re back there trying to brighten the people to levy to go somewhere else. but the truth is that it got nowhere else to go. so if you missed it online, catch it here with me, sandra goldman on al jazeera. ah, hello, i'm darren, jordan and doha with the top stories here on al jazeera. we start with breaking news and we're getting reports that unsung suit. she be ousted leader in me, and mom has just been sentenced to 4 years in jail on a number of different chargeable from st. louis. joint us live now from column poor florence. so unsung sushi had traced numerous charges in the prospect of over a 100 years in jail, torpor through those charges. and what the court verdict was. that's right. so these were the 1st verdicts in the about a dozen charges that she faces. remember, she was arrested,

she was detained on the 1st of february, which was the day of the coo and then she's on several trials or some charges against her, which haven't even been brought to trial. but these are the very 1st verdicts. and these readings had been deferred from a week ago. now we're hearing that she, in fact we've confirmed the source on the ground in myanmar that she has been sentenced to 2 years on the charge of incitement and swell as 2 years for breaking corona virus rules. now her other defendants, the deposed president, when men, and also another high ranking former official of the n l d government as national league for democracy on santucci s political party has also been found guilty and sentenced to prison. and we don't have any other details beyond that, so we don't know if they are going to be sent to prison immediately. and normally as while courts do allow sentences to run can sec concurrently instead of consecutively. so if she's been sentenced for 2 years, for one crime and 2 years for another crime, sometimes these sentences can run concurrently, which means she'll end up spending 2 years in prison rather than 4. we don't know

if that's happening in this case. we have to remember also though that these are not the only verdicts, the only charges and the only trials she's facing there. several more. the agenda has charged with her with corruption. she's also been charged with breaching the official secrets act. and the latest chargers they pulled on another corruption charge as well as electro fraud. remember, electro fraud is the justification that the gin to had used for seizing power. on the 1st of february, this was the day that the national league democracy v a the, the representatives that the not the representatives for parliament were due to be sworn in. and that's when the agenda stepped in and seized power noun. um, we're really not sure we're waiting for more details more what's going to be hacked . what's going to happen whether she is going to be taken to prison? now, alls on sushi and her co defendants were kept in an undisclosed location. they had very limited access sound. this verdict doesn't come as a surprise political service with spoken to say they wouldn't be surprised if she

is found guilty simply because they didn't. her is worried about her popularity and they want to make sure that she no longer has any has any say, has any voice in the political arena in myanmar during florence louis live for stay in calling about florence. thank you for the update. now the gambia president, adams barrow, has been declared the winner of saturday's election in what his supporters are celebrating as a landslide. but as they cheered at least 3 of barrows opponents rejected. the result was 1st elected in 2016 and been 22 years of autocracy under. yeah, had jammy with him to exile following year at least $29.00 soldiers have been killed during an attack on a military base in the chair. on saturdays several 100 gunmen on motorcycles targeted the base in the tilbury region. it's used by the sale g 5 joint force involving troops and mar, atanya, near chart. marley and bettina fossil almost 80 attackers will also kill solomon islands. prime minister, manassas, a virus facing

a motion of no confidence in parliament is in response to anti government riots more than a week ago. during which time buildings are burned down and shops looted in the capitol on the ira. locals have a list of grievances including poor government services, and a recent tilt towards china. belgium police have sprayed water cannon and fired tear gas on rioters the protest in brussels against cobit 19 rules. the government says forced a lot because cases are surging and hospitals under severe strain. far right french presidential candidate, eric zamora, has been attacked by a protest as he walked through paris crowds during his 1st campaign rally scuffles between his supporters and those who came to pronounce in some even threw chairs at each other. so those were the headlines. these continues here on al jazeera after the bottom line states with them watching bye for now. ah

hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question. the u. s. says it wants to fight corruption to promote democracy worldwide. but should it start at home? let's get to the bottom line. ah, today we continue the discussion we started last week on the summit for democracy. the white house is hosting leaders for more than 100 countries to the virtual conference with 3 main goals, according to the by the administration, fighting corruption, promoting human rights and standing up against authoritarianism. but with all the dark money and the questions surrounding the elections process and polarization in american politics. shouldn't president joe biden be more worried about the future of democracy right here at home. today i'm talking to sen. sheldon whitehouse, who's been a leading voice on fighting corruption domestically and internationally sen to white house chairs the senate caucus on international narcotics control center to thank you so much for joining say, you know,

