Financial Transparency Coalition

Does legal corruption exist? Unfortunately yes, and it poses a major challenge to the anti-corruption fight. Friendship is hardly banned by law, but friendship between political leaders and business people can hurt credibility or legitimacy of the decisions of the former, when the latter make them friendly gifts or donations. The claim for transparency is also a claim for true accountability of the decision makers, whether in the political or in the business world. Informal and opaque networks often advance their financial interests by using the discrepancy between what is formally condemned by law and what would shock every honest...

A Wall Street Journal article and a BBC program have recently discussed the potential merits of corruption. This seemingly provocative topic is indeed thought-provoking, but not exactly along the lines that the publishers or contributors intended. If we try to sum up the arguments that were developed, they are several. Corruption may be a way to circumvent bureaucratic inefficiencies, and to set a business or export goods more quickly, if not to simply survive like in the former USSR. The networks between...

Transparency has been at the forefront of public debate since the beginning of the global crisis in October 2008. One of the indirect outcomes of the crisis has probably been the rise of the G20 as the forum where global governance was discussed, with a strong stance towards transparency in the first summits that dealt with the crisis. General assessment of G20 performance in transparency-related matters is probably mixed. Whereas strong language is extremely welcome against corruption, enhanced regulation and increased disclosure lag behind with respect to financial markets or disbursement of public funds, not to mention domestic implementation in...

If we believe Plutarch, Solo abolished debt or reduced debt interests in Athens in the 6th century BC, but having informed three friends of his project, he had the discontent to find out that those friends had borrowed to purchase vast amounts of land shortly before the new law was enacted. Insider trading, fraud in finance, dissymmetry of information, lack of transparency have probably always been components of money dealings. They did not emerge in 2008, and ethics has never formed the golden rule of finance; nor has immorality, since finance is what human beings make it. Continue Reading