Development

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.

What is the human instinct when tragedy strikes outside of your immediate circle?  (I use the term ‘circle’ quite loosely and encourage self definition). For the past two weeks, I’ve been in keen observation mode.  Watching Anderson Cooper on CNN, reading various and varied thoughts on Haiti in my Google Reader, and monitoring the various […]

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 […]

Halfway through Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, I find myself with many of the same thoughts that plagued me during my graduate studies – how could so many smart people get this so entirely wrong?  Regardless of whether you agree with the intensity of Moyo’s criticism, you will find your head nodding along at some point.  […]

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 […]

It is the time of year when people promise to do things differently, when they commit to change. What might world leaders resolve for fighting corruption and promoting accountability in 2010? There are few political or business leaders on the planet who would not publicly vouch for anti-corruption and accountability. This is the lingo of […]

Can corruption really be stopped? With all the fuss that is made about anti-corruption programs and holding corrupt leaders to account, this is not a trivial question. There are people who argue that corruption is simply “the way things are done here” or “part of the culture,” implying that change is not possible. In this, […]