i want to kind of give our viewers in an understanding of the underbelly of a lot of what we see on the surface of governments and democracy. what are the big factors you've been looking at that are corrosive, that are corrosive here at home, that are corrosive internationally that you worry about? well, corruption is the big factor. corruption is money and then the question is, what do you do with the money? because if you're a collector crap or an international criminal, your one bigger bad or clipped a crack or one bigger batter international criminal away from having everything you stole stolen. so the dirty secret here is that the corruption and the money that support so much of the evil in the world then comes and finds home in our rule of law countries. and it's in our interests, i believe, very, very strongly to clean that mess up. and no longer be aiding and abetting these.

what george bush would call evil doers was. so like this summit for democracy, this is one of the pillars that we're we're that the president has outlined of concern. and, and i know that, that when this summit comes up, they're going to be people are assembled where it's going to be one of the discussion points. yeah. how do you expect it to play out? are you going to be participating? do you think you think this issue, which has become so endemic, are both here is a problem in the united states, but also internationally. and you should see the reaction or show last week of people thinking, well, what is the united states are getting off on talking about democracy when it is supporting all of these elicit leaders around the world. and it's turning a blind eye to a lot of this corruption. yeah. well, we intend to be a part of that conversation and are working on exactly how right now. but i think what's important is that this is not just an opportunity to form an 8 that corruption is a bad thing. and scold countries that we think are corrupt. we've got actually look

at the techniques of corruption, the techniques of hidden money done by these corrupt forces and in particular, look at ourselves and how we, how the rule of law countries in america specifically are enabling that corruption and enabling the hiding of the proceeds of that corruption, we have some cleaning up to do ourselves. now i occasionally turn on c, span senator and cspan, for our audience is a channel. it's devoted to covering congress. you can turn it on and you can see senator a white house about i remember as a congress of their own, like i've been, i've been watching you for years long about shadow players in the global political economy. you know who operate in in a, you know, dark way and looking at dark money. can you help bring that to life or a people? can you give us examples beyond the kind of big brand name corruption, can you go on to it into, to some detail and give us, you know, something tangible that people may be able to relate to as people have looked at

this, usually from a money laundering perspective, they have found for instance, child trafficking organizations based in europe owning farms. in the united states, they found buildings in new york city known towers in downtown manhattan, owned by a arrangements and arrangements to sewer sanctioned by us. and what you see is that the boundary between this dark economy that supports corruption, supports criminality. and our economy is very porous. and it's very much in the interest of the bad guys to get their loot into the protection of our rule of law. and they got to do so secretly. so anonymity is the key to all of this. and being able to penetrate that anonymity and find out who is really

behind the shell corporation, who is really the nominal, the real owner of the property, nominally owned by some fake entity. those are the things that we need to protect our national security at this point. are we going the right direction, senator? i was just reading about a decision, for instance, by the federal elections commission that allows foreign governments to weigh in on valid initiatives or foreign entities to weigh in on valid initiatives. you kind of look at this question of, you know, anonymity in politics in the ruling we had years ago in the supreme court on citizens united. i mean, it looks like, and then i mean, just to be honest, people look at the last administration and the opaque relationships that the president allegedly had with various potential russian players for india and it's oligarchs, etc. and when you kind of look at that and ask yourself, are there any positive steps coming forward other than the summit for democracy? we're going to talk about it. i mean, are you hopeful? are you? are you pessimistic? we just one in congress,

a long battle to give the treasury, it's been sin, it's financial investigative group, access to what are called the beneficial owners. the real owners behind american shell corporations. that was a long fight. and the folks who make money off of catering to these people, rounded up a lot of the usual d. c players to fight us. but at the end of the day, this was a bipartisan when it passed into law of the last national defense bill. and the treasury is writing those rags right now. so that should be a big step back from the united states becoming the new cayman islands, right? where crooks everywhere can go to hide their resources. is that a complete step? no, we need to see the regulations and what else needs to be done, but that's been a big step in the right direction. while most of our dark money draft has been in the wrong direction, you know, one of the topics we've looked at on this show before things like bitcoin and

