Financial Transparency Coalition

While the year-long allegations of misconduct against the Alstom Group (ALO) have led to some significant consequences for the company – US$9.5 million worth of them – a lot of questions about what happened remain. At the end of February, the World Bank decided to debar two Alstom subsidiaries for three years and agreed on a Negotiated Resolution Agreement worth US$9.5 million in restitution payments with respect to its conduct in Zambia. However, because of the nature of the settlement, the company has not had to publicly disclose the nature and scope of the alleged activities. There is currently a...

Over the weekend, the New York Times alleged that Wal-Mart deliberately hid investigations into bribery practices at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private sector employer with currently 209,000 employees. Allegedly there is a paper trail that includes hundreds of suspect payments worth more 24 million USD in total.

How do you fancy owning two Bugatti Veyrons, the fastest and priciest street car in the world, with a top speed of 250mph and a cost of €1m a pop? Or how about splashing out €18m on art formally owned by French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent? How about affording all of this on your monthly salary of €3,200? These are just some of the luxuries enjoyed by Teodorin Obiang, eldest son of the autocratic president of Equatorial Guinea, in his position as the country’s agriculture and forestry minister, which were seized by French authorities in February on suspicions...

Eastern Europe has been wracked with corruption scandals over the past few weeks. In Hungary, Transparency International released a report about the cozy relationship between business and government in the country, and warns that the government’s internal checks and balances are breaking down. In Slovakia, Smer-Social Democracy party took over the government in part due to a massive corruption scandal. Earlier this year, two ex-ministers of Romania were jailed on corruption charges and Romaina’s former prime minister became the country’s first head of government to be convicted of corruption. The truth is, though, that corruption in Eastern Europe is not...