAT are awaiting implementing regulations yet to be completed. Negative Indicators in the Battle Against Corruption -------------- -------------- VIENTIANE 00000139 003 OF 006 ¶10. (C) Laos' larger and more visible neighbors have generally garnered more attention with regard to corruption, but, on closer examination, the depth of corruption in Laos may be just as bad. Transparency International, in its 2006 report, rated Laos notably worse than the year before. The World Bank Institute's Kaufmann-Kraay corruption measurement identified Laos as more corrupt than Thailand, China, and Vietnam, and only slightly better than Cambodia. Of the multiple reasons for this, the woefully insufficient pay of civil servants tops the list. The absence of transparency or any effective check on authority, intrinsic to a one-party Communist state, presents a serious challenge even to estimating the extent of corruption. The GOL relies on donor support for much of its budget, and, as most of this assistance is not tied to good governance, there is little incentive for reform. Finally, a large and increasing portion of GDP is derived from resource extraction industries, which are especially vulnerable to corruption because the national government lacks adequate means to effectively regulate them and their products are difficult to trace. ¶11. (SBU) Low pay for civil servants is a critical problem, and Laos is near the low end globally. Salaries for physicians remain in the range of $120-$150 per month. To receive care in government health care facilities, which include most of the major hospitals in Laos, patients must give supplemental cash to the doctors and nurses who care for them. Police officers are paid even less; junior officer's monthly salary is approximately $20. Laos, however, does not have the lowest cost of living in the region, and private labor costs are non-competitive with China and Vietnam. To even approach the remuneration available in the private sector, civil servant pay would have to be increased by a factor of ten to twenty. As civil servants cannot possibly survive on their salaries, many government officials see no problem with receiving commissions, which they perceive as nothing more than gratuities similar to what waiters might receive in the U.S.; they do not see themselves as engaging in a corrupt practice. ¶12. (C) The Lao People's Democratic Republic, as a single-party communist state, is by its very nature resistant to transparency and accountability. Decision-making authority is centralized, and, absent an opposition party or any effective check on the Communist Party's power, senior leaders generally do as they please. Nepotism is rampant. Ironically, a number of rich and powerful families in the pre-1975 monarchy have continued to thrive under communism. There is strong resistance to audit systems, and many local governments have financial controls on expenditures but not on revenues, creating ample opportunity for the diversion of public funds. In general, there is no sense among Party officials that there is anything significantly wrong with corruption, though a few stalwarts still hold to the socialist ideals of their youth. ¶13. (C) While Laos now has a legal basis to prosecute corruption, and state-sanctioned organizations to root it out, few government officials would be foolhardy enough to take on the senior Party members who benefit the most from the current system. There has been no recent high-profile anti-corruption case against a Communist Party figure in Laos, unlike those which have occurred in China and Vietnam. Enforcement of the Anti-Corruption Law for anything other than relatively minor offenses by the most junior officials is next to impossible. The lack of judicial independence would make the prosecution of a major case even more problematic. The September 2005 arrest of a major Chinese drug trafficker in Houaphan illustrates how daunting corruption can be (ref A). Han Yongwan was arrested only after the GOL came under intense pressure from China, Burma and Thailand. Provincial officials were very slow to move on this case, and even the Governor may have had a hand in protecting this prominent organized crime figure. Lao military officials were also implicated. The drug lord was extradited to China via Burma, as Laos would have been an uncertain venue at best for the trial. ¶14. (C) The ongoing construction of the new National Stadium in Vientiane is an example of how the Anti-Corruption Law exists on paper only. The law specifically forbids the use of authority to take individual property. However, Vientiane Municipality used its power of eminent domain to seize small VIENTIANE 00000139 004 OF 006 parcels of privately-held land fronting Route 13, the major north-south highway in Laos, for the construction of a stadium and auxiliary facilities it will need to host the Southeast Asia Games in 2009. These tracts, optimally sited for commercial development, commanded premium values when their former owners purchased them. ¶15. (C) When the landowners requested compensation from the Municipality, officials responded that, while they sympathized