On Wednesday 24 May, an audience gathered at the Frontline Club for a discussion on corruption and its far-reaching implications. Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis joined freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, Owen Bennett-Jones, to talk about their experiences in Africa, Afghanistan and beyond. Chayes is an expert on kleptocracy, anti-corruption and civil-military relations, and is currently senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times and has worked extensively in Africa.

L-r: Sarah Chayes, Owen Bennett-Jones and Tom Burgis

It has become increasingly clear that corruption exists at every level around the world. Yet there is an ongoing reluctance to understand its complexities and to commit to workable solutions.

Chayes said, “I think there is a bias against this topic … People’s eyes glaze over. It’s not a sexy topic. There is a tendency to dismiss the seriousness of the problem.”

Chayes did not study corruption in depth until she spent time in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Initially working as a journalist and for a number of NGOs, she devoted her time to helping to repair homes that had been damaged by heavy bombing. Chayes recounted how she could not obtain the materials needed, however, because the Governor would award himself stone and sell it at grossly inflated prices to the international military.

Once Chayes left Kandahar she began to realise the extent of endemic corruption, not just in Afghanistan but around the world. She said, “I came to understand that this isn’t a fraying around the edges kind of government system. This kind of corruption network is structured and organised.”

Burgis spoke about his experiences as a correspondent for the Financial Times in South and West Africa. Africa is often described as a paradox of plenty. While the continent is frequently viewed as a symbol of extreme poverty, it is in many regards one of the wealthiest places on earth in terms of its abundance of basic natural resources.

On the subject of corruption in Nigeria, Burgis said: “It happens because the currency gets distorted… It happens because ultimately if you’re a country whose economies depend on shipping out raw resources, the contract or the deal between the rulers and the ruled breaks.”

Corruption is not just a local issue – there are global implications at every level.

Bennett-Jones asked the panellists: “If you take these situations as you described, how much of it ends up at the top of the system in the City of London, Zurich and the banks in New York and therefore will never be resolved because they are just too powerful to deal with?”

Chayes responded: “The countries that are on the positive end on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index are the ones that are exporting corruption services to the corrupt governments.”

Why is property market in London so inflated? A lot is fuelled by stolen overseas money. Tom Burgis His book Looting Machine #frontlineclub

— Kate Adams (@KateAdams3) June 24, 2015

Even though the extent of widespread corruption may seem impenetrable, Chayes believes that we can all play an individual role in combatting its influence.

“I have my money in HSBC. I intend to take my money out of HSBC. There’s a role for us as custodians of all of our values to play in piercing some of this hypocrisy.”

More information on The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth by Tom Burgis is available here.

Click here for more information on Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes.

On Wednesday 27 May, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Food Chains, a documentary which gives a revealing insight into the working conditions of farm labourers in the US. The film also follows a campaign against a powerful supermarket chain led by a workers’ movement in Immokalee, Florida. The screening was followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Sanjay Rawal, and producer Smriti Keshari.

Rawal began by telling the audience that his father was a tomato farmer in California, and that as they began their research into the treatment of farmworkers they began to hear more and more about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). The CIW, a workers’ movement in Florida, eventually had a significant impact on the direction of the project.

“When we met the Coalition and saw that they had been able to make some sort of structural change, our whole outlook changed, and we realised… We had an opportunity with the CIW to do something that had a positive message, and make a film that focused on impact.”

Food Chains largely focuses on the CIW movement, which has been successful in pressuring numerous large companies into ensuring fair wages and treatment for their tomato farmers. The movement has consequently seen its profile grow significantly in recent years.

The majority of farm workers in Florida are migrant workers, mostly from Mexico. A number of audience members asked the filmmakers questions related to immigration, particularly concerning the safety of the workers on film. Rawal and Smriti responded that the majority of abuse that occurs on farms goes unreported; many of the workers are so dependent on their wages that they are forced to remain silent, in fear of losing their jobs.

Rawal commented that, while movements like the CIW are managing to make positive developments, it is still often the case all over the world that “beautiful legislation… is not enforced amongst the lowest paid workers, because they are the ones that have the most to lose.”

Q&A with Food Chain director @MrSanjayR Can’t recommend the movie enough. #socialjustice #accountability #responsibility @frontlineclub

— Deepa Mirchandani (@d_mirch) May 27, 2015

Rawal and Smriti went on to discuss the reasons why farm workers originally choose to move to the US, and why low standards of treatment persist. Poverty, persecution and violence drives people to move to the US, and farmers and big companies are then able to keep their production prices down. Consumer desire for cheap food created a condition where the only people willing to work for those low wages are people who are desperately poor.

Rawal commented: “Every European country and the US became economic juggernauts and global powers because they were reliant on the labour of someone who didn’t look like them… The agricultural economies from all over the developed world relied on labour that was next-to free.”

Smriti explained that one of the primary goals for the film was to have an effective ‘impact strategy’ to reach consumers. The film has thus far been effective in “creating activists” – those who have watched the film tend to spread the world and begin actively supporting the movement and causes.

In response to an audience question about the absence of social media used by the characters in the film to bring attention to their plight, Rawal explained that workers are often lacking the most fundamental resources. He described many workers as “living in the 1950s” in terms of the lack of technology they have access to, and which is often “withheld from them.”

On the subject of the resources that farm labourers currently lack, Rawal commented: “The things that will really change their lives are air-conditioners in the summer, childcare… not having to line up for the bus at 5am… It’s like they’re in a different century.”

Visit the Food Chains website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

Across much of the world people face a daily battle with corruption. Infiltrating corporations, governments, the military and civil service, both on a local level and internationally, it is often seen as a symptom rather than the cause of unrest and hardship. It is therefore often relegated to the back of the queue when tackling a country’s problems.

We will be joined by Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis, whose investigations have taken them deep into the workings of corrupt systems across Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere. From the local power brokers to the international corporations, they will be discussing what they discovered about how corrupt systems operate, the implications locally and globally, and what can be done to more effectively tackle them.

Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.

Sarah Chayes is a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Formerly special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, she is an expert in kleptocracy, anti-corruption, South Asia policy and civil-military relations. As an award-winning former NPR correspondent she covered the fall of the Taliban, then left journalism but remained in Afghanistan for a decade in order to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. Chayes is author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, and more recently Thieves of State.

Tom Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times, formerly the newspaper’s Johannesburg correspondent and West Africa correspondent. He has reported on Africa since 2006 and is one of the only foreign journalists to have done back-to-back postings in southern and western Africa. He has been nominated for Young Journalist of the Year, and in 2013 won the RSL Jerwood Award for a first work of non-fiction in progress. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Financial Times Jones-Mauthner prize for ‘his superb reporting and exposé of corruption in mineral-rich Angola and Guinea’. He is author of The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Food Chains examines the relationship between the policies of corporate supermarket chains and the working conditions of American farm labourers who pick the produce that is distributed across the nation. Featuring Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and actress and advocate Eva Longoria, this award winning documentary exposes the horrific abuses farmworkers face and reveals the forces behind that exploitation: the $4 trillion global supermarket industry.

The film tracks the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an intrepid and highly lauded group of tomato pickers from Southern Florida, as they battle the giant Floridian grocery chain, Publix. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farmworkers and a more humane and transparent food chain.

Food Chains was nominated for a 2015 James Beard Foundation award for food journalism.

Directed by Sanjay Rawal
Producer: Eric Schlosser
Executive Producer: Eva Longoria
Duration: 86′
Year: 2014