The U.S. State Department has named a sanctions and nuclear weapons expert as its coordinator for global anticorruption efforts, a position created after the Biden administration pledged to fight more vigorously against corruption.
It will be a return stint at the State Department for
Richard Nephew,
who most recently was a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy in New York, the department said on Tuesday.
Mr. Nephew previously served as deputy special envoy for Iran, principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department and director for Iran on the National Security Council before joining Columbia, according to the State Department. He also worked at the Energy Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation earlier in his career and has authored a book on planning and applying sanctions, according to his biography on the Columbia website.
In his new role, Mr. Nephew will work closely with other U.S. government agencies and international partners to advance U.S. anticorruption policy. He also will lead the State Department’s implementation of the U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption issued in December and will help advance such efforts through the Summit for Democracy, a virtual gathering first held in December that brought together more than 100 governments.
Mr. Nephew declined to comment, citing the State Department’s approval process. An automated response from his email account said he is on public service leave from Columbia.
Mr. Nephew’s appointment comes after President Biden made anticorruption a central pillar of his administration’s national security agenda, first issuing a directive in June last year that ordered a range of departments and agencies to report to the White House within 200 days on how they could strengthen their efforts to fight corruption.
In December, the administration unveiled steps to combat corruption globally, including by providing assistance to foreign governments to increase financial transparency and by establishing new regulations on U.S. real-estate purchases to prevent money-laundering.
The Strategy on Countering Corruption outlines steps for cracking down on criminal actors and their networks while improving cooperation between federal agencies—including the State, Treasury and Commerce Departments as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development—and law enforcement.
“Creating and filling this position demonstrates the importance the United States places on anticorruption as a core national security interest and reiterates the central role global partnerships play in this fight,” Secretary of State
Antony Blinken
said in a statement.
Write to Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com
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