The UK’s Failure-to-Prevent-Bribery Offense Has Succeeded in Preventing Bribery

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The UK Bribery Act 2010 has been widely heralded as “the gold standard” of anti-bribery laws, an “exemplary” statute that is “a lodestar for other countries.” That the UK is now seen as a “world leader” in the fight against foreign bribery, after years of being seen as a laggard, is due in no small part to UK Bribery Act’s most innovative aspect: the failure to prevent bribery offense under section 7. This section makes commercial organizations doing business in the UK criminally liable if they fail to prevent a person associated with their organization from bribing another for the purpose of obtaining or retaining an advantage for the organization. “Associated” persons are defined broadly as including anyone who performs services on behalf of the organization, including employees, contractors and agents. But companies can avoid liability for failure to prevent bribery if they can show that they had adopted “adequate procedures” to prevent such wrongdoing. This feature of the Act has received growing international endorsement. Numerous jurisdictions have adopted similar provisions (e.g. Australia, Kenya, Bermuda, Ireland, South Africa) or are considering doing so (New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong). Moreover, within the UK itself, this failure to prevent framework has been expanded to contexts such as tax evasion and fraud offenses, and is also being considered for tackling human rights harms, mistreatment of vulnerable persons and computer misuse offenses.

Yet despite such widespread praise, section 7, and the UK Bribery Act more generally, have their detractors. The main criticisms tend to fall into two categories. First, some have argued that section 7 has not been as effective in changing corporate behavior as might have reasonably been expected. Second, some have argued that section 7’s “adequate procedures” defense is too vague. Both of these criticisms are overstated. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Likely to Ok Trump’s Firing of Whistleblower Protection Agency Head — But

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Anticorruption activists will almost certainly soon awake to more bad news about the Trump Administration and corruption: A Supreme Court decision upholding the sacking of the official responsible for protecting government whistleblowers.

A Trump win at the Supreme Court is bad news, both in legal and public relations terms. But the anticorruption community and those worried about Trump’s abuse of executive power should temper their laments. Especially because their lamentations will amplify the PR value of the win.

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U.S. Prosecutors Resign Rather Than Obey Order to Drop Corruption Charges

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Corruption fighters around the world are surely appalled at the Trump Administration’ s latest strike against the rule of law. And certainly heartened by the refusal of both politically-appointed and career prosecutors to be complicit.

On February 10 Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Bove ordered federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon to dismiss bribery charges pending against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Sassoon, a Trump appointee, resigned in protest.  Bove then went down a list of career prosecutors hunting for someone who would obey his order. At last count seven had also resigned rather than carry out the order. Details on the still developing story from open sources are here, here, and here.

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Judicial Elections Will Worsen, Not Alleviate, Mexico’s Judicial Corruption Problem

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Mexico recently passed sweeping judicial reforms. These reforms, which are to be phased in between 2025 and 2027, include various elements including a relaxation of the required qualifications for judicial service, shorter tenures, reduced salaries, and new oversight bodies. But by far the most consequential change is the introduction of judicial elections, which will make Mexico the first country to directly elect almost all its judges. (The elections will not be fully open, however, as the slate of candidates for each judicial position will be determined by evaluation committees, subject to veto of particular candidates by the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.) Although proponents advanced many arguments in favor of this “high-stakes experiment,” anticorruption featured prominently. Indeed, the introduction of judicial elections was championed by former President López Obrador and his Morena party as a way to rid the Mexican judiciary of corruption by making judges responsive to the people, rather than big business or organized crime.

Judicial corruption is indeed a serious problem in Mexico. Bribery is commonplace in local and state courts, and also occurs, though not as frequently, in federal courts. Reportedly, large tax cases “get decided with a phone call or bag of money,” while the outcomes of criminal cases are often manipulated through “a combination of both fear and bribery.” But introducing judicial elections is unlikely to ”cleanse the judicial system of corruption”, and may actually make the corruption problem worse: Continue reading →

TI USA: Attorney General’s Memorandum Redirecting U.S. Anti-Corruption Efforts Raises Questions and Concerns

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Below is the statement TI US released today in response to Attorney General Bondi’s Memorandum directing federal prosecutors “to shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations that do not involve” criminal cartels and transnational crime and disbanding DoJ’s KleptoCapture Task Force and Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Congress passed the Federal Extortion Prevention Act by a wide margin and has regularly approved funding for the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. GAB shares TI USA’s concerns about the Attorney General’s Memorandum and hopes she will reconsider it as supporters in Congress, the business community, and the anticorruption community make their concerns known.

Washington, DC—On February 5, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi circulated a Memorandum to U.S. Justice Department employees with the subject heading “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations.”

