On corruption

Will the Hamza trial in London inaugurate a new era of exposing corruption in Egypt, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

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The renowned engineering consultant Mamdouh Hamza has a long history of public service, but perhaps his most valuable contribution to the welfare of this country is that he has, albeit unwittingly, brought the issue of corruption to the forefront of public concern. The recipient of many international awards, the latest being the prestigious Agha Khan prize for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Hamza was one of a select number of prominent personalities invited by the Queen of England to a garden party in Buckingham Palace last July. In a bizarre twist of fate, he was arrested on the eve of the party and subjected to a long and tedious inquiry before being taken to London's high-security Belmarsh Prison. Charged with conspiring to assassinate four high-ranking. Egyptian government officials, Hamza was eventually released without bail but forbidden to leave Britain until his trial, scheduled for 16 May, ends. Living up to his reputation as a workaholic, Hamza has seized the opportunity of his enforced stay in Britain to work on a major construction project in London's east end.

Although logically the charge directed against Hamza should have provoked strong condemnation by Egyptian public opinion, it had quite the opposite effect. His arrest provoked an outpouring of sympathy in the Egyptian media, even in the official press, with many commentators hinting at a frame-up and portraying him as a victim of corruption.

A national debate on corruption, the scourge of all contemporary societies, is long overdue. The Hamza case has opened a can of worms we cannot afford to ignore, and the issue of corruption needs to be tackled head on. Casting light on the dark underworld of corruption is no easy matter, however, given the vested interest of its beneficiaries to keep it shrouded in secrecy, but every effort must be made to expose its stranglehold on our economic, political and moral well-being.

The globalisation of markets and financial flows has enabled corruption to grow and expand. Now a worldwide phenomenon, corruption is organically linked to capitalism. Indeed, it can be described as the ugly face of capitalism, a distortion of the profit motive that drives the capitalist system. But while capitalism strives to maximise profits under the umbrella of the law, corruption operates without regard to any legal or moral constraints. Thus contrary to the capitalist system in general, corruption does not hesitate to violate the law in its efforts to maximise profits. No longer a marginal phenomenon, corruption has become an institutionalised feature of modern life, its tentacles stretching into all aspects of economic, political and social activities throughout the world.

Institutionalised corruption has given rise to the phenomenon of money laundering by which criminals cover their tracks through an elaborate process of concealing the source of their illegally generated funds. For example, the illicit drugs industry generates an estimated $400 billion in annual profits, fully one half of which is successfully laundered across the world each year. And that is merely one part of the total global money laundering process.

Some states, such as Israel for example, do not criminalise money laundering. Here, Israel reveals the close relationship linking capitalism to corruption. The great majority of states in the world condemn corruption, but nobody can claim that a state completely devoid of corruption exists on the face of the earth.

The rise of organised crime, whether drugs trafficking, gunning, prostitution rings or financial fraud, is now an accepted part of global business life. Thus world society as we see it is not world society as it really is, but a beautified version of reality. Powerful transitional organised groups, like any other multi-million dollar business, are well financed, highly organised and at the forefront of new technology. Thanks to the sophistication of information technology, particularly the Internet which does not need to know the identity of the people who use it, they can circumvent the law when executing any undertaking. Thus technology, by making corruption easier, can be a negative factor. It is not true that technology always serves the cause of progress and emancipation; by eliminating distance both in terms of space and of time, it facilitates breaking the law, subverting the political process and adversely affecting the rules and practices of democracy.

Just as it is not isolated from world capitalism, corruption is not isolated from global terrorism. Any activity performed under the shroud of secrecy is usually not open to inspection or accountability and is consequently not immunised against violence. The present world order appears to be based on three pivots, two of which -- corruption and terrorism -- are opposed to democracy, because democracy cannot thrive in the absence of openness, transparency and accountability. We are thus dealing with a shaky world order, and to avoid any unpleasant surprises we need to address hot issues openly rather than allow them to be dealt with through violence and terror.

Terrorist activities need financing. Corruption appears as a means to guarantee such financing. Terrorism is necessarily accompanied by corruption. And corruption is protected by terrorism. Both corruption and terrorism are fed by the world system based on profit; what is more, on maximising profit to the utmost, 9/11 has developed a vicious circle between these three constituent elements.

The unprecedented behaviour of much of the Egyptian press towards Mamdouh Hamza's trial is a step in the right direction. This behaviour is bound to impose, sooner or later, the openness of the trial, even if the British press has been totally silent on the issue so far. The trial will set a precedent for similar trials in future, and these will not only be devoted to issues concerning engineering and architectural projects.