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Corruption Costs $1.6 Trillion Per Year
How much do crooked politicians and others steal every year?

Nobody really knows, of course, but as the BBC reports today, the UN estimates that $1.6 trillion each year is stolen each year and moved across national borders. Tragically, much of this money is stolen from poor countries. It is bread taken out of the mouths of the poor.

Don’t expect this figure to drop any time soon. Led by Russia, China and Iran, a large group of countries are fighting efforts to crack down.

This money is significantly greater than the value of all foreign development aid. It is more than the ten year cost of the health care bill that just passed the House. It would be enough to fund a worldwide basic health system and provide basic primary education to every child on earth. Over the next fifty years it will cost the world much more than climate change.

More than that, the level of criminality and incompetence demonstrated by the existence of so much theft is the most serious obstacle to economic and social development around the world. It is not just that governments administered by thieves are both indifferent to the plight of the poor and unable to run programs that will help them; it is also that voters in rich countries aren’t stupid. If foreign aid were perceived as being more effective, political support for it would rise....