Financial Transparency Coalition

If you’ve been following the melodrama surrounding the Bank of Kabul unfold, you’ll already know that the situation has (somewhat) stabilized. If you haven’t, here’s what you missed. Last week panic struck when President Karzai approved the dismissal of the Bank’s CEO, Sherkhan Farnood, amid numerous allegations of large scale corruption. According to high-level reports, top executives of the bank had been lending millions of dollars to the political elite for purchases of high-end real estate in Dubai. In the face of United Arab Emirates’ alarming real estate bubble, these investments are looking frighteningly sour. If...

The New York Times reports today that Hamid Karzai, the current president of Afghanistan, admitted to helping his aide escape corruption charges. From the Times:

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday for the first time that he had personally intervened to free a top political aide who had been detained on graft charges by two American-backed Afghan anticorruption units. The aide, Mohammed Zia Saleh, head of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, was arrested in late July after investigators wiretapped Mr. Saleh apparently soliciting bribes from...

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...

On Sunday, US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a promissory gem to the leaders gathered in Uganda, the pearl of Africa. It was not a pledge of more foreign aid for the continent – which has tripled since 2000 – but it could bring billions of dollars to Africa:

“ I’m pleased to announce that the U.S. Department of Justice is launching a new Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative aimed at combating large-scale foreign official corruption and recovering public funds for their intended – and proper – use:...