This study examines the challenges faced by BRICS countries in addressing corruption and money laundering in a multipolar world. It compares the anti-corruption legal frameworks in BRICS nations, identifying similarities in their commitment to international conventions and variations in enforcement and institutional robustness. The study highlights five significant challenges: political interference, weak judicial independence, lack of transparency, insufficient international cooperation, and geopolitical shielding of safe havens. Case studies from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have revealed the limitations and contradictions of enforcement efforts in these countries. This paper critiques global political incoherence, where Western nations champion anti-corruption norms while enabling illicit financial flows. It contrasts the unilateral extraterritorial enforcement model of the US and the UK with the multilateral approach favored by the BRICS. The analysis proposes strategies for BRICS to strengthen anti-corruption and anti-money laundering due diligence, such as establishing beneficial ownership transparency standards, institutionalizing interagency task forces, codifying due diligence in South-South trade agreements, ensuring judicial integrity, leveraging technology for risk-based supervision, creating an independent BRICS Anti-Corruption Observatory, and promoting a multipolar legal epistemology. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for BRICS to assert principled pluralism and transform critique into constructive leadership, thereby shaping the future of global anticorruption governance.
Chai Cássius Guimarães (Wed,) studied this question.