with the owners, no budget had been set aside for the purchase of the stadium land and, consequently, no compensation could be offered other than comparably-sized plots in the rural countryside. Valuable private land seized for public use following the Communist takeover in 1975 was sometimes used by senior officials for their own estates, and the memory of the past abuses makes the recently-displaced landowners skeptical about who will really benefit from the land they surrendered to the Vientiane authorities. ¶16. (C) Even the Embassy has not been immune to the effects of corruption in Laos. Several years ago, when the NAS Field Advisor in Phongsaly Province halted a construction project because of the kickbacks being paid to senior provincial officials, the corrupt officials used their Communist Party connections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to have his visa revoked. The Embassy's Consular Section routinely returns Lao passports to the MFA that the Ministry's own officials have issued to persons who have obtained duplicate identifies (new name, surname and date of birth) after failing a visa interview. To our knowledge, no action has ever been taken against any individual. The NAS has on several occasions endured delays in processing law enforcement program documents and equipment when the Director refused to fund office furnishings for the concerned officials. Fortunately, these experiences have generally been the exception rather than the rule, but the rage and shame on the faces of the Embassy's locally-engaged staff when this occurs speaks to a long and simmering frustration by some at the misuse of official authority. ¶17. (SBU) A direct consequence of decades of abuse of power is that there is no public trust; government officials are presumed to be corrupt unless proven otherwise. There is also no mitigating indigenous civil society or strong private sector to serve as an independent but unthreatening impetus for reform. The government is drafting legislation to regulate civil society and NGOs, providing some official sanction; the few civil society institutions and NGOs that exist in Laos continue to rely on a core of expatriate experts rather than civic-minded Lao. There is ongoing dialogue between the Lao Bar Association and some donors, but, with fewer than 100 practicing attorneys in Laos, the influence of this organization is limited. ¶18. (SBU) In many cases, donor activities do as much to facilitate corruption as they do to promote good governance. A substantial portion of the GOL's budget comes directly from aid programs provided by foreign governments, international organizations, and NGOs. Overseas development assistance (ODA) flows in Laos are not transparent; much of the assistance provided is expended on high-end SUVs and study tours for senior officials rather than reaching the masses of rural poor who need it most. Our discussions with Lao counterparts on upcoming training programs often center around one topic--the per diem rate for participants. Management by objective is sorely lacking, and there is strong resistance to procurement reforms. Corruption is not the consequence of ODA; that problem runs much deeper in Lao society. But many donors are not doing what they could to promote transparency. ¶19. (C) A major donor's roundtable meeting held in Vientiane in November 2006 was a lost opportunity to tie ODA to greater transparency and better governance. One major reason for this is that some of the largest donors to Laos, such as Japan, China, and Vietnam, are focused more on their bilateral relationships with the GOL than on the efficacy of their programs. As the Japanese representative at the World Bank discussions stated, "Japan is not in a position to link ODA to governance . . . but expects the World Bank to assume responsibility for pursuing this objective in Laos." (Comment: Unspoken but clearly communicated at the World Bank meeting was the message that, as long as Japan feels it necessary to continue a bidding war with China for the good will of the communist leadership, governance reform in Laos VIENTIANE 00000139 005 OF 006 will not be a priority. The Japanese representative read from a prepared statement with little enthusiasm. When the NAS spoke with her about the size of Japanese ODA in Laos, she stated that Japan contributed $80 million to Laos in 2006, seven to eight times the U.S. contribution. She then remarked, "but you have results to show for what the U.S. has put in," implying that Japan got little in return for its generosity. End Comment). ¶20. (C) Corruption in Laos is not confined to the public sector. Depositors must still pay banks to make withdrawals larger than a few hundred dollars. According to figures presented at the World Bank meeting, construction kickbacks normally run about 10%. Corruption in the mining sector is rife; and China in particular has been able to exploit the weakness of the GOL's regulatory system (ref F). In one recent example, a Russian firm that had done all of the survey and preparatory work on an iron ore claim was refused permission to dig, only to find out