Author Archives: Matthew Stephenson

Unknown's avatar

About Matthew Stephenson

Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Guest Post: Global Lessons from Sri Lankan Civil Society for Post-Crisis Governance Reform

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest post is from Nishan de Mel and Inoshini Perera of Verite Research and Nikhil Wilmink of the Open Society Foundations.

In 2022, Sri Lanka experienced the most severe economic crisis of its post-independence history. Foreign reserves were emptied as the currency depreciated by over 80% and essential imports such as fuel and medicine were curtailed. Sri Lanka was forced to default on its external debt of over USD 40 billion. In desperation, the government went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance—the seventeenth time Sri Lanka has done so since 1965. The IMF’s rescue program, which prioritized price stabilization above all else, inflicted substantial hardship, as interest rates spiked, poverty doubled to around 30%, and the previous eight years of GDP growth were wiped out.

The crisis triggered an awakening among the Sri Lankan people about the consequences of corrupt governance. Protests proliferated and grew into an avalanche known as the Aragalaya (mass uprising), the largest democratic protest in Sri Lanka’s history. Protestors viewed Sri Lanka’s economic collapse as rooted in corruption, impunity, and the abuse of political power. The protests ultimately forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign and flee the country.

Given that concerns about corruption and misgovernance were so central to the discussion of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, in early 2023 the IMF reached an agreement with the Sri Lankan government to conduct a “Governance Diagnostic Assessment” (GDA) – the first one in Asia. Civil society in Sri Lanka was not overly impressed, however. Sri Lankan civil society organizations (CSOs) were concerned that IMF consultations with civil society would be largely performative. CSOs were also concerned that there would not be sufficient accountability for implementation of the anticorruption measures that the IMF designed with the government. Leading think tanks and CSOs in Sri Lanka came together to form the Civil Society Initiative on Anti-Corruption Reform for Economic Recovery (CSI-group). The CSI-group initially requested that the IMF transcribe and publish its consultations with CSOs, but the IMF would not agree to this. Therefore, the CSI-group took an independent path by bringing hundreds of other CSOs together into a process for producing a “Civil Society Governance Diagnostic Report”. This was the first time any country’s civil society sector had ever drafted a governance report to guide the IMF’s GDA. That GDA, produced after the civil society diagnostic, was an excellent document that aligned closely with what had been produced by the CSOs. Sri Lankan CSOs also created of an independent IMF Tracker to monitor the government’s implementation of its IMF program commitments and to provide more transparency about the significant failures to comply with commitments on governance and anticorruption, even when these were not highlighted in the IMF’s reviews.

Recognizing the core governance weaknesses needed a multi-pronged approach. The Sri Lankan think tank Verité Research decided to involve bondholders as well. In June 2024, Verité Research proposed a new debt instrument: a “Governance-Linked Bond” (GLB), designed to reduce reducing the risk of repeated defaults in countries with poor governance. Through the GLB, creditors agree to reduce the borrowing country’s coupon payments if that country takes certain governance-improving actions—actions that benefit the creditors as well by reducing the risk of default. Thus, GLBs make the adoption of these governance improvements a win-win for both debtor countries and creditors. The GLB proposal was adopted by private creditors in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring in December 2024. The final GLB issue made up about 13.5% of Sri Lanka’s new restructured debt (USD 1.44 billion) with a coupon reduction of 75 basis points, from 2028-2035 if three key performance indicators (KPIs) are met: (1) a target revenue-to-GDP ratio; (2) the publication of a fiscal strategy that complies with the new public finance management act that Sri Lanka adopted in August 2024; and (3) compliance with the information disclosure covenant in the restructured bond contracts. Notably, these KPIs were drawn from a set of sensible set of compliance actions related to the existing laws of the country, its macroeconomic targets, and stipulations on the bond contract; there was no need to link them to the IMF’s GDA.

In sum, CSOs’ engagement in Sri Lanka resulted in a number of meaningful improvements, including the IMF’s adoption of a much-improved GDA and the innovation of the GLB, a new global instrument to improve governance. With Kenya now undertaking a similar process, some key lessons from Sri Lanka include: being able to take advantage of windows of opportunity and momentum swings (such as the momentum from popular protests around corruption and the IMF program in Sri Lanka); and building diverse coalitions able to take a systemic approach (Sri Lanka’s significant achievements have come from partnerships with unusual partners including bondholders).

