John Githongo, the Center's 2024-25 Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow, is a Kenyan anti-corruption activist and founder of the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International. He is a leading voice on the relationship between corrupt democracies, development, and poverty in the modern world. His many honors and awards include being selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the world’s 100 top global thinkers. (The image above is courtesy of Martin Dee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Watching U.S. democracy at work is fascinating, and, at breakneck speed, President Donald Trump has moved quickly to fulfill his promises. Among the most striking developments I have witnessed in my decades-long experience in this sector is the decisive change in the United States’ priorities regarding its anti-corruption posture and institutions. Let me explain.
Every so often, I am struck by how some senior officials express frustration over the uphill battle against corruption—sometimes suggesting we should make peace or even legalize aspects of it. In poorer countries, where limited resources are allocated to anti-corruption efforts with little success, such sentiments can be especially compelling. Kenya’s finance minister recently sparked outrage by suggesting that, while fighting corruption is important, stolen funds should at least be spent locally rather than hidden abroad, benefiting foreign economies instead (Standard Media, Nation Africa).
These frustrations are not unique to the developing world. Since the 1970s, some U.S. officials have argued that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) puts American businesses at a disadvantage globally, as they compete against rivals not bound by such restrictions.
On February 10, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order pausing all future investigations and enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. He also directed the attorney general to resolve existing FCPA investigations. The order was accompanied by the rationale that, since its enactment, the FCPA “has been systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States… Overexpansive and unpredictable FCPA enforcement against American citizens and businesses—by our own government—for routine business practices in other nations not only wastes limited prosecutorial resources that could be dedicated to preserving American freedoms, but actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.”
Such developments are hugely consequential. While the FCPA remains law, the pause highlighted a long-standing complaint from some Western business actors: that they are unable to compete effectively in an environment where, for example, Chinese or Middle Eastern corporations appear freer to pay bribes as incentives to win business. As a result, there are entire parts of the world that U.S. corporations find too troublesome to even enter.
For more than thirty years, the FCPA has been a beacon for the world’s anti-corruption infrastructure, largely because of its extraterritorial reach. This means that U.S. nationals and corporations can be prosecuted by U.S. authorities for corrupt behavior committed outside the United States. This principle was adopted as international best practice and informed the OECD Convention Against the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials of 1997 and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption of 2003.
The FCPA was enacted in response to corruption scandals involving corporations such as Lockheed and Gulf Oil, and it emerged partly out of the work of the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Its spirit and lessons have become essential best practice.
The FCPA has had global impact also because of the dominant role of the U.S. dollar in the international financial system. This centrality meant that corrupt transactions—even if they only passed through the U.S. as a result of correspondent banking relationships—were theoretically open to scrutiny by U.S. regulators and investigators. For authorities in developing jurisdictions, this ability of the United States to pick up and prosecute corruption cases that occurred elsewhere has been significant. Hundreds of witnesses and whistleblowers from outside the U.S. are currently involved in FCPA-related cases.
As reported in The New York Times last November, U.S. prosecutors issued indictments alleging that the giant conglomerate founded by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani had duped U.S. investors by hiding the fact that a project for which capital had been raised partly in the United States was backed by a $265 million bribery scheme. It was a fascinating case because of who Adani and his corporation are in the Global South, and in India in particular. He is among the most accomplished mobilizers of private capital from around the world for large-scale, long-term, infrastructure-heavy projects in the developing world. His rise has also symbolized India’s steady ascent as a global power. The information in the indictments suggested not only a prosecution of specific alleged transactions—given the vast and varied nature of the Adani conglomerate—but also a challenge to an entire business model deployed across multiple countries. That said, it is not unlikely that Mr. Adani’s legal troubles in the U.S. are now largely historical.
The controversially enterprising Adani Group, with its aggressive, go-getting business style, points to the kind of competitive waters U.S. businesses will be entering in a post-FCPA world. When the FCPA became law in the 1970s, India was a poor developing country; today, it is a colossus with heavy hitters like Adani competing fiercely in international business and finance.
The U.S. had been the center of gravity for global anti-corruption efforts, from the 1970s through 2003, when the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) was ratified. Now, a significant shift is underway as the new administration seeks to reconfigure the international business playing field so U.S. corporations can compete on far more ruthless terms. Indicative of this shift was the Founding Statement of the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce, signed on March 20, 2025, by the British, Swiss, and French governments. The task force aims to develop a framework for combating national and international corruption, effectively seeking to fill the gap the U.S. may be leaving behind. It is, indeed, a brave new world.
The world’s anti-corruption treaties, laws, and regulatory instruments do not eliminate graft. But they do make it riskier by raising the cost of dodgy deals. If Trump’s vision prevails, those risks for the corrupt may soon be much reduced.
Editor's Note: On June 9, 2025, the Department of Justice announced that the enforcement pause was over and issued its "Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." The article and video were finalized ahead of that decision and do not address the new guidelines.
