Homosexuality and money-laundering
GAY RIGHTS. MONEY-LAUNDERING. AFRICA. UKRAINE. THE US. Conjuring relies on distracting the audience’s attention
Actor Peter Cushing in a 1968 portrayal of the character Sherlock Holmes, eyeing the jewel known as “The Blue Carbuncle”.
The fraudster and the conjuror both rely on one thing: deceptive sleight of hand. Whilst conjuring justly enriches its audience with innocent entertainment, fraud entertains its far-from-innocent perpetrator with unjust enrichment.
The days of the money-launderers were doomed to be consigned to an ignominious past when, in the 1990s, a raft of anti-money-laundering legislation swept into the legal systems of most western nations. The laundering of illicit gains would run up against the impenetrable protective bastion of what became known for short as AML. Money-laundering’s plaintive wails would be heard as washerwomen and washermen flailed around in the suds of their own iniquity. The world’s financial systems had been saved.
Yet, while doomed, they were far from destined to suffer such a fate. Flail they do not, for repeated revelations that might have otherwise rocked the establishment have shown only that the establishment is fully engaged in the throes of wash-boarding its under-the-table kick-backs and saving the suds to wash clean their bright, innocent countenances. As Ukraine avows its endeavours to clean up its act, even as its arch-rival in matters corruption assails its people with missiles, it can be concluded that it need make but miniscule efforts if its ambition is to climb the infamous transparency index to a position that would proclaim its “Edelweiss” complexion. Clean and bright are but those who are the least dirty, and it’s a poor definition when everyone’s dirty.
In conversation recently with an acquaintance at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, I sketched out the following situation, which I didn’t entirely comprehend and to which my interlocutor proffered a simple explanation.
I said that The Gambia, a former British colony in West Africa, and Senegal, a neighbouring former French colony, which makes of The Gambia an enclave, bar both their coasts to the Atlantic Ocean, had enjoyed a co-government period between 1982 and 1989, during which they were known as Senegambia. This appealed to me because The Gambia, which takes its name from the River Gambia, is in fact constituted by little more than the lowest third of that river, measured from its source in Guinea, before it crosses Senegal to become a wide watercourse entirely within the boundaries of The Gambia. And Senegal, which borders Saharan Africa and is therefore fairly dry in climate, lacks any water course, bar that part of the River Gambia that flows through it. Would the two nations, one a nation of water with no hinterland, the other a nation of hinterland with little water, not benefit ideally from being conjoined to form a single nation?
To this, I received a simple response: two countries can have two presidents.
The burden of responsibility that goes hand in hand with ascent to the highest office of these nations brings with it the very enviable prospect of riches. And riches, as we have come to recognise, are for anything but sharing. Senegal and The Gambia are two nations, two republics, that languish in poverty, a lack of education and a lack of opportunity and that both possess elites who want for nothing.
Across the continent, on its east coast, lie three nations that, once bound under British hegemony, are now independent, of Britain and of each other: Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar), Kenya (formerly British East Africa) and Uganda (formerly the Protectorate of).
The transparency index places these three nations at 142nd place (Uganda), 123rd place (Kenya) and, in 94th place, Tanzania. I am left wondering whether Uganda looks to Tanzania to know how it will improve its index ranking from the mires of the bottom of the league table, or whether, indeed, Tanzania looks to Uganda to understand what it is doing wrong in slipping so far up the table. Meanwhile, it can but be concluded that all three languish, but with no fear of relegation: the elites want still for nothing; their peoples want still for much. The Gambia is in among them at position no. 110; Senegal is comparatively a shining example, occupying as it does position no. 72.
One thread that links the east and west African nations is the proscription of homosexuality. Some of the laws against it date from British occupation; Senegal’s law dates from 1966, six years after its independence from France. If colonial Africa thirsted for many a long year to throw off its yoke of political hegemony, those under British rule certainly embraced with fervour one aspect of occupation: their laws against homosexuality. Introduced at various times during the 19th and early 20th centuries (Zanzibar, 1864; The Gambia, 1888; Kenya, 1897; Tanganyika, 1899; and Uganda, 1902) none of these statutes has been repealed since independence was granted in the post-war world.
This may speak to a number of causes: that, wrong though colonials were in many a respect, they were at least right in this one. Or, that the religious missionaries in Africa had greater effect than any evangelist preaching to Europeans had had. It could also be that the reason for which England repealed its anti-gay law in 1967 – to counter the scourge of blackmail – forms a very good reason for under-developed nations to uphold such statutes: as a lever of control. Or it could very well be that homosexuality constitutes an emotive side-show allowing elites to garner public support for a highly moralistic stance, whilst dirty dealings are admitted through their back doors.
It is well known that the success of a conjuror lies in “sleight of hand”: they “switch” a card, a ball, a Boeing 747 (quite how Mr Copperfield did that is his own safe secret) with a deft manoeuvre, from which the audience’s attention is drawn by some other, more opulent act, thus leaving the audience unsuspecting of the deception being played out upon them. Therefore, when great play is made of something that seems, to many eyes, to be a bagatelle and, at that, one which causes great concerns for human rights, then the deprivation of human rights – which serves no material purpose other than as a control mechanism or, as in the case of a conjuror, as a distraction from other business that would draw greater criticism – one is left wondering whether one has, in fact, been duped by the whole sorry show.
