A Legacy of Corruption

I think corruption is probably the most challenging task facing Argentina and also South America in general.

Corruption in Argentina has been a long-standing problem that has plagued not only every level of government but also in the private sector. Despite institutional and legal framework that is suppose to prevent such corruption, bribery and payoffs are seen as a part of everyday life in Argentina.

The amount of scandals that have plagued Argentina regarding corruption in the past 10 years are overwhelming. These includes cases about the Mayor of Buenos Ares and an SEC case from Ralph Lauren that claims the company had to bribe Argentinean custom officials to get their merchandise through despite the proper paperwork.

It is very difficult to find a sector of Argentina that isn’t afflicted by corruption. I’ve found reports of corruption on banking, media, pharmaceuticals and judicial process. Currently, there are many rumors of voting fraud as the presidential election approaches.

Climate survey about corruption from Argentineans 

There is a bureau in Buenos Ares that is an anti-corruption force. However, despite the large amount of investigations launched by the bureau, they rarely get actual convictions from their investigations. Perhaps this speaks to how systemic corruption is that even the anti-corruption bureau can’t get a lot of convictions and how this bureau may even be corrupt itself.  

To put this all into perspective, Argentina ranks 106 out of 177 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Report in 2013. However, it ranked 11^th out of 20 countries in Latin America. So while Argentina is pretty bad with corruption in general, it’s not the worst or even super close to the worst in Latin America. I think this shows that while corruption in Argentina is bad, corruption in Lain/South America is even worse.

Many factors contribute to why South America remains tocorrupt. Many experts point to organized crime and widespread drug trafficking, While organized crime is a huge part of corruption in South America, history also plays a role in the systemic corruption in these countries. Many of these countries have strong histories of corruption and powerful political oligarchies. 

Map of transparency ratings from Transparency International 

So fixing this problem might not be as easy as just eliminating organized crime because corruption is so engrained into the cultural in both South America and in Argentina. I think that as South American and Argentina continue to develop, there is a chance that corruption begins to decrease because the countries become more stable and citizens are more likely to protest such problems.

Anti-corruption protest in Argentina