Guest Post: Getting into the Weeds of Victim Compensation in Foreign Bribery Cases

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest post is from Sam Hickey, a lawyer and former regular GAB contributor:

Given the Trump Administration’s decision to pause FCPA enforcement and disband the DOJ’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, the United Kingdom has become an even more important actor in international efforts to remediate those most impacted by foreign bribery, and the global fight against corruption more generally.

Together with the Basel Institute on Governance, I have written a report on the UK’s use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) to compensate the victims of foreign bribery. Given the inherent difficulties in seizing, forfeiting, and repatriating illicit wealth through traditional asset recovery frameworks, DPAs possess immense potential to remediate the victims of corruption in low-income countries. But this practice also raises a number of questions and challenges, which the report seeks to address. Here are some of the more serious ones: Continue reading →

Announcement: Academia Against Corruption in the Americas Conference — Call for Papers

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest announcement is from Bonnie Jo Palifka, Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Government at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

The Call for Papers for the 2025 Academia against Corruption in the Americas (ACA) Conference is out! We’re excited to be hosted by the Observatorio Fiscal, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, on May 21-23, 2025.

I founded ACA in 2018, inspired by two events. First, in 2016, I attended the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Panama. This was my first anticorruption conference, and I was excited to be surrounded by so many like-minded people. One moment that struck me occurred during a panel session, when Louise Shelley, in the audience, expressed how happy she was to see scholars (not only practitioners) at the conference and how important it is to teach anti-corruption to the new generations. The following year, at a conference on teaching anticorruption at the UNODC in Vienna, Matthew Stephenson (founder of the GAB) and I lamented the fact that most academic anticorruption conferences are held in Europe, Africa, and Asia. With two small children at home, making it difficult for me to travel (the aforementioned conferences notwithstanding), I decided to bring the scholars to me. Matthew and Louise were keynote speakers at the 2018 and 2019 conferences, respectively, in Monterrey, Mexico. Other keynote speakers have included Susan Rose-Ackerman, Michael Johnston, and Stephen Morris, as well as several rising stars. Our peer-reviewed sessions have featured presenters from top universities and important organizations from around the world.

The ACA Conference has three main goals:

  1. to enrich and promote multidisciplinary research on corruption and anticorruption in the Americas.
  2. to promote the inclusion of courses or sub-topics on corruption in university curricula.
  3. to form a research and teaching network in the Americas. (See our group on LinkedIn and our nascent YouTube channel, where we will eventually post the videos from previous ACA conferences and our new online seminar series, the ACA Forum.)

We accept three types of submissions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. (Presentations at the conference may be in English or Spanish):

  1. research on corruption and anticorruption, especially in the Americas
  2. didactic tools and examples of teaching corruption and anticorruption
  3. anticorruption tools and initiatives from civil society

While the ACA is a marriage of my interests—Corruption Studies and Latin American Studies—note that our focus is on the Americas more broadly.  Research on corruption in the United States, for example, would be especially timely.

We invite professors, researchers, and civil society organizations from all disciplines to submit proposals (full papers or reports, at any stage from draft through published) before February 28, 2025.

Please send any queries to anticorruption.academia@gmail.com.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and hope to see you at the conference in person or online.

Announcement: 9th Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network Forum — Call For Papers

Posted on by
Reply

Ilona Wysmulek, Assistant Professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a leader of the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN), provides the following announcement, which may be of interest to many GAB readers:

The Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN) will be holding its 9th ICRN Forum for early-career corruption researchers and practitioners in June 12 to 14, 2025, at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. The ICRN Forum is a dynamic gathering of international and interdisciplinary early career researchers working on (anti-)corruption and integrity. Participants will have the opportunity to present their research, exchange ideas, start collaborative projects and take part in co-creation sessions in the field. This year, it is also an opportunity for researchers from OECD ODA countries to apply for the two-year Governance & Integrity Fellowship, which will start at ICRN 2025. The Fellowship includes research training, mentoring and a small research grant. It also includes sponsorship to attend the Forum in Vienna to present a research proposal.

Those interested in applying, may do so here. Applicants are required to fill in the registration form, choose your session type and follow the guidelines. ICRN Forum welcomes submissions to four types of sessions:

(1) Promotion  – presentations of advanced-stage research that is nearing completion or has been completed.  This includes work where the researcher has already conducted fieldwork/collected data, undertaken some degree of analysis and produced some results. We also encourage submissions that focus on promoting completed work, discussing the challenges of fieldwork, and/or possible avenues of analysis based on material already collected.

(2) Work in Progress  – presentations of researchers currently at the early stages of their research process who wish to discuss their research design, expected/potential fieldwork issues (i.e., before data collection), identified research gaps, and contribution statements. The objective of these sessions is for presenters to benefit from feedback on the initial phase of their research work.

