Financial Transparency Coalition

We need to rethink the traditional relationship between industrial resource extraction and local development, writes Transparency International's François Valérian.

Our traditional approach to the link between industrial exploitation of underground wealth and local development is fundamentally flawed. While there is ample recognition that industrial corporations have to help local development where they operate, the rationale behind such efforts is rarely articulated. Implicit rationale is most often to buy some kind of local peace through community investment. More theoretical and acceptable explanations make extensive use of...

JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesia has succeeded in dismantling a major new Al-Qaeda-style terrorist network but corruption and complacency threaten to unravel its gains against home grown extremists, a think tank said Tuesday.

The Senate subcommittee on investigations held their hearing today to highlight the problem of US law and money laundering activities from foreign officials. They also released a report, which can be downloaded here. I wrote about the hearing yesterday, so I'd like to make a general comment about the report. Reading through each of the case studies, a theme emerges. At various points in each study, certain public and private individuals and institutions identified the unlawful or suspect nature of the financial transactions taking place in front of them. Often, they acted to close a bank account, notify authorities,...

As many of you know, tomorrow (Wednesday, December 9th, 2009) is International Anti-Corruption Day. Among the days festivities, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is sponsoring a roundtable on the fight against bribery and corruption, and Task Force member Transparency International is hosting a lecture with Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Both of the events should be fascinating if you get a chance to attend. It's also important to remember that on a day as symbolically important as tomorrow, we (in the developed world) have a tendency to think of corruption solely as a problem...