Tag Archives: Inter-American Development Bank

New Podcast, Featuring Roberto de Michele and Francesco De Simone

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This episode features my interview with Roberto de Michele and Francesco De Simone, who work as work in the state modernization specialists at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In our conversation, we discuss the work that the IDB does on anticorruption, transparency, and related issues, and also how the IDB (or any other entity working in this area) can assess the impact of its projects. We further discuss the relationship between grand and petty corruption, and closely associated questions concerning incremental versus disruptive anticorruption reform strategies. (This discussion includes some discussions of the recommendations of the report prepared by an outside expert advisory group commissioned by the IDB, which Rick discussed shortly after it came out.) Toward the end of the interview, we talk about the impact that scholarly research has had on Roberto and Francesco’s thinking on anticorruption-related topics, and we conclude the interview with a discussion of the current state of corruption in the Americas–considering both the optimistic and pessimistic views of where things are going in the region.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

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.

Top-Notch Advice from the Inter-American Development Bank on Combatting Corruption

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To say I opened a copy of Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Anticorruption, Transparency and Integrity in Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank’s latestadvice to Latin American and Caribbean governments on fighting corruption, with low expectations would be an overstatement. What specific, detailed, actionable and therefore useful measures could a report directed at 45 governments contain? Particularly given the diversity of the region’s governments, which range from prosperous, thriving middle-income democracies to desperately poor, repressive authoritarian regimes.  I thus assumed the report would follow the tiresome formula of so many previous attempts to spur developing nations to take meaningful steps to curb corruptions: a hodgepodge of obvious but vague generalizations wrapped around pleas for greater political will.

My subterranean expectations were only lowered given its institutional sponsor. Like the other regional development banks and the World Bank, the IDB exists to loan money and therefore strives to stay on the good side of the region’s governments to ensure they will continue to borrow.  In reports past from other development banks that consideration has often ruled out even the hint of politically controversial measures or criticism levelled at any government’s faltering anticorruption efforts.

The third strike against the report is its authors.  A distinguished collection of mostly Latin American “names” in the anticorruption field, all are busy experts whose main job is delivering high-profile lectures, authoring academic papers, and advising private sector entities and governments.  Devoting time and effort to an IDB publication that neither burnishes one’s academic credentials nor services clients was probably not high on their list of priorities. Most likely, I thought, they were asked to bless a precooked series of bromides assembled by interns and junior staff.

Boy, were my expectations off base.  Rather than a strike out, the report is a home run.  Or at least a stand-up triple. Continue reading →

Beneficial Ownership Disclosure by Multilateral Development Banks

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Joseph Kraus at The ONE Campaign recently summarized for GAB readers  measures governments are taking to require companies registered in their territory to reveal the natural person or persons who own and control them, their beneficial owners.  A parallel effort has begun to persuade the international development banks – the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – to reveal the beneficial owners of the companies “their monies” (read taxpayer monies) fund.  In May 2017, the U.S. Congress ordered the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to see that each bank: –

“collects, verifies, and publishes, to the maximum extent practicable, beneficial ownership information … for any corporation or limited liability company, other than a publicly listed company, that receives funds from [it].”  Division J, section 2079(f) of the  Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017.

As the U.S. is a significant funder of each bank, an American serves on the board of each.  In the 2017 law, Congress directed the Treasury Secretary, to whom the American board members answer, “to instruct” each to urge its bank to comply with Congress’ wish on beneficial ownership.  It also required the Secretary to report on how the successful the American board member had been in persuading the other board members and the management of their bank to gather and reveal beneficial ownership information.

The Secretary’s report contains several surprises on which banks took the U.S. effort on beneficial ownership seriously and which ones blew it off.  With the banks that ignored the U.S. effort, it leaves unanswered an interesting question: What if anything did board members representing other countries committed to the disclosure of beneficial ownership do to push the issue?

Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Link Between Perceived Corruption and Sovereign Risk Ratings

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Today’s guest post is from Roberto de Michele and Francesco De Simone, of the Inter-American Development Bank and Ugo Panizza of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

A year ago, at a seminar at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a representative from one of the major private credit rating agencies got everyone’s attention with a single slide. That slide showed a strong positive correlation between corruption perception indicators and sovereign risk ratings. The simple yet compelling message: corruption, or at least its perception, negatively affects a country’s perceived credit risk, in turn may raise the country’s borrowing cost.

What are we to make of this correlation? Does it indeed indicate a causal connection between corruption and high borrowing costs? If so, what are the implications for policymakers? Although there was some discussion of this issue in the academic literature a decade ago, the subject had not received much attention. Intrigued by this simple correlation, the IDB Transparency Fund sponsored a study of this topic, for which one of us (Ugo Panizza) served as principal investigator. That study, published last October, is available in English and Spanish on the IDB website. The main findings were as follows: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Behavioral Economics, Punishment, and Faith in the Fight Against Corruption

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The following guest post, by Roberto de Michele, Principal Specialist in the Institutional Capacity of the State Division at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), is a translated and slightly modified version of a post that Mr. de Michele originally published in Spanish on the IDB’s governance blog on August 29, 2016:

Last August, Hugo Alconada Mon, one of Argentina’s most prestigious investigative journalists, published an article (in Spanish) describing how road construction firms in Argentina created a cartel to fix public work contracts. Members of the cartel would meet in the board room of the sector chamber to conduct their business. The room has a statue of Our Lady of Luján, patroness of Argentina. Before commencing negotiations to fix contracts, assign “winners,” and distribute earnings, members of the cartel would turn around the image of Our Lady of Luján to face the wall, with her back to those gathered there. It was, as one of the sources candidly put it, “so that she doesn’t see what we were about to do.” This remark got me thinking about two possible explanations on why we break the law, cheat, and lie both to the government and to others. Continue reading →

Sanctions Systems of Multilateral Banks: Overview and Responses

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Although prosecutions under transnational anti-bribery laws like the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act may get more attention, the major multilateral development banks (MDBs) have adopted administrative sanctions systems that significantly contribute to the strengthening of integrity structures in the countries in which they operate. Indeed, the seven large MDBs share an anticorruption strategy that includes harmonized definitions of fraudulent, corrupt and other prohibited practices. The strategy also incorporates shared principles for conducting integrity due diligence in private sector transactions, and a framework for sharing information to address integrity concerns. These sanctioning systems help to deter and prevent corruption in funded projects, thereby helping to ensure that MDBs achieve their development mandates and fulfill their fiduciary duty to guarantee that their loans are used “only for the purposes for which the loan was granted”. In some cases, as in the World Bank’s Macmillan Publishers and SNC-Lavalin debarments, MDB sanctions have preceded criminal charges by national authorities. In this post, I will provide a brief overview of these systems. Continue reading →