(3) Co-creation  – sessions dedicated to developing new research ideas and fostering open collaboration projects. These may include concepts for joint publications, teaching initiatives, or the organization of conference panels, as well as more innovative approaches to advancing corruption research through discussions of methodologies or data collection techniques. Applicants to a co-creation session are expected to volunteer to moderate (chair) the session. Proposals for a co-creation session must include a clear description of objectives, procedures, guiding questions, and any other elements considered relevant for the successful holding of discussions.

(4) New ideas from the Global South (fellowship programme)  – presentations of research proposals by selected Governance & Integrity Fellows. These proposals should outline a plan for research that has not yet been conducted. The sessions will provide the opportunity for discussion and constructive feedback.

For the Promotion, Work in Progress or Co-creation sessions, a 300-word abstract is required. To become a  Governance & Integrity Fellow and present at the “New ideas from the Global South” session, a  500-word research proposal, a 300-word motivation statement  and a  2-page CV are required.

There is no registration fee, but participants would bear travel and accommodation expenses. Governance & Integrity Fellows will be supported by a travel and accommodation grant. Any questions can be sent to the organizing team at icrn2025@ceu.edu

Application Deadline: Monday, February 3, 2025.

Where? Central European University (CEU), Vienna, Austria

When? Thursday, June 12, to Saturday, June 14, 2025

Who? Early-career scholars and practitioners studying (anti-)corruption and integrity

Launching the Fellowship: Researchers living and working in the OECD ODA country can apply to a two-year Governance & Integrity Fellowship that launches at ICRN 2025.

Guest Post: Italy’s Misguided, and Possibly Illegal, Repeal of the Abuse of Office Offense

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest post is from Roberta De Paolis, a post doctoral fellow in Criminal Law at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa.

For nearly a hundred years, the Italian criminal code included an “abuse of office” offense. Public officials committed this crime when, in the course of performing their duties, they acted in a way that was otherwise unlawful or entailed a conflict of interest, and in so doing secured a monetary advantage to themselves and/or inflicted monetary damage on others. For example, if a public official rigged a public procurement auction, steering a government contract to a relative or friend, that public official would not only have violated the rules on competition procedures, but would also have committed the crime of abuse of office. But the crime could apply more broadly. For example, if a local official denied a citizen a building permit for self-interested reasons, the official may have committed the abuse-of-office crime.

On its face, the abuse of office offense seems like a potentially powerful anticorruption tool. But it had proved to be controversial. Many, including Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, claimed that the crime was too vague, and potentially too broad. For example, in many small Italian towns, many people—particularly at the elite level—know each other socially and often have family ties, and as a result many decisions that local politicians make could be characterized as helping their friends or relations or otherwise involving a conflict of interest. Consider a mayor who announces a tender for public construction project, and the best bid comes from an acquaintance of the mayor. If the city government accepts that bid, the local political opposition could report the decision to the authorities and assert that the mayor abused her office by favoring an acquaintance in the tender procedure. As a result, according to critics of the abuse-of-office offense, many local public officials were discouraged from implementing socially valuable public works projects, out of fear of ending up under criminal investigation. The critics also pointed out that, despite the large number of prosecutions for abuse of office, these prosecutions rarely produced convictions: the most up-to-date statistics report that about 5,000 criminal prosecutions for abuse of office resulted in only nine convictions. This is suggestive evidence that many of the investigations were meritless, and possibly politically motivated tools of harassment.

That, at least, is what critics of the law argued, and this past August, those criticisms carried the day: Parliament voted to repeal the abuse-of-office offense. But was that the right decision? Many experts say no. Notably, the President of Italy’s National Anti-Corruption Authority, Giuseppe Busia, asserted that repealing the abuse of office offense leads to impunity in cases of conflict of interest like favoritism in public competition or tenders. Similarly, a spokesman for the European Commission claimed that the repeal of this law “decriminalizes an important form of corruption and may have an impact on the effectiveness of the European fight against corruption.” (Indeed, it is worth noting that 25 of the 27 EU countries have criminal laws prohibiting abuse of office.) Supporters of the repeal respond that these concerns are overblown because other provisions of the criminal code, as well as Italian administrative law, still apply to the egregious cases. But that is not obviously true, and, worrisomely, the repeal of the criminal abuse of office offense has not been counterbalanced by the introduction of new administrative offenses to address the problematic conduct. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Embracing and Enhancing IMF’s Governance Conditionalities To Fight Corruption

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest post is from Beauty Emefa Narteh, the Executive Secretary at the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, and Leslie Tsai, General Counsel at the Chandler Foundation and lead for the organization’s efforts to support good governance, increased transparency and accountability, and robust international and national integrity ecosystems

 IMF bailouts of countries in financial distress often come with unpopular strings attached—strict conditionalities related to fiscal policy that often force countries to make deep spending cuts and to increase taxes on food, healthcare, and fuel. These painful austerity measures have often proved counterproductive, plunging countries into recession and sparking anti-government riots and protests.

