AMBASSADOR NIKKI HALEY: Thank you for coming out today.
We wanted, again, to give you an opportunity
to speak with the briefers, so I'll go ahead.
Mr. Prendergast, go ahead and start.
MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST: Hi, I'm John Prendergast from Enough
Project and Century.
Today we witnessed something, I think, very historic.
I've spent 35 years of my career working on conflict.
And for most of that time, corruption issues
were not really acknowledged to be a driving force of conflict.
Yet we understand very well, and I
think many of the statements of the permanent representatives
today illustrated corruption is at the root of conflict.
And the Security Council is willing to take it on.
Ambassador Haley's going to lead in that regard,
and I think that this is a historic moment in some ways
to see that now the most important international body
working on international peace and security
is recognizing this core driver of violence and conflict
as central to the agenda for conflict resolution.
AUDIENCE: I want to ask you--
may I?
AMBASSADOR HALEY: Sure.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, you mentioned that you gave the Security
Council some recommendations that corruption should
be taken into consideration when sanctions
are discussed in the council.
So how was the feedback, did you get any feedback
from council members?
And I would like also to hear from Ambassador
Haley about her position on this point.
Thank you.
MR. PRENDERGAST: Me first?
Yeah, I was very encouraged by the statements
by a number of the country delegations.
The willingness to look at corruption
as a core driver of violence, and therefore,
when using the points of leverage
that the United Nations Security Council possesses
in the form of targeted sanctions
to use corruption as a potential rationale for the imposition
of those sanctions.
So I think it's very encouraging today.
It's going to require a lot of follow up.
But I do think that some of the country delegations
made it clear that they were going to be utilizing
that factor as part and parcel of their calculations going
forward.
AMBASSADOR HALEY: I think the main thing that I'll say
is we have really tried to break the mold of the Security
Council.
The Security Council, when we came in two years ago,
had their ideas of what was involved in peace and security.
And it was the ideas that were comfortable to them.
Since then, in the first presidency
we made them address human rights.
And they pushed back and said that was a Geneva problem, that
wasn't a New York problem.
We think that's a problem everywhere.
And if we're going to talk about peace and security,
human rights have to be a part of that conversation.
In this presidency, we said that you
have to talk about corruption.
We did get pushback, and you heard
some of that in the council from those
that don't think we need to talk about corruption.
What I can tell you is whenever we get pushback
from the council on any issue, it's all the more reason
why we need to talk about it.
Because it's something that's being thrown under the rug,
it's something that's not being talked about.
And at the heart of what we're supposed
to be doing in the Security Council is prevention.
And so we'll continue to bring up those topics
that we see that are being whispered about in closed
doors, that are being talked about in hallways
but not being talked about in the chamber.
And I think today was a big day in terms of opening up
the conversation of corruption as it
relates to peace and security.
And that goes into what we're going
to be hearing this afternoon that we have Assistant
Secretary Billingslea here, who I will just tell you treasury
could not be a better partner to us here at U.S. UN
and the way that we have really gone after corrupt regimes,
those that are hurting their own people,
the things that they are doing.
Treasury has really come alongside us
and we've worked together to make
a difference on the ground.
And so we will be talking about Venezuela today.
That's very important, and so I'm
going to turn it over to Assistant Secretary
Billingslea.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA:
Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity
to be here as the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
at the ambassador's invitation.
It's also great to be here with John, who's a close partner,
and we really value the relationship
we have with your organization and other NGOs
working on this most challenging and most heart
wrenching of issues.
John gave a series of recommendations
to the Security Council today which
are very much in line with how the administration
and the Treasury Department have already been operating.
And we welcome the chance to explore further opportunities
to engage in targeted financial sanctions,
as the ambassador mentioned, particularly
going after the complete networks of those
who are extorting or otherwise extracting wealth
from the helpless.
Dan Gertler is a good example of how the Treasury Department
will use the Global Magnitsky Act to hold
those who are engaged in these types of unacceptable
levels of human rights abuse accountable.
Look forward to the conversation this afternoon
where we will delve into great detail regarding
one of the most horrific humanitarian crises emerging
in our western hemisphere, and that is the case of Venezuela,
where corruption clearly poses a direct threat to regional peace
and stability.
Ambassador, thank you.
AUDIENCE: Follow up, if I may?
Ambassador Haley, on Venezuela, this weekend there
were reports of meetings between U.S. officials and some people
in the military in Venezuela to discuss plans
to overthrow President Maduro.
Were you aware of these, and do you
have any comment on these type of plans?
AMBASSADOR HALEY: It's not anything we're acknowledging.
I mean, it's no surprise Venezuela's
going to continue to talk about as many things as they
can to distract from what's happening on the ground.
What we know is that over a million Venezuelans
have left the border and continue to every single day.
And we're going to continue to highlight the human rights
abuses, we're going to continue to highlight
the corruption that's happening in Venezuela,
and we're going to continue to highlight how
Maduro is at the core of this.
He can distract in any way that he wants,
but we are full speed ahead on standing strongly
with the Venezuelan people.
We'll continue to do that.
AUDIENCE: May I follow up?
