I Fought Corruption Abroad for Years. My Own Country Just Surrendered.
America Just Joined Russia and Belarus in Quitting the Fight Against Corruption
Photograph: Yahoo News
America cannot lead the fight against corruption abroad while dismantling the tools that expose it at home. Leaving GRECO, weakening anti-corruption enforcement, and rewarding corrupt leaders sends a dangerous message: Washington no longer wants to be held to the standards it once demanded of others.
Last week, the United States became the third country ever to quit GRECO, Europe’s leading anti-corruption watchdog. The first two were Russia and Belarus, hardly the company America should be keeping. I served as U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, a country long burdened by entrenched corruption, and I’ve worked in Minsk and Moscow. I watched those regimes dodge scrutiny for years. I never imagined I would see America join them.
The State Department says GRECO “does not provide tangible benefits to US national security.” But America had belonged since 2000, and membership meant something. We opened our own record to peer review and expected others to do the same. Leaving tells every government that hates scrutiny that Washington no longer cares who is watching.
This is not an isolated act. In February 2025, the president froze enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,(FCPA),our law against bribing foreign officials, calling it “a disaster.” Enforcement has resumed on paper, but 2025 saw the fewest public FCPA actions in at least 15 years. That same month, the attorney general disbanded the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, the unit that tracked down and seized the proceeds of foreign graft. This August, Treasury permanently exempted American companies from reporting their true owners under the Corporate Transparency Act, a law Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator, hailed as “the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.”
Then came the rewards. President Trump. pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran authoritarian president sentenced to 45 years for helping move hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, days before his country’s election. Paraguay’s Horacio Cartes, sanctioned in 2023 for “rampant corruption that undermines democratic institutions,” had his sanctions lifted in October 2025. Treasury offered no reason, and the U.S. embassy said only that the sanctions no longer fit current policy. Paraguayans, like everyone else, can read that signal as clearly as I can.
Why should an American in Ohio or Arizona care? Because corruption is not a foreign problem. It is how cocaine and fentanyl cross borders, how hostile regimes hide their money, and how anonymous shell companies launder fortunes through American real estate. Weakening transparency rules is a gift to the very cartels the administration says it wants to destroy.
Corruption also costs American businesses and workers. When bribes decide who wins a contract, honest American firms lose. The FCPA was meant to level that field. Corrupt governments also make unreliable allies. Leaders who can be bought sell out to the highest bidder, and Moscow and Beijing are happy to bid.
Finally, there is credibility. For decades, American diplomats could press foreign leaders to clean up because we held ourselves to the same standard. We cannot ask Paraguay, Honduras, or anyone else to prosecute their powerful while we pardon and delist ours and others’.
The rot is not only abroad. America has hit its lowest-ever score on Transparency International’s corruption index, while the president’s family took in more than $1 billion last year, largely from crypto, amid conflicts a former White House ethics lawyer says would violate the law for any other official. The White House denies any conflict. But a government that dismantles the tools for policing corruption abroad should not be surprised when the world asks what it is protecting at home.
None of this is irreversible. At a minimum, Congress should be considering the restoration of funding to the kleptocracy unit, and pressing to rejoin GRECO. The Council of Europe has said the door is open.
Corruption thrives when good people look away. America should never be among them, and Americans should demand that we walk back through that door.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 450 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