But while IMF conditionalities have gotten a deservedly bad reputation, a relatively new category of IMF conditionalities, focused on governance reforms, presents the 3.3 billion people living in countries swept up in the current global debt crisis with something precious: hope and the possibility of a true pathway to financial stability. The IMF’s expanded the use of governance-related conditions is a based on a belated acknowledgement of a point that civil society leaders and anticorruption champions around the world have long emphasized: that governance issues are as macroeconomically critical as fiscal policy, and that when corruption bloats and distorts government spending, a narrow focus on economic policy alone will be insufficient to pull countries out of chronic economic crisis. Notably, the IMF’s governance conditionalities are far more popular among ordinary citizens than their standard austerity measures. This is not only because corruption is widely seen as a scourge that most heavily burdens the poor, but also because anticorruption systems that protect government coffers can blunt the need for cuts to social spending over the long term.

The IMF’s governance conditionalities provide a powerful if imperfect tool for savvy civil society leaders who have long advocated for increased government accountability and stronger anticorruption systems. When governments are in discussions with the IMF about bailouts, domestic civil society groups in those countries can use this opportunity to press for much-needed progress on anticorruption. Continue reading →

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Dan Hough

Posted on by
Reply
A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett interviews Professor Dan Hough of the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption about his new book, Foul Play: Tackling Football’s Integrity Problem. Professor Hough discusses how he applies analytical frameworks from the corruption and governance fields to analyze the integrity challenges facing football, both on and off the pitch. The discussion also covers how debates over integrity in football connects to broader debates about how to encourage integrity in other areas.
You can find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

New Podcast Episode, Featuring David Jancsics

Posted on by
Reply
A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett interviews Professor David Jancsics of the San Diego State University School of Public Affairs about about his his research on the sociology of corruption. Drawing on sociological and other theoretical insights, Professor Jancsics proposes classifying types of corruption using two cross-cutting dimensions–the type of resource transfer and the type of client–and uses these dimensions to develop a new typology of corruption that identifies for basic types: (1) market corruption, (2) social bribe, (3) corrupt organization, and (4) state capture. The discussion goes into particular depth regarding that fourth category, exploring the problem of state capture in Hungary. The interview also touches on another line of Professor Jancsics’ research, concerning corruption at borders.
You can find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

Guest Post: Lessons from the Extractive Sector for Fighting Corruption in Green Energy

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s guest post comes from Mark Robinson, Executive Director of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), and Maja de Vibe, Senior Vice President at Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy. They write in a personal capacity, building on a joint research paper published by the Basel Institute on Governance.

In response to the global climate crisis, countries around the world are seeking to shift to clean energy. The result is massive pressure to invest in solar, wind, hydropower, and green hydrogen projects. As this critical investment moves forward, it is more important than ever to address the corruption and governance risks around issues like supply chains, licensing, land leases, community consultation, tax and royalties. After all, as investment in the renewables sector grows, so does its attractiveness to those seeking to exploit opportunities for bribery and fraud. Making good governance and anticorruption a priority can help the green energy sector mitigate the risks to communities and the environment, and ensure more equitable sharing of the benefits and burdens of renewable energy development

Yet while companies are increasingly aware of governance and corruption risks in the renewables sector, there has been insufficient action to address them so far. There are numerous reasons for this, including the fact that companies might prioritize more immediate needs, such as securing finance or community support, or they may lack the knowledge and capacity to analyze and address corruption risks. Continue reading →

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Tom Firestone and Scott Greytak

Posted on by
Reply
After a brief late-summer hiatus, a new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett interviews Tom Firestone, a partner at the law firm Squire Patton Boggs, and Scott Greytak, the Director of Advocacy at Transparency International US, about the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA), a new and groundbreaking piece of US federal legislation that makes it a crime for any foreign official to demand or accept a bribe from an American or American company, or from any person while in the territory of the United States. The conversation touches on the scope of the act, how it relates to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the effects that the law may have on anticorruption enforcement efforts in other countries, and the challenges related to FEPA enforcement.
You can find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!