later that a Chinese firm had been granted the concession (ref I). Corruption in the logging industry is also rampant, Vietnamese concerns operating near the Lao-Vietnamese border being effectively exempt from even the minimal attempts at enforcement found elsewhere (ref G). Siene Saphanthong, the former Minister of Agriculture, was transferred because he failed to control corruption in the timber industry, but not prosecuted (ref C). Corruption in resource extraction industries is likely to get worse as the importance of this sector to the Lao economy grows. Mining and hydropower, which currently account for approximately 50% of GDP, will grow to 70% by the end of the decade, and potentially 90% of GDP when these industries are fully developed. Further complicating this problem is the very close relationship between the private sector and the GOL. The Path Forward -------------- ¶21. (SBU) If Laos is ever to bring its corruption problems under control, it must change the acquiescent attitude that allows abusive practices to thrive. To that end, it must take several key steps: -Civil service pay must be increased to market levels, ending the economic motivation that drives much of the more common, albeit small-scale, corruption. -The GOL and the Party, under the direction of senior leaders, must rid themselves of their culture of corruption. The prosecution of a corrupt senior official or officials would send a strong message in this regard. As China's influence in Laos grows, adopting some of China's strategies for prosecuting corrupt officials might raise awareness among Party officials and the government that corruption, even among the elite, will not be tolerated. -Prosecutors, the judiciary, and anti-corruption organizations must receive the support they need from senior leaders to act independently against corruption. -The central government must regain its authority over the provinces so that it can force implementation of reform initiatives. Full implementation of a new centrally-controlled tax structure would be critical to effecting this change. -The banking sector must be reformed and fiduciary controls instituted. -Whistle blowers must be protected and their efforts recognized. Some exist, but they find safety only in donor organizations outside of government. - A mutual accountability framework has to be established for donor support which links ODA to good governance. USG programs have this, and it works. Procurement reform is a must. -Public institutions must be strengthened, and civil society afforded a chance to develop. -The GOL should prosecute several high-profile corruption cases, as China has done, to send a clear signal that it is no longer acceptable. VIENTIANE 00000139 006 OF 006 ¶22. (SBU) Changes such as these will not happen quickly, particularly under the circumstances found in Laos. At the January meeting, World Bank representatives suggested that anti-corruption efforts in Laos must be incremental, using a multi-sector approach. Initially, civil society must emerge as a partner in development, then transition into being a source for oversight. Positive developments need to be reinforced, particularly where key stakeholders perceive corruption as a threat to the nation's long-term goals and prosperity. For its part, the World Bank does not plan to make any major changes to its current anti-corruption strategy in Laos, based on its five pillars: -Preventing Fraud and Corruption within World Bank Projects. -Helping countries that request World Bank support in their efforts to reduce corruption. -Taking corruption more explicitly into account in its country assistance strategy. -Adding voice and support to international efforts to reduce corruption. -Protecting the Bank from internal fraud and corruption. The World Bank will continue to move forward with its anti-corruption programs in Laos when, where, and with whom it believes there is a reasonable chance for success, which the Bank terms its "points of entry." In doing so, it parallels other donors concerned with governance, working with institutions and individuals that are relatively free of corruption, and avoiding the rest. ¶23. (C) Comment: The corruption problem in Laos is not hopeless. the World Bank contends that there are officials, some very senior, who wish to fight corruption, but they have been blocked by interference from the Communist Party. The NAS has found that the GOL officials it works with often come to favor the transparency and tight controls we profess after they have worked with the Embassy for several years and have seen how much more effective and beneficial our system can be. Surprisingly the most vocal critics of government corruption at the World Bank meeting were the Lao nationals representing foreign NGOs; in our experience, the few Lao citizens willing to discuss the subject with us rail against the abuses they face every day whenever out of earshot of Party officials. Laos has shown a willingness to take on corruption, but in order to do so effectively, it will have to make profound changes in its government, society, and political culture. End Comment. HASLACH