Tag Archives: KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Jack Goldsmith

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview my Harvard Law School colleague Jack Goldsmith about what the Trump Administration has taught us about the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. system for constraining corruption, conflicts of interest, and other forms of wrongdoing by the President and senior members of the executive branch, as well as what kinds of institutional reforms and policy changes would help prevent such wrongdoing going forward. The conversation centers on Professor Goldsmith’s new book, After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, co-authored with Bob Bauer. Jack and I discuss the importance of norms in constraining wrongdoing and maintaining the independence of law enforcement bodies, various approaches to addressing financial conflict-of-interest risks in the context of the U.S. president, the challenges (but also the necessity) of relying on political checks, and the debates over whether to prosecute a former president, such as President Trump, for crimes allegedly committed while in office. You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Daniel Freund

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Jonathan Kleinpass interview Daniel Freund, a German representative in the European Parliament, where he serves on the Committee on Budgetary Control and co-chairs the Parliament’s Anti-Corruption Intergroup. Mr. Freund discusses the risks of corruption (or other forms of misappropriation) of EU funds and how to close these loopholes, as well as the use of conditionalities to promote the rule of law. Much of the interview focuses on the challenges posed by states like Hungary, where the Orban regime’s suppression of media freedom and judicial independence has created a situation in which Orban and his cronies are looting the state and enriching themselves to the tune of over one billion Euros per year, as well as entrenching their own power through a system of favoritism and crony capitalism. Mr. Freund discusses the challenges that the Hungarian situation poses for the EU, and the institutional mechanisms that the EU might use to respond this and similar situations.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Claudia Escobar

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Claudia Escobar, a former Magistrate Judge on the Court of Appeals in Guatemala. Judge Escobar resigned her position in 2014 after exposing corruption in the judicial selection process. Judge Escobar secretly recorded a meeting with representatives of the then-ruling party, who indicated that she would be promoted if she ruled in favor of the government in an important upcoming case. Judge Escobar subsequently released the recordings, and fled Guatemala for fear of reprisals. Since then, she has been working in the United States as a researcher, consultant, and advocate, with a focus on fighting judicial corruption in Guatemala and elsewhere in the Americas.

Our interview begins with a discussion of how Guatemala’s history, including more than 36 years of civil war, has created a culture of impunity and insecurity, and how the challenges this legacy poses to the creation of a genuinely impartial and honest judicial system. Judge Escobar describes many of the problems with Guatemala’s current judicial appointment system, and the associated corruption risks. Our conversation then turned to the impact and legacy of the UN-backed anti-impunity commission, known by its Spanish acronym CICIG. Judge Escobar offers her perspective on the fight against corruption under former President Jimmy Morales and new President Alejandro Giammattei, as well as a more general discussion of the politics of anticorruption in Guatemala and the prospects for future progress on this issue.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring James Wasserstrom (Part 2)

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, James Wasserstrom, with whom I did a podcast episode last month, returns for a second interview. In our first conversation, Mr. Wasserstrom and I talked about his experience as a whistleblower exposing corruption at the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in 2007, and the aftermath. In this week’s episode, Mr. Wasserstrom discusses his work as a special advisor on anticorruption issues at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, where he served from 2009 to 2014. He talks about the importance of anticorruption work in ensuring stability and security, the challenges he faced in convincing senior military and diplomatic officials of the need to take corruption seriously, and why it’s important, in situations like Afghanistan, to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to corruption and to use strict conditionalities on aid to compel governments to adopt meaningful improvements in transparency, accountability, and integrity. He also compares his experiences in Afghanistan with his prior work in Kosovo, as well as work he’s done since on promoting anticorruption and good governance in Ukraine.

You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring James Wasserstrom

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview James Wasserstrom. Mr. Wasserstrom, currently a private consultant on corruption and transparency issues, began his career with the United Nations, and was posted to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in 2007. His UN career took an unexpected turn when he uncovered corruption by high-level UNMIK officials. He reported his findings to the UN, but this was leaked to the perpetrators, and he was subjected to an extensive campaign of retaliation. After extensive legal proceedings, it was eventually determined that he had been mistreated, but the UN denied him compensation on dubious procedural grounds. During and after his dispute with the UN, Mr. Wasserstrom has been a leading advocate for institutional reform at the UN and integrity reforms more generally, and from 2009-2014 served as a special advisor on anticorruption at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. In our interview, Mr. Wasserstrom and I discuss his experience as a UN whistleblower, the flaws in the UN’s whistleblower protection system, and what if anything can be done. We also discuss Mr. Wasserstrom’s ideas for providing more international support for whistleblowers in hostile environment, including his new proposal for an “integrity sanctuary” program.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

 

New Podcast, Featuring Michael Hershman

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After a brief summer hiatus, I’m happy to announce that a new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke interview Michael Hershman. Mr. Hershman, one of the co-founders of Transparency International (TI), has had a long and distinguished career on issues related to transparency and anticorruption, including work with the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and, more recently, the Independent Governance Committee for FIFA. In the interview, Nils and Christopher talk with Mr. Hershman about his background, the founding of TI, the relationship between corruption and populism, and issues related to corruption and sports, among other topics.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast, Featuring Franz von Weizsäcker and Niklas Kossow

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke interview Franz von Weizsäcker (from the German Agency for International Development (GIZ)) and Niklas Kossow (form the Hertie School of Governance) about how new technologies, particular distributed ledger technology like Blockchain, can be used to curb corruption. Franz and Niklas first describe how they became interested in this topic and then, after providing a basic introduction to how distributed ledger technology works, they discuss both the opportunities and the challenges associated with deploying these new technologies to curb corruption.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast, Featuring Asoka Obeysekere

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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:

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.

New Podcast, Featuring Irio Musskopf

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke interview Irio Musskopf, a Brazilian software engineer who co-founded and developed an open-data anticorruption project called Operation “Serenata de Amor, which uses artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze publicly available data to identify and publicize information about suspicious cases involving potential misappropriation of public money. Mr. Musskopf discusses the background of the project,the basic statistical approach to detecting suspicious spending patterns,the reasons for relying exclusively on public data (even when offered access to non-public information), and some of the challenges the project team has encountered. The conversation also discusses more general questions regarding the role that intelligent algorithms can play in anticorruption efforts, including questions about whether and where such algorithms might be able to supplant human analysis, and when human decision-making will remain essential..

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.

New Podcast, Featuring Robert Manzanares

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Robert Manzanares, who served for many years as a Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that investigates a variety of federal laws dealing with cross-border criminal activity. Though Mr. Manzanares worked on a wide variety of fraud and corruption cases during his career at HSI, he is best known in the anticorruption community for his role as the lead agent in the case that ultimately lead to the seizure of substantial illegally-acquired assets of Teodorin Obiang, the Vice President of Equatorial Guinea and the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang. Much of our conversation focuses on that case, including the background on how HSI and Mr. Manzanares got involved in the case, some of the challenges that the investigators faced, and the broader significance of this case for the fight against global kleptocracy. We also use our discussion of that case to explore some broader issues, including the question of why it makes sense for the U.S. government to prioritize these cases, what can or should be done to target the Western individuals and firms that facilitate misconduct like Obiang’s, and what to do with seized assets in settings where the corrupt actors are still in power in their home countries.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior 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.