Corruption leads to extremism, says Cameron

May 12, 2016 22:12

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday described corruption as a "cancer" at the heart of the world's problems which also drove people towards extremism.

"If we want to see countries escape poverty and become wealthy, we need to tackle corruption. If we want countries that have great natural resources to make sure that they can use those for the benefit of their people, we need to tackle corruption," Cameron said while speaking at the first two-day anti-corruption summit in London.

"If we want to defeat terrorism and extremism, we have to recognise that corruption and lack of access to justice can often be the way that people are driven towards extremism. Corruption is the cancer at the heart of so many problems we need to tackle in our world," Cameron said.

His views were echoed by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said: "Corruption, writ large, is as much of an enemy because it destroys nation states as some of the extremists we're fighting".

Kerry said that in his global travels he had been "shocked by the degree to which he have found corruption pandemic in the world today.

"Corruption writ large is as much of an enemy, because it destroys nation states, as some of the extremists we're fighting," he said.

The summit is part of Cameron's attempt to lead a wider global effort to crack down on corruption.

The UK government announced that foreign firms that own property in the UK must declare their assets publicly in a bid to stamp out money-laundering.

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