JORDAN'S ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION SHOWS SIGNS OF

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 AMMAN 000604 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/11/2018 TAGS: PGOV KCOR KDEM JO SUBJECT: JORDAN'S ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION SHOWS SIGNS OF LIFE, BUT DONOR SKEPTICISM PERSISTS REF: A. 07 AMMAN 5061 ¶B. AMMAN 157 AMMAN 00000604 001.2 OF 003 Classified By: Ambassador David Hale for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Jordan's Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is showing tentative signs of life. The ACC's chair told Post that the institution is now digging into casework after securing a new building and a full complement of staff. Some in the donor community, however, are deeply skeptical of the ACC's purported ability to function, and point to personality conflicts and foot-dragging behind the scenes as evidence that the commission is failing to live up to its promise. The EU, which is funding an initial consultancy with more support promised in the future, is starting to hedge. Unless the ACC's primary benefactor sees dramatic improvement soon, the institution's external funding could be in jeopardy. With the ACC's future prospects still uncertain, reports of the demise of the parallel anti-corruption structure within the General Intelligence Department are likely unfounded. End Summary. Getting Down to Business? -------------- ¶2. (SBU) In a meeting with Anti-Corruption Commission chair Adel Shakhanbeh, the former Justice Minister said that his agency had "formally started work." Nearly a year after being created by the parliament (Ref A),the ACC is now fully staffed, resides in a brand new building, and has completed its internal regulations. Shakhanbeh says that the staff has also begun casework in earnest, fielding complaints from ordinary citizens and proactively pursuing incidents that it learns about through the media and other channels. (Jordanian media recently reported that two lower level employees of the Great Amman Municipality were referred to the ACC for prosecution for their alleged role in a bribery scheme.) In addition starting its work on the prosecutorial end, the ACC has created a mechanism to track and maintain control over cases once they are passed to the judiciary for trial, something that was previously a question mark. The ACC is also starting to work on a proactive campaign against corruption. Curricula are being prepared for both high school and university students, and the ACC is planning to hold workshops and conferences within the next year on the topic. ¶3. (C) As usual, Shakhanbeh was cagey about numbers and timelines. When asked how many cases he had in the pipeline, Shakhanbeh refused to answer - less, we suspect, because of ongoing investigations, and more because the numbers are by all indications still on the slim side. While indicating that some cases were moving closer to prosecution, he was unable to offer an estimate of when the first case would be either brought to trial or run completely through the judicial procedure. Note: Howard Whitton, head of the EU's ACC consulting team, believes that Shakhanbeh's claim is baseless: "I think it's not true that they're pursuing casework. They had no staff up until one month ago." End Note. ¶4. (C) Shakhanbeh continues to raise expectations in public. Jordan recently hosted a conference at the Dead Sea for Arab signatories to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). Contacts tell us that in his public statements to other Arab officials, Shakhanbeh spoke about the urgent need for far-reaching reforms that would break through political barriers, and talked about implementing such reforms in Jordan as an example to the region. "They've put a lot of pressure on themselves to be the leading Arab state in terms of compliance with UNCAC," said Whitton. Donors Get Restless -------------- ¶5. (C) The European Union is the primary international benefactor of the ACC. Alessandro Campo, who manages the EU's legal programs in Jordan, told us that the initial phase of its support plan for the ACC would end in April. As part of this first tranche of assistance, the EU has worked with the ACC through a group of consultants to produce an action plan for the new agency. Lead EU consultant Whitton is extremely pessimistic about the leadership and policy direction of the body. "We've been trying to have a substantive discussion with the commissioners from the beginning. They don't want one," he says. Through his experiences in dealing directly with Shakhanbeh and the other commissioners, Whitton asserts that the ACC's leadership "has no conception of the difference between operations and strategy." Rather than planning for targets they want to AMMAN 00000604 002.2 OF 003 reach, Whitton sees the ACC hiring staff indiscriminately (without reference to the commission's budget) and pledging half-heartedly to work on the goals of the commission later. "These guys think that they're there to preside, to put up the facade," Whitton complains. ¶6. (C) Campo said (and Whitton confirmed) that the more politically sensitive parts of the consultants' reports were cleansed by their ACC interlocutors. As an example, Campo cites the recommendation of the consultants that