crypto currencies and the role they play, either constructively and helping give a new architecture to how we track stuff versus what we see as, you know, cyber attacks and ransom attacks, you know, sometimes done in bitcoin or other crypto currencies. to what degree are these emerging, you know, non federal backed weather, national back currencies coming on. part of the problem is you see it, there is kind of the new aspect of it and it's probably the one we understand, the least. but anything that confers anonymity on a bad actor is the danger. and so when a bad actress able to use a currency that allows them to avoid money laundering investigations, that's not a good thing for either our public safety or our national security. do you think from an intelligence perspective or a financial intelligence perspective, when we see players out there, russian, oligarchs, or vladimir putin himself, who's reportedly the richest person in the world of non transparent?

sure. here and legitimate, very legitimate, he very high paid chief executive, but i guess the question is, do we have the awareness of where these assets are? why isn't the u. s. government playing more of a role in disclosing what it knows about corruption abroad? if for no other reason to create pressures abroad, so that those citizens and other countries actually because were waiting on, you know, leaks of papers like that, they're had him all papers or other of that happening. and so your story comes in a very full 3 d vision when you look at some of these papers. but i assume that somewhere in the u. s. government, we know a lot of this. why are we so reticent about disclosing what we know about the so i wouldn't be so sure that we know a lot about him and i think a lot of what we do know about it may very well come through sources that we don't want to reveal because there is no obvious way to go to the cayman islands or to go

to some other place that hides foreign loot very effectively and try to penetrate through. in some cases, multiple screens of fake corporate layering that prevent you from knowing who the real owner is of that asset. so it's not as easy as you think. and therefore, the way in is often somebody who knows something who was telling you that as opposed to being able to go in and investigate and you don't want to blow the source. so i don't think we put anywhere near enough attention on that aspect of the problem to begin with, which is one of the reasons i'm excited about the summit. but i also think that we've got limits that we need to deal with by forcing a new international consensus that hiding this dark economy that had the, you know, their to benefit, kept a craps and criminals should be as unacceptable as child labor. se one of the

things that worried me years a back about 911 and the emergence of groups like al qaeda was their desire to embed themselves into the governments abroad. because if you control a state, you can control a lot of issues that people don't, don't understand. and a lot of people have alleged that, that has happened with norco, trans national norco operations. so the international drug cartels have become as powerful or more powerful, you know, then governments, and then you see the struggles in certain parts of mexico and another central american governments in kind of dealing with this is america derelict in helping those governments fight those, those, those situations are we in any way not doing what we should be doing on that front because once they do control governments, then they have a lot more ability in tools to penetrate this country. yeah, i think we have been inadequate in addressing this the way i give this context is

to go back to samuel huntington famous argument about a clash of civilizations and between 2 different worlds that we are coming into. only he posited that our class civilizations was based on cultural religious ethnic divisions. i don't see that i see the clash of civilizations between rule of law civilization and the cryptography and criminal countries of the world. and if you look at what's happened, bad to america and the last couple decades, pretty much all of it has come out of non rule of law land. and we have not looked adequately at that as a national security problem and addressed it at the level that it needs to be addressed. it's a little bit like having a, some sort of, you know, bacillus or plague molecule when it's around, it's really dangerous and you've got to cure it and fix it. and you can do that with sunlight and do it. it's not the fix isn't that hard. we just haven't paid

enough attention to it and the battle between rule of law civilization and it's adversary and the contest is one that we desperately need to win and we're not winning it right now. and so how do you fix it? what's the strategic leap or the fix for that? because what you're talking about is also a regular topic on the show, which is the corrosion here at home. the corrosion and trust in institutions are leaders. and the just serious doubt that, you know, if you're in a neighbourhood and you've got a republican neighbor and you happen to be a democrat, your folks are going to think gravity operates differently. so i'd be interested when you see rule of law not work and you feel people somehow demeaned and left behind in that. do you worry about that here? yeah, and i think the way you solve it is 1st, you've got to see this as a strategic priority. and it very often is kind of the little puppy the tailing along behind everything else. and the foreign policy national security establishment, look at o, rush on the board of ukraine, such a crisis. oh,