The Memorandum explains the outlined changes as a step toward implementing President Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order entitled “Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

Among the changes are directives to (1) eliminate the KleptoCapture Task Force and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative (KARI); (2) prioritize Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) investigations that are related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs); (3) shift focus away from FCPA and FEPA investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection; and (3) remove the “bureaucratic impediment” requiring that investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA or FEPA regarding foreign bribery associated with cartels and TCOs first be authorized by, as well as conducted solely by, the Criminal Division and the Fraud Section, respectively, of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

Transparency International U.S Executive Director Gary Kalman issued the following statement:

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The Age of Opacity: Reviving India’s Right to Information Act

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Nearly five years ago, Inayat Sabhikhi’s post on this blog praised India’s Right to Information Act (RTIA) —which mandates public authorities to respond in a timely fashion to citizen requests for information—as a “remarkably effective anticorruption tool.” In contrast, last year the Supreme Court of India warned that the Act was “fast becoming a ‘dead letter law.’” What can be done to revitalize the RTIA? An important part of the answer lies in centering the rural poor—increasing awareness, affordability, and accessibility to the RTIA in India’s villages.

Given that many of the RTIA’s most lauded exposés have involved urban political corruption (see here, here, and here), it is sometimes forgotten that the law was fundamentally enacted so as to empower marginalized communities in rural India. In fact, the RTIA owes its existence to the collective efforts of activists who, throughout the 1990s, successfully campaigned to uncover local employment records to ensure fair compensation for small farmers. The RTIA’s promise in exposing rural corruption is illustrated in two cases that occurred shortly after the Act’s passage in 2005:

  • In 2007, farmers in the state of Assam leveraged the RTIA to reveal irregularities in the operation of the public system for distributing food to people living below the poverty. A further investigation revealed that local officials had diverted the rice to themselves, selling it on the black market at a sevenfold price increase.
  • In 2008, activists in the state of Punjab submitted RTIA applications to understand why federal money earmarked to build rural housing had not been distributed to the intended beneficiaries. As the requested reports indicated, the grants had been embezzled by village council members, who built houses for themselves. 

While these examples demonstrate that the RTIA’s potential to give rural citizens greater ability to hold local elites accountable, such examples are the exception rather than the rule. Although corruption is rampant in rural India (see here, here, here, and here), RTI requests in villages are all too rare. While 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas, barely 25% of RTI applications come from villages, and in some states that percentage is as low as 11%. In short, the communities with the most to gain from the RTIA are the ones that have used it the least.

Two reforms would help address this problem: 

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

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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.

What’s Corruption Got to Do With It? The Role of Anticorruption Rhetoric in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Protests

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Doctors in in the Indian city of Kolkata have been protesting and striking against the state’s ruling political regime since August 2024, with no end to the demonstrations in sight. The protests were initially sparked by the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at R.G. Kar Medical Hospital, with anti-misogyny as the protesters’ central rallying cry. The “Reclaim the Night” march in Kolkata, which inspired parallel marches across India and garnered international attention, epitomized this early focus. In recent months, however, the protests have evolved into a broader movement against corruption. As one politician noted in his resignation letter, “the present outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the corrupt.”

This might appear puzzling, as this anticorruption rhetoric seems rather disconnected from the movement’s original focus on justice for the victim and the broader culture of misogyny and violence against women. But there are at least three reasons why protests that originated in outrage over violence and misogyny have evolved into protests that foreground concerns about corruption.

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

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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.

The Kerjiwal Case and the Erosion of Transparency and Accountability in India

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Former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal rose to power championing anticorruption in Indian politics. But last March, India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), a semi-independent agency tasked with enforcing anticorruption laws, arrested Kejriwal in connection with allegations that his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received over $10 million in kickbacks in exchange for favorable liquor licenses in Delhi. This is not the first time that the AAP—a self-described anticorruption party—has been implicated in a corruption scandal (see here and here). Perhaps Kejriwal is yet another example of a politician caught betraying in private the principles he’d championed in public. 

But several observers have raised concerns about Kejriwal’s arrest, and suggested that it may reflect a disturbing politicization of anticorruption enforcement under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For one thing, critics point to the suspicious timing of the arrest: Kejriwal was arrested just weeks before India’s national elections, following two years of investigation with no prior action. And Kejriwal’s arrest may have distracted public attention from a potential corruption scandal that would affect Modi’s party, the BJP, involving BJP fundraising from anonymous corporate donations through a system that the Indian Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional. More generally, Kejriwal’s arrest fit a troubling pattern: Since 2014, 95% of the ED’s cases are against politicians from minority parties (under the previous regime, the number was 54%). Even more disturbing, 23 of the last 25 politicians probed for corruption saw charges dropped after switching allegiances to the BJP. And just a month prior to Kejriwal’s arrest, Hemant Soren, another popular Chief Minister critical of the BJP, was arrested on corruption charges.

So, is this a case where a hypocritical politician is being held accountable for betraying his own principles? Or is this an instance in which anticorruption enforcement has been weaponized by the incumbent president to discredit and punish political adversaries? Or both? How are citizens to know? Uncovering the truth is especially difficult when the three pillars meant to ensure transparency and accountability in Indian anticorruption efforts—the judiciary, the media, and civic organizations—appear increasingly susceptible to political and systemic pressures. When these institutions fail to inspire public confidence, the boundary between legitimate accountability and political retribution is obscured. Kejriwal’s case highlights the need to examine the state of these pillars and their ability to fulfill their critical roles in such contentious cases. 

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