certain staff members of the ACC specialize in the arena of political corruption exclusively. The references to political corruption, however, were omitted from the report at Shakhanbeh's request, and the idea of specialization was dropped. Aside from dropping references to political corruption in Jordan, Whitton portrays the commissioners as both unwilling and unable to engage on the substance of enforcement. The initial strategy paper produced by the consultants was criticized not for its content, but for its typos. Whitton relays that it took a tense sit-down with Campo and the consultants for the commissioners to realize that the ACC's relations with the EU would be damaged if it failed to engage on the issues and chart a clear way forward. ¶7. (C) One of the basic problems Whitton sees is in the commission's personnel. The commissioners currently include one former General Intelligence Department (GID) official, one former member of the pension authority in the Ministry of Finance, two judges, and Shakhanbeh. Both from his personal observations of the commission at work and from his consultations with members of Jordan's political elite, Whitton states that "the unanimous opinion is that the King picked the wrong people for the commission." Certainly, Whitton's firsthand experience with Shakhanbeh is discouraging. According to Whitton, Shakhanbeh's leadership style is overbearing, haughty, and grates on the other members, especially the judges. One commissioner even walked out of a recent ACC meeting in frustration with the way meetings were run. "The commissioners definitely don't see eye to eye," he notes. Note: These reports of inability to operate on the part of Shakhanbeh and the commissioners are not new to us (Ref B). MP Hazim Al-Nasser summed up the standard opinion in a recent meeting when he simply stated, "Shakhanbeh is useless." End Note. ¶8. (C) Joaquin Tasso-Vilallonga, the head of the EU's Justice, Freedom, and Security programs in Jordan (and Campo's superior),is bluntly critical of the ACC's inaction to date, and hints that a cutoff of EU funding may be imminent. "The ACC is an empty shell," he complains. "They have this beautiful brand new building with four brand new Mercedes outside. What kind of message does that send?" He says that the lack of focus on enforcement within the ACC, along with the stove-piping of information in Jordan's government, will ultimately hinder the ability of the ACC to get results. "It's not about the actions Jordan takes in terms of setting up institutions. It's about the results they get. There is action, but it is minimal. They're going the wrong way, and there is a political reason for this," he says. The long term assistance program for the ACC is budgeted at 1.5 million euros. There is currently a plan to release a tender in October for a twinning project that would pair up Jordan's ACC with a European equivalent. Tasso-Vilallonga, however, says that the money is "allocated, but not committed." If the ACC fails to show sufficient action or ability to muster political will, Tasso-Vilallonga indicated that his office will pull the plug on funding: "If it doesn't work, we will simply move on to something else." Whitton believes that while the EU has been dropping hints like this for some time, they have fallen on deaf ears at the ACC, where Shakhanbeh and the other commissioners seem oblivious to the fact that a grant for 1.5 million euros may soon be pulled out from under them. The decision on whether to do so is still a few months off, but initial indications from EU staff are that they are already convinced that funding should be pulled. Will the GID's ACC Disband? -------------- ¶9. (C) On February 15, the daily newspaper Al-Dustour reported in a column dedicated to political rumors that the Anti-Corruption Commission of the General Intelligence Department (GID) would disband, and its staff would fold into the national ACC. The item was un-sourced, and the column is not known for the reliability of its information. Our contacts have long speculated that such a move would be politically and administratively impossible (Ref B). "I don't see GID's commission being impacted in any way by the national ACC," said the EU's Tasso-Vilallonga. Consultant Whitton agrees, saying that he has not heard of any such move AMMAN 00000604 003.2 OF 003 to integrate the two institutions. "The GID will continue to do all of the substantive work on corruption," he posits. Comment -------------- ¶10. (C) While there is finally evidence of activity at the ACC, it is still far from clear that it will become the positive, forward-looking institution that was hoped for by the King and the international community. The degree of pessimism (or outright hostility) among Jordan's elites towards the personalities at the ACC, combined with reports of infighting and the EU's skepticism, paint a less than optimistic picture of the institution's future. Any loss of EU funding will further complicate the ACC's ability to live up to the high standards which the Jordanian public expects. If the ACC becomes another rusted hulk on the sidelines of the road towards reform, it will ultimately fall to other elements of the judiciary to pick up the slack - something they have historically been unwilling or unable to accomplish. HALE