Announcement: ICRN Forum — Call for Applications

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The Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN), on whose Board of Advisors I serve, will be holding its eighth annual ICRN Forum this coming June June 27 to 29, 2024 at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. The ICRN Forum is a brings together early career researchers from diverse disciplines, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology. Participant will have the opportunity to present their research (at different stages), exchange ideas, and take part in co-creation sessions.

Those who are interested in submitting an application to present at the Forum (including a registration form and a 300-word abstract) may do so here. The ICRN’s instructions for applicants indicates that the Forum organizers welcome theoretical and empirical contribution on corruption, anticorruption, and/or integrity–from practitioners as well as academic researchers–and that applicants may apply for any of the three types of sessions:

  • Research Findings: In these sessions, authors will present research at a more advanced stage. (That is, where the researcher has already carried out their fieldwork, collected data, conducted some degree of analysis, produced some results, even if preliminary.) We also encourage submissions focused on the promotion of completed papers, the discussion of fieldwork challenges, and/or possible analytical pathways based on already-collected materials.
  • Work in Progress: In these sessions, researchers will present early-stage ideas, with the main objective to help these researchers get useful feedback on research design, framing, and related issues.
  • Co-Creation-: These sessions will focus on developing new research ideas and/or open collaboration projects; these may include ideas for a joint publication, teaching activities, or the organization of conference panels, as well as more innovative ideas that may advance corruption research. 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, procedure, guiding questions, and any other elements considered relevant for the successful holding of discussions.

The deadline for submitting applications is Friday, February 9, 2024. Notification of acceptance will be sent out in March 2024. There is no registration fee, but participants will bear their own travel and accommodation expenses. Any questions can be sent to the organizing team at icrn2024@ics.ulisboa.pt

Shifting Goalposts: How FIFA Has Failed In Its Transparency Reforms

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FIFA, the body that oversees world football (soccer), has a long history of corruption well-documented on this blog, particularly during the tenure of former president Sepp Blatter (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). A series of groundbreaking indictments of numerous FIFA officials for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering by United States prosecutors, starting from 2015, led to multiple convictions, and revealed the widespread bribery involved in the awarding of 2010 World Cup hosting rights to South Africa. This scandal led to Blatter’s resignation in June 2015. (Blatter was later fined millions of dollars and banned from any involvement in FIFA activities for more than ten years by the organization’s Ethics Committee.) There have also been frequent allegations that Russian and Qatari officials allegedly bribed some FIFA executives and voters to win hosting rights to the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, though United States Attorneys probing FIFA have not elected to bring charges in relation to those allegations.

After Blatter’s resignation, FIFA pledged to clean up its act. In early 2016, Gianni Infantino was elected FIFA President. Infantino had campaigned on promises to crack down on corruption in the organization, and he pledged greater transparency in his first post-victory remarks. Shortly after assuming office, Infantino took steps to hire a chief compliance officer, publicly disclose the compensation of executive management, and bring FIFA’s accounting and auditing in line with industry best practices. But how has Infantino fared in increasing transparency when it comes to picking the host of the World Cup? 

Not very well. True, FIFA and Infantino widely touted the rigor of the process used to pick the United States, Canada, and Mexico as joint hosts for the 2026 Cup: an extensive consultation process introduced new standards for bidders, bids were subject to a years-long review window, new “technical requirements” for sustainable event management and environmental protection were created, and voting rights were expanded to FIFA’s entire 211-member body in place of being vested solely in FIFA’s executive committee. But the rather bizarre series of events this past October—culminating in FIFA picking the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 World Cups in a span of less than a month, with the winning bidder uncontested in both cases—demonstrates that the organization’s leadership has engineered rather ingenious methods of subverting nearly all of these reforms. Continue reading →

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Robert Klitgaard

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, host Dan Hough interviews Professor Robert Klitgaard, one of the most well-known and influential academics in the corruption field. In the conversation, Professor Klitgaard talks us through the origins of his ideas in applying institutional economic theory to understanding corruption issues, as originally set out in his 1980 book Controlling Corruption. He then discusses several other issues, including challenges related to elitism in developing and developed countries, the role of “culture” in anticorruption analysis, and his recent research in Bhutan and the lessons it might hold for other countries pursuing anticorruption reforms. You can also 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!

Any Change is Progress? African Citizens Hope the Coups will Leave the Fight against Corruption in Better Hands

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Africa has seen a recent spate of military coups—from Mali to Guinea to Burkina Faso to Niger to Gabon. Most Western powers have condemned these coups. But many Africans have rejoiced, or at least have been far less concerned. For example, a survey conducted shortly after the coup in Niger suggests that most people in four other West African countries (Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast) believed that the Niger coup was justified. Why the dissonance between Western and African reactions to these coups?

The answer has to do with the dysfunction and corruption of many nominally “democratic” African governments. Endemic corruption has destroyed public trust in African democracy, and coup leaders have made it clear that corruption is one of the core justifications for their takeovers. Whether this is sincere, a pretext, or a combination, it is clear that the coup leaders are tapping into a sense of genuine public grievance, and that many citizens in these countries have become so frustrated with their elected governments that they would willingly trade electoral democracy for a government with the political will to fight corruption and improve living conditions.

For this reason, it would be an error to see African citizens’ support for these coups as evidence of a turn against genuine democracy. But there is an enormous gap between genuine democracy and the reality of electoral democracy as it exists in many African countries. Westerners who are surprised by African citizens’ support for the recent coups have underestimated just how poorly the corruption of the previous regimes had devastated public trust.