May I follow up please?
So do you mean by that the any case of corruption
in any country should be brought to the international community
to be dealt with, or the United States
is going to deal with the issue unilaterally
if you may clarify this issue?
AMBASSADOR HALEY: So no country is immune to corruption,
and every country has to work every day
to ensure that corruption doesn't infiltrate its society.
But what we should be willing to do
is while we always respect sovereign rights
and we will always support sovereign rights,
we should not think that we can't talk about the fact
when we see corruption hurting people on the ground.
When we start to see the powerful getting more and more
wealthy off of the powerless and we
start to see that there's frustration that's happening,
we know frustration leads to protests,
protests lead to conflict, conflict leads to the Security
Council, and then we're all having to deal with it.
What we're saying is whether it's human rights, whether it's
corruption, whether it's any of these issues,
we have to get past where we can't talk about it.
That's what they tried to do with Venezuela last year.
When I tried to bring Venezuela to the Security Council
they said we couldn't talk about it.
What if we had talked about it?
Where would we be today in Venezuela
had we had that conversation?
And that's what we're saying is we can't whisper
about these things anymore.
We do have to be willing to have those conversations.
Now I'm going to ask you to point your questions to the two
gentlemen, and we'll take just maybe a couple more.
AUDIENCE: Hi, thank you.
Hi, thanks.
I have two questions.
The first one is specifically about sanctions.
We know that you guys have presented a list of sanctions,
especially individuals.
You have mentioned those sanctions
are targeted to Maduro regime and those around him.
Are we expecting more sanctions soon?
And especially when it comes to oil,
we know that right now the situation
for a lot of Venezuelans are very dire, especially
those in the region.
And Ambassador, do you think that eventually we
will see that this is a subject that will end up
on the agenda of the Security Council,
especially now that we have regional meetings
about the situation in Venezuela?
2.3 million Venezuelans leaving, situations in Brazil
where Venezuelans are being lynched because
of individual situations.
Are we going to eventually see that as a regional issue that
is more than a sovereign in Venezuela
that is affecting the peace and security of the Americas?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY BILLINGSLEA: Sure, I'll
try to address both the questions that we just heard.
Look, it is always our goal to work collaboratively
with the international community in every instance
where that's possible.
And we do that through a number of mechanisms,
the United Nations being obviously a major one.
But we also do it, as John was talking today
about the importance of the financial action task force,
we worked jointly there to strengthen money laundering
regimes, anti-money laundering regimes,
and we're going to continue to do that.
But when we have cases where individuals are affecting
the integrity of the U.S. financial system,
the Department of the Treasury will not
hesitate to act by ourselves, if need be.
Now in terms of Venezuela, I wouldn't
want to prejudge or forecast any additional actions that
may or may not be forthcoming.
Rather, there are a number of countries and bodies, including
the European Union, Panama, Canada, the United States,
and others who've already taken strong action
to ensure that those regime insiders and cronies who
surround Maduro are not able to benefit
from the legitimate proceeds that they've been generating
stealing from the oil industry.
We'll talk today about how they're
stealing now from the mining industry and the gold sector.
We'll also talk about the horrific holding
hostage of humanitarian assistance coming
into the country through the CLAP program
and how they steal from that, as well.
So these will be things that we're
going to encourage the international community
to work on and to shine a bright spotlight on.
AMBASSADOR HALEY: I'm going to ask John to come forward just
to talk about the effectiveness of sanctions
and when he's found them to be effective
and what their use can be.
MR. PRENDERGAST: I think given topic today,
the connection's between corruption and conflict.
What I found extraordinary in the last year
is the escalation, slowly but surely,
by the Treasury Department of sanctions
that begin to slowly expand the people who are affected
by those sanctions who are underwriting
the profiting from conflict, from violence in South Sudan,
in Congo, two of the biggest issues in front
of the Security Council today.
When leaders like Salva Kiir and Joseph Kabila
see that there is a slow, steady ratcheting up
of that financial pressure, when they realize that,
in fact, some of their key interlocutors--
financial interlocutors who have been squirreling away millions,
if not billions of dollars on their behalf for years on end,
and suddenly the spotlight is being shined
on that illicit financial flow.
And it's being-- beginning to be curtailed
through the use of these financial instruments, tools
of financial pressure.
That begins to affect the calculations.
That begins to affect Joseph Kabila's--
President Kabila's is calculations of whether or not
he ought to run again.
That begins to affect the calculations of President Kiir
and whether or not he ought to sign the peace deal that's
in front of him right now and whether he
ought to implement it.
So steadily increasing that net that
begins to go around all this illicit activity
is one of the primary, if not the primary points of leverage
that the international community-- the United Nations
Security Council and its member states as well
as all the member states in the General Assembly--
can undertake in order to support peace,
to support human rights, and support good governance.
The connection between well implemented,
and expanding, and accelerated targeted sanctions
against networks and the shifting of the calculations
of leaders on the ground who have benefited for years,
if not decades, from wholesale theft of the natural resource
of their country, the connection between those two things to me
is very direct.
AMBASSADOR HALEY: Thank you all very much.
We'll see you all this afternoon.