The results from last weekend’s state government elections in New Delhi have been tallied, and the message on Tuesday was clear – voters are still fed up with corruption.
The results from last weekend’s state government elections in New Delhi have been tallied, and the message on Tuesday was clear – voters are still fed up with corruption.
One of the best times to invest in Latin America has been over the last few short years following the 2008 financial crisis. Investments in countries like Brazil and Mexico are at some of their highest rates in modern history. Despite this growth trend, some old investment problems still exist, combined with a new investment […]
Any unchecked authority or power—especially when involving monies—ultimately leads to corruption. That is why it is necessary to put in place mechanisms to monitor, audit, reward, and, when necessary, punish.All laws stemming from a moral or a legal code are based on a system of rewards and punishments. By corruption I mean: Abuse of authority […]
The Irish playwright Brendan Behan once opined that, “I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.” Behan was hardly an unbiased commentator, having misspent his youth in activities that assured a mutual antipathy between the literary giant and the law enforcement community, but the findings of Transparency […]
At the beginning of 2013, Forbes Magazine announced that the first female African had crossed the threshold into the status of billionaire. Isabel Dos Santos is the eldest daughter of Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. Her wealth is composed of 28.8 percent shares in Zon Multimedia, the biggest cable TV operator in Portugal, making her the largest shareholder in the […]
How corrupt is your government? This week, Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a measure of “perceived levels of public sector corruption in countries worldwide.” Some results are simply unsurprising: out of 176 countries, war-torn Afghanistan and Somalia, and opaque, impoverished North Korea share the bottom spot. Meanwhile, Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand, […]
Last week the Foreign Policy Association released its annual National Opinion Ballot Report regarding several topics within the realm of U.S. foreign policy. One subject that received much attention surrounded the United States’ role and responsibility when it came to promoting democracy globally. When the participants were asked if “The United States should actively promote democracy around […]
One of my primary interests regarding government is how countries transition to democracy from another form of rule, and why some places seem to have more success with this than others. For countries formerly under the influence of the Soviet Union, some have seen democracy establish a strong foothold, whereas others face a constant struggle […]
This past Tuesday marked the annual release of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Transparency International’s opportunity to name and shame all over the world. This year, as in most years, there were few surprises: the index is actually designed to favor stability over dramatic changes in order not to unduly punish countries that experience an […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
Russian oil companies, including Gazprom and Lukoil, will pay $1 billion to Venezuela for the chance to develop oil reserves along the Orinoco. Even though Caracas and Moscow are allies, I still have doubts about the final payout for these businesses. In 2006 the Venezuelan government pushed out some foreign oil companies, and forced others […]