Haifa Wehbe, a popular singer in Lebanon, dons an LTA t-shirt for the BLOM Beirut Marathon.
When you live and work in a region where daily life accessories may include shoulder-mounted missiles and backpack bombs, efforts to reduce corruption have plenty of incentive to be as creative as possible. The Lebanese Transparency Association (LTA) is the Lebanon chapter of Transparency International, and rather than investigating or exposing individual cases of corruption, which might invite a few unwanted accessories, LTA focuses on systemic factors that create situations for bribery, nepotism, patronage, embezzlement, and other forms of corruption. If you’re interested in asking LTA what it’s like to do this kind of work, you can ask them yourself, later today on Facebook.
LTA is...
Residents look on as rioters clash with police last December in Algiers. (WSJ)
In the weeks since Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika launched a probe into Sonatrach, the country’s largest state gas company, a different, more compelling narrative has emerged which points to the powerful Department of Security Intelligence (DRS) as the origin of the probe. That is, the investigation and removal of Sonatrach’s top officials is seen as a direct affront to Bouteflika’s civilian control over Algeria’s lucrative oil and gas industry, which accounts for 98 percent of exports. Why on earth would Bouteflika launch an anti-corruption drive which weakens his own Minister of Energy, Chakib Khelil, who is one of his closest allies?
If civilian-military power struggles are a central...
Since 2008, President Bakiev has embarked on a privatization mission. Lessons from around the world and most recently other former Soviet countries, including Russia, Kazakhstan, and others, clearly illustrate that privatization is not an end to itself. Rather the process of privatization is the key to successful transition from a centralized to a market economy. With this goal in mind, Kyrgyz civil society, with the business community at its helm, continues to sound alarms over speedy privatization that ensues in Kyrgyzstan with little transparency and much public skepticism. Opaqueness in the privatization process, combined with drastic increases in utility costs, undermines the public’s trust in the government and leads to a potential further consolidation of economic power in...
A street in Algiers, capital of Algeria and the second largest city in the Maghreb region. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2733/4037850966_845322f091.jpg
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s “war” against corruption has recently reached the republic’s largest oil company. Sonatrach is a national oil corporation that employs 125,000 people and accounts for 98 per cent of Algeria’s foreign currency receipts in a country where gas exports make up 30% of the GDP. Sonatrach’s CEO and top management team have reportedly been suspended and placed under investigation for claims concerning company tenders for consultancy and security contracts.
The Sonatrach crackdown, or the January 13th earthquake as the Algerian media refer to it, is by far the largest of President...
Several public officials in Thailand are apparently guilty of submitting false disaster reports to claim funds from the emergency relief fund. The fact itself is not that exciting in Thailand, a country where corruption has become a household name. What’s more interesting is one of the main reasons public officials were able to do it – “disaster” was not clearly defined in regulations.
Weak legal definitions are one of the understated root sources of corruption. In Russia, for instance, the legal definition of government official does not cover all public servants, which means that some get a pass from the anti-corruption legislations enacted by Russian authorities....
Local experts agree that corruption in Lebanon has become a challenge of enormous size and systemic reach. And neither the public nor the private sector can tackle this challenge alone. Recognizing this, the Lebanese Transparency Association (LTA), with CIPE’s support, created a vehicle – the Lebanon Anti-Bribery Network (LABN). Through it both the Lebanese private and public sectors could work collectively against corruption and bribery in an environment which does not attempt to lay blame, but rather seeks to identify constructive solutions.
On January 27, 2010, over 50 participants, including representatives from the Lebanese Ministry of Finance and former Ministers of Finance, as well as representatives from the private sector and civil society, debated a preliminary policy...
In 2004, two suicide bombers got on two planes in Russia, bypassing security, and blew up the planes. It cost them roughly $30 in bribes. 90 people died. That’s less than 50 cents per life. This poster, by TI-Russia seeks to get people to understand that corruption is not harmless. Corruption kills....
Posters like these from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime are popular in Bhutan, highlighting concrete examples of corruption’s effects on democracy and development.
Bhutan – self-proclaimed “Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon,” one of the world’s newest democracies, and a country fairly high up on the ‘mysterious’ chart. Bhutan has been hidden away from the world nearly since its founding. The establishment of a parliament, the coronation of a new king, and the first-ever elections for the country’s leadership all took place in late 2008. Gradually, Bhutan is becoming more accessible, from an economic perspective, to the world. And yet, even this early in its founding, problems that we see throughout the South Asian region are...
