Global Integrity released its latest Integrity Index this week. It includes scores and narrative descriptions about corruption in countries worldwide. This year’s press release briefly considers the effect of foreign aid on anti-corruption enforcement. It cites Uganda and Bosnia & Herzegovina as countries with major donor support that have not made significant gains, “lending credence […]
Corruption takes different forms in different countries, depending on which actions will have the least consequences. In rich countries, corruption tends to be confined to politics and business. In poor countries, low-level officials requesting bribes might be predominant. Some governments lack the ability to fight corruption and others lack the desire. Corruption in China has […]
by Guest Blogger Donald Bowser [email protected] In Afghanistan the international community has finally come around to understanding the need to fight corruption. Until recently corruption in the country was seen as either being “too engrained” in Afghan society or ”too sensitive” an issue to push for reform. However, the situation is dire and too little […]
Can corruption really be fought? That is, can you change a society from one whose everyday wheels are greased by bribes to one in which petty corruption is rare and shunned? Can you, say, turn Uzbekistan into Britain? The textbook examples of such change are Singapore and Hong Kong. Both faced corruption as a commonplace […]
An update on BAE: It has pled guilty to charges in both the United States and Britain. It will pay nearly $450 million in penalties.
Last week the UK’s Serious Fraud Office brought bribery charges against an agent of British defense contractor BAE. These are the first criminal charges to be brought against a company that has been under investigation for more than five years. The status of BAE is highly contentious. Unlike Siemens, another major company accused of bribery, […]
In follow-up to my Haiti post, Transparency International has just released a handbook on humanitarian aid. Very interesting and worth checking out.
Campaign finance is one of the gray areas of corruption, a practice that makes those concerned with accountability squirm, but one that is largely legal. Few would claim that democracy is served when a donor’s financing of a political campaign leads directly to policies in favor of that donor – but such a link is […]
The former president of Guatemala, Alfonso Portillo, has been charged with money-laundering in the United States, whose banks he had been using to allegedly embezzle from the Guatemalan government. This is an admirable example of an international effort to fight otherwise domestic corruption.
As millions of dollars in aid and other resources flow to Haiti, it is inevitable that someone will raise the specter of waste through corruption. Often such words come from those who oppose aid on ideological grounds, swaying public opinion by exploiting our natural aversion to corruption. But genuine abuses unfortunately do occur, and their […]
There was a time when a bribe to obtain a driver’s license was corruption, but a bribe to obtain a contract was just business. No longer. Companies around the world are now paying attention not just to the practices of their own employees, but to those of their subsidiaries and partners. And most of the […]
Last week President Obama issued an executive order to systematize and accelerate the declassification of national security documents. National security is always the arch nemesis of transparency, the ace in the sleeve of politicians who aren’t quite comfortable with whatever pledges of openness they have made. Obama’s decision is therefore admirable not only for the […]
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