Financial Transparency Coalition

Since his election Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking about corruption. The subject has had prominence in many of his speeches since his campaign in 2008. In September of 2009 he announced a major reform program aiming to tackle rampant corruption in his country, although he didn’t actually detail what the reform program would include. Medvedev has also repeatedly vowed to tackle corruption in the court systems, stating that Russia should do its best to “make the courts become as much as possible independent from the authorities and at the same time to absolutely depend on...

Robin Hodess, Knowledge & Research Director at Transparency International, Draws the Dots between Financial Transparency and Climate Change This year’s Transparency International Global Corruption Report, launched this week in Dhaka, Bangladesh, tackles corruption and climate change. The message? Without better governance, climate change measures could go awry. The risk is corruption. The result could be lack of progress in the reduction of greenhouses gases, putting the planet at risk. The new TI report collects more than 50 articles on corruption threats that could affect climate governance, such as policy capture, and it highlights the challenges that will arise as large amounts...

In Treasure Islands I briefly mention Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Sectetary from 1961-1971, who had such stridently anti-government views that he banned the publication of official statistics because they would, he said, attract too much attention from civil servants. Such is the anti-government, anti-society worldview that I have so often encountered offshore. I also quote Jack Blum, a top US criminal investigator, who described Hong Kong as an "anything-goes, no-regulation world . . corporations doing business in China set up Hong Kong companies with secret shareholdings . . today Hong Kong is where most of the corruption in...

Behind only fear and tragedy, Osama bin Laden’s most enduring legacy on our world will be the changes in national and international security. Our response to his hate—and the attacks he orchestrated on September 11th—was overwhelming shaped by our collective realization that many of our security systems cannot protect against those who want so badly to do us harm. The most conspicuous of these systematic changes was—of course—in air transportation, as anyone who has flown before and after 2001 can tell you. The United States' capacity to respond to terrorist attacks was also improved with the...