Corruption is a considerable problem in many countries, undermining the rule of law and impeding broad-based democratic and market development. Afghanistan, unfortunately, is one of the most glaring examples of the pernicious nature of corruption. A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime backs up this perception with precise data. The report found that Afghan citizens pay a total of $2.5 billion a year in bribes, or 23% of Afghanistan’s GDP. This is nearly the same amount generated from Afghanistan’s entire narcotics trade ($2.8 billion a year). Nearly 60% of those surveyed place corruption above security or unemployment as areas of concern to the country.
Those tasked with enforcing the law were cited as the worst aggressors: nearly 25% of Afghans...
Yesterday I attended an excellent presentation by John Fingleton, Chief Executive of the UK office of Fair Trading. He discussed his recent paper: “Government in markets – why competition matters – a guide for policy makers".
Fingleton highlighted the importance of competition and the appropriate role of the government in facilitating it. Of interest to me was his notation that there was no such thing as a cookie-cutter approach to competition policy. Rather, he suggested that competition policy instruments are sequential and it was important that each country have a vision of what their institutional setting will look like. In other words, while the promotion of competition is the clear goal, the form it takes institutionally should be...
We’ve arrived in Manila for our first-ever partner conference in SE Asia. CIPE partners from all around the region—China, Mongolia, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma—have gathered to share experiences and refine strategies for moving forward in their countries. Already on the first morning, one word that has been used several times by partners to describe their initial efforts is “quixotic.” They feel strongly about the issues they address, and in many cases are making great strides, but many of them undertook their efforts initially as a leap of faith—based on a belief that something had to be done, though it may have seemed like tilting at windmills to do so.
Just on arrival here in the Philippines, it doesn’t take long to see that, even as an active democracy, Philippines...
A drug inspector in Pakistan has spilled the beans on corruption within the state department which is fuelling the trade in fake medicines.IPN has long argued that state corruption and weak rule of law are leading factors in the dissemination of fakes.The inspector revealed that cases often sit in the courts for up to a decade, while the criminals keep operating, or simply move elsewhere to escape conviction."Vested interests" in the government are blamed for deliberately stifling justice."Due to the vested interests of a few notorious people at the QCB [Quality Control Board], these
cases are still pending and have been put off for special meetings —
which may or may not take place,” added a police official in Karachi.Meanwhile the inspector said: “Piles of cases have been filed...
Shanta from the World Bank's Africa blog looks at the relationship between teachers and politicians. One explanation for the poor quality of education in some developing countries is that many teachers are nothing more than political appointees. This often means that they don't bother showing up for work:
One of the reasons why schoolchildren in low-income countries, despite being in school most of the time, seem to be learning very little is that the teacher is often not there. In Uganda, for instance, the teacher absence rate in public primary schools was estimated at 27 percent.
However, the problem may not be the teacher himself, but the political system in which the teacher operates. Many of us have anecdotes about teachers’ being the political operatives in the village:...
New anti-counterfeiting laws may not be a silver bullet against dangerous fake products, but Sisule Musungu is wrong to claim that IP protection cannot affect the quality of goods—and way off the mark in his conspiracy theories about IP being a sinister trade tool of “the West”.Thankfully he differentiates between different forms of IP in the interview (patents, copyright, trademarks) and it’s important that laws do the same. Further, new laws are no use if they’re not implemented fairly and efficiently. Head of the Nigerian food and drug regulator Paul Orhii recently explained: “[Counterfeiting] criminals, who are usually very wealthy, very often go scot-free in court … in Nigeria the litigation process is very sluggish. Some cases last for more than 10 years in one...
In
Intellectual Property,
ip,
counterfeit,
drugs,
substandard,
trademarks,
medicines,
IP protection,
IQsensato,
Sisule Musungu,
rule of law,
Counterfeit and substandard medicines,
Corruption
A street market in Yemen. (photo: CIPE)
Now that Yemen is front and center in the minds of U.S. national security experts and the American public alike, it’s time for a serious reassessment of our military and development assistance to the poorest nation in the Middle East. U.S. assistance strategy in Yemen should take into consideration the wide range of factors that threaten Yemen’s already tenuous political and economic stability.
In an article for the Center for American Progress, I argue that to avoid further deterioration, the right government and civil institutions must be in place to ensure a process where the rights of citizens are respected and the building blocks for a better economic future are clearly being put in place. The U.S. and the international community need...
The Financial Times reports that Nigeria is considering giving a portion of its oil revenues directly to citizens of the Niger delta, inspired by the Alaska model:
Nigeria’s rulers are hoping a new policy to deliver the benefits of oil to the local population – as Alaska does with its pioneering approach of distributing petrodollars in cash to citizens – might help placate an insurgency that has cut production by as much as 40 per cent.
