A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Asoka Obeysekere, the Executive Director for Transparency International’s Sri Lanka chapter (TI-SL). Our conversation covers TI-SL’s various approaches to combating corruption in Sri Lanka, including both “retail” legal aid efforts to assist individual citizens in dealing with corrupt bureaucrats, as well as efforts to secure broader legal and institutional reforms, as well as broader cultural change. On that latter subject, the interview also covers the system of corruption in Sri Lanka, how corruption has become normalized, and whether an dhow attitudes about corruption can be changed. We also discuss how TI-SL, drawing inspiration from a civil society initiative in Ukraie, has compiled its own registry of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) using publicly available, and how the creation of such a database can be helpful in detecting suspicious activity and exposing potential wrongdoing. The interview concludes with the advice Mr. Obeysekere would offer to other civil society leaders operating in similarly challenging environments on how they can be most effective in advancing an anticorruption agenda.
You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
- The Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN) website
- iTunes
- Soundcloud
- Google Podcasts
- Apple Podcasts
- Stitcher
- Spotify
- Overcast
- Castbox
KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.
GAB | The Global Anticorruption Blog 