Financial Transparency Coalition

Most large-scale corruption cases involve using legal entities to conceal ownership and control of corrupt proceeds, and policymakers should take steps to improve transparency to reduce opportunities for wrongdoing, according to a study released today by the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative of the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The report, The Puppet Masters: How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It, examines how bribes, embezzled state assets and other criminal proceeds are being hidden via legal structures – shell companies, foundations, trusts and others. The...

For any act of corruption, there is a demand—that is, a venal official who is willing to accept a bribe—but there is also a supply—an individual or business willing to supply it. The dualistic nature of corruption is a headache, particularly for public individuals and institutions interested in stemming the harmful practice. For example, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh has commented on the difficulty for environmental regulators inIndia to check violations of green controls. He noted "I can control the demand for corruption but someone has to control the supply of corruption too. I cannot stop that." Fortunately, as a...

Vietnam and the World Bank recently held the first Viet Nam Anti-Corruption Intiative, or VACI.  The Initiative encouraged the public—whether ordinary citizens, NGOs, or private business—to develop proposals to help combat corruption in their communities.  VACI then selected 34 promising ideas, and awarded a total of approximately $450,000 to help fund the implementation of these plans in the coming year.  It is hoped that this initiative will be repeated in 2013. In order for pervasive corruption to be combated effectively, public support for anti-corruption initiatives is essential, and this year has seen people around the world taking a stand against graft in their...

Classification is important—in any discipline. Classification of symptoms helps doctors determine the correct treatment for patients. It helps us pick out the right book in a library, settle on the appropriate sentence for a convict, and compare species of plants. For similar reasons, researchers collect countries into groups based on a variety of metrics that define prosperity. These systems allow us to compare gains in development, to better understand how gains in development can be achieved, and determine appropriate aid packages. It isn’t always easy because there isn’t any one parameter that successfully defines wealth or prosperity.