what's trying to do about i want such a crisis and things like this. the don't have a kind of moment to them. but are structural and are very important to get right because they will avoid that later. that's wakeham. all right, that's, that's reacting to something you want to show them. yeah. so, so the institution that makes clipped crafts and foreign criminals able to hide their money behind rule of law protections is an institution that we need to and do . and if we do wanna do it will have a much safer and better planet how literate do you think the biden national security team is on this subject? i know you're out there pounding on this every day, and i don't mean to critique you unfairly. but there aren't a lot of other people with senator sheldon white house pounding every day on this. i'm sure you do have allies be nice to hear who they are, but are you sensing that president biden and his team are taking this as seriously

as you are? yeah, i think that this administration has taken his problem more seriously than any previous administration has this conference, i think is an expression of that. and particularly if it's successful at raising the profile of this issue of cryptography and hidden money and our role in all of it, then i think they can really step up an entirely new level and, and be very, very effective. i wouldn't, since you've mentioned other senators wanna go without mentioning, been kardon, who's been so effective in sanctioned the magnet magnets gate sanctions, particularly, and the sanctions regime and not interrupt it. def, here describe that what the magnets he met. magnets key sanctions are for our audience. so russia found a guy they didn't like. and they basically deprived imprisoned him and deprived them of health care. and he died. as a result, they were able to steal his company. he'd been a big investor in russia,

and other people came in and took over his company. and that whole operation was so rotten that a regime of international sanctions was developed to find the russians who'd been involved in that scheme and deny them access to banks and other institutions in the free world. so that regime makes a very good model for dealing with other bad behavior. trade sanctions and magnetic sky sanctions can put real pressure on countries that are providing shelter for this dark economy to not get off and to come clean. and kardon has been a real hero, i think, in that respect. yeah. and bill browder who was wanted back to art and you know, was, was working on this now. and my understanding is leading team is now applied to other governments as well. so not just russia, but you know, more broadly and even got it expanded to the russian scheme to do doping

in the olympics and other international athletic contests. so as a tool we've seen are useful. it isn't work spanning it's use, and it's there are ready to be applied to people who indulge the dark money cryptography regime. so we just ask you this question. i'm, i want to show you this, this chart. we're going to put this chart up that shows how, you know, whether most americans are going to trust the 2024 election. now this is slightly a different topic, but i want to get into it because it talks a little bit about confidence in the system that we have. and we show that, you know, democrats have 82 percent trust in the 2024 election coming up. republicans for 33 percent this election that hasn't happened right. it has not happened, but the level of crossing institution is so divided between these 2 parties. and i know in my, in my gut, that part of it has to do with doubt in institutions and a feeling like the system is unfair to some fair to others. i or,

or maybe you have other insights into what's going on. i think a lot of it has to do with propaganda. propaganda is an age old technique. the i did that in america were not vulnerable of propaganda is not justified by facts or rationality. and i think people are being very heavily propagandized about this. and we happen to know that a loved us propaganda actually originates overseas. we've actually caught the russians sending propaganda through us communications vectors and into our population. so we know that it is happening, and unfortunately we are not effective at i'm defending our firewalls against that stuff because the very same channels that allow russia to propagandized the public or the channels that allow, for instance, the american fossil fuel industry to propagandized, the public and so to indulge our domestic propagandized ers and let them hide, we've kept these channels in place that let anybody hide. and that's just

a really stupid choice for our country to make. do you think, given the tools you have in the u. s. senate your, you know, on committees and you, you had a narcotics caucus that, that you were seeing subpoena plow a power play out right now. and i'm just wondering how strong a tool or weak a tool it is to use that to try to create transparency on these rule of law and kind of democracy solvency questions. do you need more tools to do your job as a senator to get into these and to get into these dark places? i think we probably do. there's a very real danger that the new supreme court majority is going to republican majority. republican majority is going to create that already has created and, and expand dark money rights that inhibit congress is ability to do the investigations that the constitution allows us. and in fact requires us that to do so. we have some hazards. one of them is where this court goes on this question.