According to proponents, the scheme could make about $555m annually available – about $20 a year for every man, woman and child of the delta’s 28m people, a significant amount in a region where 70 per cent live on less than $1.50 a day.
Nigeria’s eight oil producing states already receive an extra slice of oil proceeds – but much of the...
With all the talk about Yemen, it is useful to ask – why is the country so poor and so susceptible to terrorism, despite the vast oil reserves? Brian Palmer over at Slate has a simple answer – civil war, corruption, and economic mismanagement. Corruption is so widespread, he notes, that it is no wonder the country can’t even take a full advantage of the oil reserves it has.
This blog on the daily realities of corruption in Yemen is quite descriptive of the problem the country has been facing for a number of years now (it is written by a person who helped conduct a World Bank survey of corruption attitudes in the country, the results of which were recently made public).
Yemen is another proof that the resource curse is not an imaginary concept, but rather a sad......
The World Bank’s Investment Climate Department (CIC) has reviewed the recent literature on the relationship between restrictive regulation, corruption and business environment reforms, finding that corruption is positively correlated with restrictive regulation.
Using databases of investment climate reforms (Doing Business) and corruption (World Wide Governance Indicators) from 2005-2008, Figure 1 shows a significant and positive correlation between corruption and the number of procedures for starting a business in 183 countries.
The number of procedures is not the only indicator of regulatory barriers that may contribute to corruption. Figure 2A shows that for a given number of procedures, the number of days to start a business is positively...
This morning I published an interview with Jean Pesme from the World Bank's anti-corruption program StAR. Here's a look at what else happened on Anti-Corruption Day:
Thousands marched against corruption in Indonesia. Plus, bloggers from the Huffington Post think there's more to come.
The World Economic Forum has published its Global Agenda Council on Corruption.
Transparency International asks, "What does Anti-corruption stand for"?
The OECD held a roundtable discussion on "Foreign Bribery: Who Pays the Price".
A look into what Switzerland is doing to fight corrupt money.
Ban Ki-moon argues, "Corruption is not some vast impersonal force. It is the result of personal decisions, most often motivated by greed."
(h/t Transparency International...
December 9th is the UN's official anti-corruption day, and in order to celebrate, PSD blog has been working with the World Bank's Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR), a partnership between the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank. It is driven by four guiding principles:
StAR encourages and supports the ratification, domestication and implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption, which provides the legal framework for international collaboration in the return of stolen assets that are the proceeds of corruption
StAR is focused on international asset recovery, targeting financial centers in developed countries
Asset recovery is a demand driven, country-led activity
StAR provides assistance in the technical dimensions of asset...
There are many ways of making money. One of them is rigging the system in your own favor. The son of Equatorial Guinea’s ruler has perfected the approach in his own back yard.
…the president’s son and agriculture minister has transferred at least $73m (£44m)into America to pay for a $35m Malibu mansion and private jet. Teodoro Obiang Nguema junior is said to have imposed a tax on timber payable not to the national treasury but directly to him.
Oil has certainly fueled economic growth in the country and in GDP per capita terms the country is one of the richest in the world (more than $30,000 according to the World Bank which is higher than Spain, Italy, Greece, South Korea and others.)
But, how do you contrast this income with extreme poverty on the ground - where 60%...
More developments in the Argentinian fake medicines scandal which, in case you haven't been reading, has been linked to key supporters of the President.Already arrested are the head of a trade union (and, oddly, his girlfriend) and head of a pharmaceutical company. And four others.Now reports suggest officials in the Ministry of Health are implicated and that more arrests will follow.Where fake drugs exist, corruption is typically not far behind. This serves as yet another example of why the problem cannot be solved by increasing the power of politicians and government officials. They're often the ones driving the fakes in the first place.GOTCHA! Update: the under-secretary of Health, Buenos Aires, has turned himself in. Click here for the......
With the recent conference on UN Convention on Corruption (UNCAC) implementation in Doha on November 9-13, anti-corruption efforts are a hot topic in the Middle East and North Africa. At a minimum, the Doha gathering focused the attention of government bodies tasked with implementing the agreement, and the final statement of this conference encourages the state parties to adopt a robust implementation plan. Although most Arab states have signed and ratified UNCAC, implementation has been weak and anti-corruption advocates are using the tool as a point of pressure on their governments. Indeed, they have an uphill battle to fight: international barometers and indicators, such as the recently released Corruption Perception Index (CPI), an annual ranking produced by Transparency...