FP Virtual Dialogue: Corruption and Democratic Decay

Anthony "Tony" Banbury joined the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) as President and Chief Executive Officer on November 1, 2018. Prior to joining IFES, Tony had an extensive career working for the UN and the United States government. Banbury worked for the UN for 20 years in a variety of roles both at UN headquarters in New York and in the field. From 2009 through 2016 Banbury served as Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support; in this role he was responsible for providing operational support to more than 30 UN peacekeeping and political missions around the world with a combined annual budget of more than $8 billion and with more than 170,000 deployed personnel. While working at UN headquarters, Banbury was given a number of special assignments by the Secretary-General including designing and leading the UN’s first-ever emergency health mission in response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola crisis; designing and establishing the Joint Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-UN Mission to remove chemical weapons from Syria in 2013; leading the effort to stop widespread killings and prevent genocide in the Central African Republic in 2014; and leading the operational response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the worst humanitarian disaster in the western hemisphere in modern history. Banbury previously served as Asia Regional Director for the UN World Food Programme from 2003 to 2009 where he oversaw operations in 14 countries including Afghanistan and North Korea, and led the organization’s operational response to the Indian Ocean tsunami and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. Banbury started his UN career in 1988 as a Human Rights Officer in Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand and later served in various humanitarian, political affairs and human rights positions in Asia, the Balkans during the war in the former Yugoslavia and UN headquarters.
Prior to his most senior roles with the UN, Banbury worked in the United States government as Director and then Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the National Security Council (2000-2003) and Senior Policy Advisor in the Balkans Task Force at the Department of Defense (1998-2000). Banbury holds a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a graduate degree in international relations from the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études Internationales at the University of Geneva, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tufts University.
Banbury is a member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Public Impact and received a Distinguished Service Award from the President of the United States for service on 9/11, a Bronze Palm to the Exceptional Civilian Service Award from the Secretary of Defense, an Exceptional Civilian Service Award from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from Tufts University. Banbury speaks to varying degrees French, Thai and Cambodian. He lived abroad for more than 12 years in eight countries in Africa, Asia and Europe and has done working visits to over 70 countries during his career.

Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment adviser to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a “threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate corruption. Following his expulsion, the Russian authorities raided his offices, seized Hermitage Fund’s investment companies and used them to steal $230 million of taxes that the companies had previously paid. When Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was arrested by the same officers he implicated, tortured for 358 days, and killed in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009. Since then, Browder has spent the last 5 years fighting for justice for Mr. Magnitsky. The Russian government exonerated and even promoted some of the officials involved so Browder took the case to America, where his campaigning led to the US Congress adopting the ‘Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act’ in 2012, which imposed visa sanctions and asset freezes on those involved in the detention, ill-treatment and death of Sergei Magnitsky (as well as in other human rights abuses). This law was the first time the US sanctioned Russia in 35 years and became the model for all subsequent US sanctions against Russia. Browder is currently working to have similar legislation passed in Magnitsky’s name across the European Union.

Katherine Ellena is Director of IFES’ new Center for Anti- Corruption and Democratic Trust, which is focused on improving the ability of democracies to deliver for all people through cross-sectoral anti-corruption initiatives that address the global
democratic trust deficit. In addition, as IFES’ Senior Global Legal Advisor Ellena provides direct technical assistance to IFES’ field programs worldwide, and has worked with government ministries, election commissions, oversight bodies,
anti-corruption commissions, tribunals, courts, government interlocutors and civil society in over 25 countries over the past 17 years.
Before joining IFES, Ellena held positions as the acting vice president of the United States New Zealand Council, a research and faculty associate with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of Defense Analysis, and a foreign policy officer
with the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This included two years with the New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she helped manage New Zealand government responses to both a natural disaster and a terrorist attack.
Ellena is a special advisor to the Standing Committee on Election Law at the American Bar Association and a member of the Scientific Committee for the Global Network on Electoral Justice. She holds a master’s degree in law with honors from the University of Canterbury, bachelor’s degrees in law and philosophy from the University of Canterbury, and a diploma for graduates in international development from the University of London’s London School of Economics. She was admitted as a barrister and solicitor to the High Court of New Zealand in 2004 and is a member of the American Bar Association, International Bar Association and New Zealand Law Society.