it's the court, the dark money belt, the dark money behind the federalist society ran the turn style through which the last 3 judges came. so the idea that it's now turning to defend dark money, it's kind of an ominous portent and it suggest, i mean, those are strong words, ominous portent. but it's an ominous poor town because i think in a, you know, somebody said many years ago that sunlight is the best disinfectant. right. and the more the court, and the more our system establishes safe havens from sunlight channels where dark money and anonymity can do their worst. right. the worse off we're going to be sen, wrap up. i want to read a couple of comments that came in after our last show because i think it's important we listen to how the world is perceiving this summit for democracy in reaction to the show tor eric back a writes. they should be pointing out major flaws in american democracy. money in

politics. yep. lobbying gerrymandering, voters, suppression, low participation in elections. the electoral college, the filibuster, counter majority carrying institutions like the senate and the supreme court. erosion of democratic norms, etc. sounds like a sheldon whitehouse list to me, but a moment. the 2nd one is from such even us it says, let's just think for a moment how in iranian would see this are cubans or venezuelans, bolivians, or just the majority of popular opinion around latin america, asia, africa, or even europe. the popular notion would be that the united states has been the biggest obstacle in the path of even thinking about a democratic justice based nation abroad. so there's doubt in this for democracy that's coming up. i just love the kind of get your picture. you know, if you were advising joe biden, on how to keep this from being a big belly flop and failing, what would be the key to turning around the doubts that these people have about america's role in convening this i think you've got to start the way we did in

glasgow on climate change with a little humility, but with really showing up in force. and then i think you've got to make it real. we have lost our standing to give the rest of the world lectures. we have to actually fix the problem. and show that we're fixing it within our own country as well as demanding that everybody else does. and there are 2 big networks that need to be disrupted. one is the network of foreign countries that shelter the international dark economy for the criminals and for the collector graphs. and we can do that in the 2nd, which is not unrelated, is the dark money network within the united states. that has made a lot of those things that your writer called us out for happen. there's a group of front groups with a funded by a couple of billionaires who are responsible for making a great deal of that happen. and we need to make sure the american public hears

that story and understands how they've been had dish real quickly. we, i remember on, on shows like the godfather with marlon brando, seeing those senate hearings, you know, on organized crime in america. they may have actually happened in real life in the past, but do we need something like that? again, do we need to have sheldon white house or other senators ashy convening senate hearings of that old were to calling it subpoena and people on organized crime trans nationally? i think it would be helpful for the american public to see that behind a lot of what they don't like about this country is a set of groups that are essentially phony groups that are all interrelated and often have overlapping boards and directors and same offices and all that kind of stuff. it's like a covert operation. and behind that is a bunch people who are funding what is essentially a covered intelligence operation against their own country. that's a story worth telling we have not told it at all. well, well sen,

sheldon white house, democratic rhode island and chair of the senate narcotics caucus, really appreciate you sharing with us these other contours of the summit for democracy. this coming up. thanks for joining us today. good to be with you, steve. thanks for having me. so what's the bottom line? americas version of democracy has some great aspects that have inspired others, but there's so much that is not inspirational. sen, white house is right to focus on shadow organizations, corruption, that drug trade and the people behind them. these real centers of power that have real influence and they eat away at our democratic institutions. non transparent money and power are harming the u. s. at home and undermining order injustice in the international system. on top of that, sometimes washington supports those leaders abroad who are propped up by this corruption for a summit of democracy to mean anything. these issues, this issue of hypocrisy of supporting those leaders who are anti democratic anti human rights, all have to be dealt with. otherwise, this summit is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. and that's the bottom line, ah,

a with mother nature's gift of cultural landscapes. a strong infrastructure governance

arising where investments are waiting to flourish, with even supplied by tradition. and where beautiful possibilities are offered. why? hello, i'm darn jordan in dough with a reminder, the headline 0 now to 0. me and mars deposed civilian liter. unsung sushi has been sentenced to 4 years in prison in connection with a series of charges leveled against her by the military. genta monday sentence has to do with 2 specific cases, but so she also faces many more charges florence louis as more from calling them 1st verdicts in the about a dozen charges that she faces. remember, she was arrested, was detained on the 1st of february, which was the day of the coo and then she's on several trials. there are some charges against her.