Continue reading →

Guest Announcement: New Basel AML Index Now Available

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Kateryna Boguslavska, project manager at the Basel Institute on Governance, provides the following announcement:

Earlier this month, the Basel Institute on Governance released its annual Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Index; the public edition of this index, which draws on 18 separate indicators, ranks 152 jurisdictions according to each jurisdiction’s risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, and its capacity to counter those risks. (While the public edition is freely available, those interested in a more in-depth exploration of the data, for a larger number of jurisdictions, can sign up for the Expert Edition — also free for users outside the private sector.) The launch of the Basel AML Index was accompanied by a launch webinar, as well as a report. That report focuses on three important topics: virtual assets, confiscation of illicit assets, and the misuse of non-profit organizations for terrorist financing. This resource may be useful for many researchers who study corruption and illicit financial flows.

Guest Post: The OECD’s Report on Brazil Should Be a Wake-Up Call

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Today’s guest post is from Guilherme France, the Research and Advocacy Manager at Transparency International Brazil and a PhD candidate at the Institute for Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery (WGB) conducts periodic reviews (in successive “phases”) on how well signatories to the OECD Convention on Preventing Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. Recently, the WGB published its Phase 4 report on Brazil. The picture it paints is rather bleak, and should be a wake-up call for Brazilian citizens and, one hopes, the Brazilian government. While the WGB also acknowledged some improvements in Brazil’s anticorruption framework (such as better inter-institutional cooperation, an increase in funding for law enforcement agencies, and efforts to enact a stronger whistleblower protections), Brazil is underperforming with respect to enforcement, and backsliding with respect to institutional independence. Continue reading →

Developing an Effective Corruption Prevention Strategy: Insights from Sierra Leone

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It is often said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is nowhere truer than in the fight against corruption. That insight has helped shape the approach of Sierra Leone’s campaign against corruption over the last several years. In 2018, Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), of which I am the Commissioner (Head), made a deliberate policy decision to emphasize prevention over enforcement. The ACC created a designated “Prevention Department,” which was empowered to work, in conjunction with other oversight bodies such as the Supreme Audit Institution and the Public Sector Reform Agency, to ensure that corruption prevention systems and processes are embedded in the national administrative and governance architecture.

Of course, talking generally about “prevention” is easier than actually implementing effective corruption prevention mechanisms. So, what are some of the key tools that Sierra Leone has deployed to enhance its corruption prevention system? I will highlight five that have been especially important and effective: Continue reading →

TI Senegal to IMF: Hold Our Government to its Anticorruption Commitments

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Last June the International Monetary Fund approved $1.8 billion in loans to Senegal to stave off a debt crisis. Funds were conditioned among other measures on the government’s promise to strengthen the fight against corruption, a condition the government accepted wholeheartedly and without reservation. Indeed, IMF Deputy Director Kenji Okamura assured the IMF board before voting the loan that the Senegalese government was serious about anticorruption reform, that it recognized it was “critical to the restoration of growth and fiscal stability” (here).

The government’s promises and Okamura’s assurances are now in doubt. Forum Civil, the Senegal chapter of Transparency International, reported in late October that the government has done virtually nothing to keep its promises.  

The Fund is not helpless in the face of the government’s broken promises. The loan funds are being disbursed in tranches; each tranche requires board approval and a meeting to okay the first tranche set for December. Moreover, four of the anticorruption reforms – enforcing the asset declaration system, strengthening the anticorruption agency and the prosecution, and tightening the civil service ethics code — are “structural benchmarks. That is, IMF procedures require the Board to assay progress on each before okaying a tranche.

In its October report, reprinted below, the Forum Civil documents the government’s failure to live up to its promises, lays out immediate steps it should take to demonstrate it intends to keep them, and urges the IMF, for the sake of the citizens of Senegal and their future, to hold the government to its commitments

Continue reading →

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Panel Discussion on Professional Enablers

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.  This episode features a panel discussion on the role of so-called “professional enablers” (including lawyers, accountants, consultants, and others) in facilitating corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering, and related activities. The panelists–Robert Barrington, Guy Beringer, Liz Dávid-Barrett, Tena Prelec–discuss the meaning of the “professional enablers” term, distinguish legal from illegal functions, and discuss the types of corruption-related activities that these service providers might facilitate. The panelists provide a variety of case examples from around the world, focusing particularly on the legal profession, and discuss potential responses, including highr professional standards.

You can also 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!

A New Page in the Populist Playbook: Imran Khan Frames Anticorruption as Foreign Manipulation

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In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan—who, if declared eligible, would be seeking a return to office in the 2024 elections—faces numerous allegations of corruption and other financial impropriety. More than 200 cases have been filed against him in Pakistan’s courts, and he continues to sit behind bars in Adiala Jail. Yet these legal troubles have had little effect on Khan’s popularity in pre-election polls. Part of the reason, as I discussed in my last post, is that Pakistan’s long history of politicized anticorruption enforcement has left Pakistanis deeply apathetic about corruption allegations and weary of their frequently cynical use. But Khan has also been unusually successful in convincing the public that the charges against him are politically motivated. What accounts for his ability to rally the public to his side when similarly situated Pakistani politicians have failed before him? The answer may lie in Khan’s concerted focus on what he claims is evidence of American meddling. Continue reading →