Do you disagree that religion in any form can be used as a force against corruption?
If you work to exclude religion as a whole because some religions or those practicing them have certain beliefs you may find reprehensible, you also exclude other moral and ethical beliefs, peer pressure, and community support that would combat corruption.
I have to invert your first statement to make sense: do you (I) agree that religion in any form can be used as a force to encourage corruption?
To which I would reply yes, religion in any form can be (and is) used to support and encourage corruption.
All (communal, as opposed to internal) religions look good on the surface, promising wealth (prosperity gospel Christianity), eternal life (various abrahamic religions), removal of body thetans (scientology), etc.
They all share the attribute of not being provable, and all will fight (often quite literally) for their own survival based on no evidence at all.
And they all require the existence of THE OTHER, a threat, sometimes existential, sometimes racial but in some way unacceptably different.
Actions against THE OTHER are seen as noble, even when they otherwise seem to go against the letter and spirit of the communal creed.
Religion cannot be used as a tool of inclusion because for someone to be considered "good", there has to also be an identifiable "evil". Strangely, nobody ever claims this latter title for themselves.
Finally, I'm sure we (you and I) will never know for sure, but I'm willing to bet the majority of the authorities involved here were all part of their community churches.