But the interrogation stops short, so often, of questioning the elite that wants for nothing and the people that wants for everything, where the people is ostensibly content with its absence of homosexuality, such that it does not question the opulence in which its elite exists. One is almost left applauding the trick – if trick it be – and nodding approvingly with shrugs of the shoulders, as if to say, “Without the anti-gay question, how, then, would the elite distract attention from its corrupt practices?” I think it would need to find another distraction. So, why, then, would it introduce legislation to resolve the human rights issue that is the means by which it masks the matters that are the very source of its wealth, while also being a source of its people’s contentment? It wouldn’t.
War-torn Ukraine has introduced a law to guarantee the rights of LGBT people. Bravo. And it has proclaimed a determination to stamp out in the greatest measure possible the corruption that has plagued the nation for 30 years (and more, truth be told). Why should anyone believe their sincerity on either score? Do you?
I do. And for no better reason than that, together, they stand to reason. First, I cannot look into the future and foretell the lot of gays, lesbians and others who fall under the LGBT umbrella in Ukraine, or their prospects of a free existence in a tolerant society. Nor can I assure anyone, least of all myself, that the days of corruption in Ukraine are counted and Ukraine is destined to shoot miraculously up the transparency index. But, of one thing I am certain: that the one will not happen independently of the other. Either they will both fail; or they will both be crowned with success.
I am as convinced of this as I am that the decriminalisation of homosexuality across the African continent will inevitably and consequentially go hand in hand with a reduction in that continent’s sleazy involvement in acts of corruption and bribery. Because its relinquishment of a lever of control will indicate its readiness to stand or fall by its own efforts, to operate not just systems of justice but a society imbued with a sense of justice. It may even see the union of Senegal and The Gambia in a spirit of corruptionless, cohesive cooperation, who knows? And that will send a magnificent message to the world: that global development assistance is destined for safe, competent hands, in which it will be put to work for the benefit of those for which aid is intended: the peoples of these nations, be they heterosexual, homosexual or whatever.
The gay sideshow is being played out now before America’s eyes and, if the pressure promised by AML comes actually to be felt in the pockets of those who evade it, we can be sure that human rights issues and anti-gay sentiment will burgeon in other nations too. The conjurors who have duped their law enforcement agencies with mountebank gestures for so long will, when the audience sees the switch, themselves switch to a new distraction.
One is sadly tempted to conclude that gay rights cannot exist in a world that forbids money-laundering. And that pulling the plug on money-laundering will see gay rights gurgle down the plug hole along with it. And that honesty and liberty are incompatible. And that retaining human rights is the trade-off for dishonesty. But there is a state in which both honesty and liberty can co-exist: a state we call enlightenment.
Plato invented the idea of democracy and condemned it in the same breath. Because democracy is equality under the law and freedom for all within the law’s constraints; and the freedom we enjoy under democracy allows our elites to favour some above others under the law, so that equality is nibbled at as freedom flourishes. We reach a point where the cards get stacked so much against us that we are cheated blind before our very eyes, as we celebrate the crumbs of freedom that are bestowed upon us. If we turn tail and attack those who abuse freedom to enrich themselves, they will sure as anything turn tail and attack the freedoms we have enjoyed in counterbalance of their lucrative dishonesty. Unless they are enlightened.
The matter of the impingement of human rights (and the right to be homosexual is a human right) is something that has many effects but its prime effect is that of an exercise of control. However, the exercise of that control has a secondary function, and that is to detract attention from other matters of a more material nature. The conclusion has to be that, where human rights are impinged on, those who do the impinging either wish to subject the victims to their control for material gain (slavery is the extreme example of this) or, where no direct material gain is to be had, in order to detract attention from something else that is worthy of censure. When Ukraine seeks to relieve the LGBT community in that country from the pressures otherwise resting on it and also avows its will to reduce corruption there, that speaks to a sentiment of enlightenment, because it voluntarily opts to dispense with a means by which it might otherwise be able to detract from a practice that is reprehensible and, without such a distraction, its policy of stamping out corruption can be taken as sincere.
But, in Africa, where the detraction is given such emphasis, one is left wondering what it is that is then being detracted from. The same applies in American politics at this time. In other parts, human rights may be being compromised for control purposes. Or being left alone because the facility with which nefarious practices can be developed is not subject to constraint.
A question remains, therefore, for those places where AML is ineffective, and therefore human rights remain untouched, as to what developments in relation to human rights can be expected should the effectiveness of AML be beefed up to stem the flow of illicit funds into legitimate channels. Is there a correlation? Well, let’s beef up AML’s effectiveness, and we may yet find out.
Only when AML is truly effective and human rights remain untrammelled by oppression can we say that enlightenment has taken root.
I said to a friend in The Gambia some months ago that I yearn for the day when European nations like Britain, Germany and Switzerland will come cap in hand to Banjul asking for development aid. Why should that be an impossible dream? I’ll grant, it is an unlikely one. But it is one whose eventuality is categorically ruled out ab initio for as long as Africa wrings its hands over homosexuality and its elites embrace persecution as a means of control conducive to their own personal wealth, for only once they do away with these oppressive laws and accept that corruption must go from their midst will they be capable of being deemed enlightened.
In lining their pockets with the likes of Holmes’ Blue Carbuncle, it’s as if Africa’s leaders suffer gladly an enormous pus-filled carbuncle on their countenances. One that could be lanced with a prick of a needle. Yet, Europe’s begging Africa for aid seems as fantastical a prospect as that of a gracious Africa seeing the light, being enlightened, and displaying such life-preserving humility.
An act without which, in poverty and prejudice, Africa is destined to fester.