Bannon Indicted for Defrauding Contributors

One of former President Donald Trump’s chief advisors, Steve Bannon, is facing charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York State for money laundering and conspiracy to defraud contributors. According to Politico’s Julian Shen-Berro, Bannon is alleged, through a fundraising initiative called We Build the Wall, to have collected money in 2019 from donors to support building a wall along the U.S/Mexico border. Trump made a campaign promise to build such a wall and to make Mexico pay for it, but Trump never achieved that goal. We Build the Wall collected15 million dollars towards that end. 

However, it appears that Bannon used some of the donated money to pay a salary to the president of We Build The Wall, Brian Kolfage, a former Air Force veteran, even though Kolfage publicly insisted that he would receive no compensation for his role in developing the fund. The charge is that Bannon used the rest of the money for personal use. Ironically, Trump pardoned Bannon before leaving office in January of 2021 over these exact charges, at the federal level, brought by the Department of Justice. But that doesn’t pardon Bannon from charges made by New York state, where it appears that Bannon or one of his co-defendants were living at the time. The pardon demonstrates that both Trump and Bannon believed that the federal charges were accurate and could jeopardize Bannon. Bannon could face up to 15 years in jail and heavy financial penalties if convicted. Of course, like many corruption cases, the donors who contributed to the effort will probably never see their money again…or a completed wall.

Uploading older articles

In the coming days I will be uploading articles that I have written before I set up this website. These are older posts and will seem dated, but I wanted to get them up so everyone could see them.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page there is a follow button in the bottom right hand corner that will enable you to receive an email when I post on the Crispin Corruption Report. Thanks for following. Peter

Zelenskyy’s House Cleaning.

Recently. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired several high-ranking officials in what is becoming an ever-widening corruption scandal. Reports emerged on Monday, the 23rd of January, that Zelenskyy had fired his deputy infrastructure minister Vasyl Lozinskyi for allegedly stealing $400,000 that was intended to support the war effort. According to an article in The Guardian, Lozinskyi colluded with contractors to inflate the prices of items such as generators, and he would pocket the difference. According to a Reuters article from the 22nd of January, the defense minister Oleksiy Reznikov had secured food on contracts at highly inflated prices. Zelenskyy’s deputy cabinet minister was also fired after allegations emerged that he drove luxury cars around Kyiv shortly after Russia invaded.

  A Washington Post article published recently highlights the role journalists and NGOs in Ukraine have played in exposing corrupt schemes. Also, according to a recent report by The Guardian, Oleksandr Novikov, the country’s lead anti-corruption tsar, has vowed not to let up on pursuing corrupt individuals despite being in the middle of a war. According to polling done in Ukraine before the war, only 40 percent of the Ukrainian population was willing to report corruption. However, 84 percent of the population is now ready to report wrongdoing. Surely if Countries such as the US and the UK are going to continue giving military aid to Ukraine, they will want to see some progress on the anti-corruption front.

The Imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi: Politically Motivated or Genuine?

Recently Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted of corruption charges and now faces up to 33 years in prison. She is also facing charges related to breaching COVID-19 laws, sedition, and election fraud. Suu Kyi is viewed as a defender of democratic and human rights in Burma, where the military holds immense power over civil society. According to an article by NPR, the specific corruption charges relate to the alleged misuse of state funds and allowing a cabinet minister to purchase a helicopter. Western experts generally assume that Suu Kyi’s trial is essentially for show, not unlike the trials that took place during the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Despite Ms. Suu Kyi’s questionable actions regarding the minority Rohingya ethnic group, it seems unlikely that she is guilty of wrongdoing.

Suu Kyi’s trial and corruption charges appear to be a classic example of an authoritarian government attempting to remove a politician with democratic ideals through spurious allegations. Befitting a country where a military junta is in power, there is not much information on how deep corruption runs in Myanmar. However, there is a report authored by the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre detailing the different types of misconduct that affect civil society in Myanmar. For example, cronyism appears to be prevalent within the military, with high-ranking ministers selling state-run assets to close friends and associates with little transparency being observed. Myanmar also suffers from a “resource curse,” meaning that while it is blessed with many natural resources, corruption surrounding oil & gas exploration and logging is rampant. It seems very clear that the military junta sees Suu Kyi as a threat to their abuses and of their grip on power, so putting her in prison on politically motivated charges appears, from their perspective, to be the only option.