DECISION BRIEF: UN Anti-Corruption Programs Are So Biased That US Must Shut Them Down

Decision: President Trump should follow up his United Nations anti-corruption address by pulling all support for biased and corrupt UN anti-corruption programs.

Reason: UN anti-corruption programs have become shakedown-and-protection rackets for anti-American extremists. The UN anti-corruption programs aid and abet corrupt anti-American political extremists and other bad actors who use the fight against corruption selectively as a weapon of political warfare. The programs undermine the sovereignty of individual countries, which runs counter to the president’s 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States.

Pushback: Obama holdovers and the permanent bureaucracy in the State Department argue that the US must stand as a beacon against “corruption and impunity.” Led by politicized figures like career Ambassador Todd Robinson, they will fight to save the UN programs in order to promote extreme political, economic, and social agendas that do not reflect the American mainstream. Pushback will also come from European Union- and Soros-funded interests that will lose power and influence if the one-sided UN anti-corruption programs are curtailed.

Background: The Trump Administration set the precedent for terminating all support for the UN’s abusive anti-corruption programs. It ended US support for the United Nations Human Rights Council because of the Council’s bias and corrupt approach to human rights. “For too long,” US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said last June, “the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias.”

Case in point: Central America. The “anti-corruption” cesspool of political bias is most glaring in our own hemisphere. The UN has given a pass to the corrupt and murderous Ortega family dictatorship in Nicaragua and its sister FMLN Marxist government in El Salvador. Instead, the UN focuses on Guatemala, a politically and culturally conservative country where the far Left, after a 30-year campaign of violent extremism, has no hope of coming to power democratically.

For most of the past decade, a special UN-sponsored agency has attacked Guatemala and aid the former Communist violent extremists. That agency, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), worked with the former insurgents and their grassroots community organizations to infiltrate and tear down the constitutional and democratic order. Under a slogan to end “impunity and corruption,” CICIG ran its own investigations and criminal prosecutions of Guatemalans who had opposed the Communists in the past.

CICIG’s UN-appointed leader, Ivan Velasquez, is a Colombian lawyer and political activist tied to the FARC, ELN, and M19 narcoterrorists. As a judge in Colombia, Velasquez went after self-defense forces that combated the Cuban-backed guerrillas, and reputedly intervened on behalf of jailed narcoterrorists, while being part of their political front groups. Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said that as a judge, Velasquez was a member of pro-guerrilla “political group” and “never an impartial judge.”

The US, the European Union, and the Soros Open Society Foundation worked together to fund and empower CICIG as part of a larger lawfare effort to stage a judicial coup d’etat in Guatemala.

The State Department, under the hand of Ambassador Robinson, forced Guatemala’s president and Congress to oust the attorney general and stuff the country’s highest courts with handpicked, Soros-trained judicial activists to serve as justices to rule the country from the bench and change the makeup and structure of the government. CICIG was an investigative and prosecutorial weapon to attack, undermine, and imprison the former guerrillas’ political opponents. Guatemalan President Morales shut down CICIG in September.

Undermining a strong security partner. UN anti-corruption organizations undermine US interests. Guatemala is a small but important example. It is the United States’ strongest Central American partner in fighting illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking along Mexico’s southern border. It is the best suited to help President Trump carry out his anti-corruption and anti-trafficking initiative unveiled at the UN on September 24. While supporting CICIG, the State Department undermined the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-illegal immigration initiatives in Guatemala.

Guatemala has a decades-long security relationship with Israel and is a bulwark against Communist Chinese expansion in the Americas. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales followed Trump in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Guatemala is one of the few countries in the world that still recognizes the Republic of China on Taiwan.

The Bottom Line. After a shaky start, the Trump Administration is moving in the right direction. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tacitly supported Guatemala this month for shutting down CICIG, expelling Velasquez, and reestablishing national sovereignty. Now, the US must:

• Terminate all financial, policy, and diplomatic support for United Nations and Soros-related anti-corruption operations and work to shut them down.
• Cease all cooperation and communication with Soros-funded organizations.
• Strengthen bilateral relations with cooperative countries, while respecting their sovereignty.
• Set an example to others by voiding the US visas of Ivan Velasquez, CICIG staff, and Guatemalan lawyers, jurists, and officials who abuse the anti-corruption system for political purposes.
• Remove all US officials who support biased UN anti-corruption programs. To start, Ambassador Todd Robinson must be removed from his present position as Senior Advisor for Central America in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and moved to a position where he can do no harm.

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