Justyna Gudzowska has spent over a dozen years combating financial crime.  She currently serves as the Director of Illicit Finance Policy at The Sentry, an investigative and policy organization that follows the dirty money connected to African war criminals and transnational war profiteers and seeks to shut those benefiting from atrocities out of the international financial system.  She devises innovative ways to use financial pressures to create leverage for peace, human rights, and good governance.  In this capacity, she frequently liaises with the U.S. government and with governments around the world; the private sector (in particular global banks); and civil society.  Prior to joining The Sentry, Justyna was an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, leading and overseeing the implementation of sanctions for the bank’s offices across the globe and its more than 60,000 employees. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Justyna was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to advise the Security Council on countering the financing of terrorism, in particular ISIS and Al-Qaida.  Before serving at the UN, she was a legal advisor to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she advised on the full spectrum of economic sanctions issues.  Earlier in her career, she worked as an associate at the international law firms Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and at Debevoise & Plimpton. Justyna received her JD from Yale Law School, where she served as Development Editor for the Yale Journal of International Law and was a student director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights. She holds master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a B.A. from Rice University.

Michael Johnston (Ph. D. Yale University, 1977) is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Colgate University. From January 2017 through May, 2019, he was a Distinguished Professor at the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Laxenburg, Austria. His current book project, Corruption in America: A Fifty-Ring Circus (co-author Oguzhan Dinçer), is projected for completion in 2023. The Conundrum of Corruption: Reform for Social Justice (co-author Scott A. Fritzen), was published in 2021 by Routledge. Transitions to Good Governance (Edward Elgar; co-edited with Alina Mungiu-Pippidi), appeared in 2017. Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2005) won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, presented by the University of Louisville. He has served as a consultant to numerous international organizations, and between 2009 and 2014 was involved in long-term reform efforts in the Philippines. In recent years he has helped develop typologies of corruption risks for the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency of the World Bank, prepared a review of issues in measuring corruption and governance for a World Bank working group, developed an analysis of connections between corruption and political instability for a US Government agency, and presented a lecture and chaired a panel discussion at the OECD in Paris. In 2016 he was a member of a team organized by the University of Southern California that conducted a mid-term evaluation of the Open Government Partnership. He lives in suburban Austin, Texas, with his wife Betsy, who may well re-introduce cats to the household within the coming year. How long they will let us continue to live in their house remains to be seen.

Based in Sarajevo, Miranda Patrucic joined OCCRP in 2006 and is the deputy editor in chief for regional stories and Central Asia. She oversees regional editors around the world and our work in Central Asia. She worked on the award-winning Plunder and Patronage in the Heart of Central Asia and The Matraimov Kingdom series of stories, which led to protests that eventually brought down a government in Kyrgyzstan. She has also worked on investigations that exposed billions in telecom bribes in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan; uncovered hidden assets of Azerbaijan’s and Montenegro’s ruling elites; and revealed a €1.2 billion arms trade between Europe and the Gulf, which fueled conflicts in the Middle East. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and worked on the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and the FinCEN Files. She is the recipient of the Knight International Journalism Award, the Global Shining Light Award, the IRE Tom Renner Award, the Daniel Pearl Award, and the European Press Prize. She also runs a fellowship program that trains journalists on how to investigate and uncover corruption and “follow the money.”

Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy. Before joining FP, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade, including his most recent position as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. Previously, he served as a senior producer in CNN’s New York and London bureaus, receiving a Peabody Award and three Emmy nominations for his work. Agrawal is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy. He is a graduate of Harvard University.