A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett speaks to Tom Burgis, a journalist and author who has written extensively on corruption and kleptocracy around the world. The interview covers a range of topics, including is forthcoming book, Cuckooland, which grapples with some of the challenges for journalists in scrutinizing public figures in a “post-truth” society. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations: Soundcloud Stitcher iTunes Spotify Google Podcasts Apple Podc ..read more

GAB welcome back Craig R. Arndt, an American lawyer now living in Bangkok. Craig has advised a variety of clients on corruption-related matters and represented corruption victims in damage actions. Below he offers a coda to Government Leaders Should Watch Who Watches Them Wearing Their Pricey Watches In 2018 the Thai public was mesmerized by a photo showing retired General and then Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan wearing a luxury watch. Activists soon found other photos of him sporting a variety of watches together worth $1.5 million. General Prawit was widely mocked for his explanation ..read more

Recently, the European Union moved forward with comprehensive new media freedom law, the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The EMFA includes a number of important reforms meant to protect journalistic independence, including prohibitions on interference in editorial decisionmaking and protections for sources. But one of the proposed reforms is especially important for those who care about preserving the media’s role as an anticorruption watchdog: the EMFA’s rules on government advertising in private media. The EMFA requires that governments (1) adopt fair, transparent, and objective standards ..read more

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte is the latest government leader to be ensnarled in a corruption flap thanks to a penchant for high-end time pieces. Before her it was the then-Prime Minister of Croatia Ivo Sanader (here) and after him the then-Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan (here). Like them, she apparently believed wearing a different expensive watch on different occasions was part of the job of running a country. And like them, her luxurious taste was caught on camera. Photographs show her at one or another function modeling watches that in toto cost more than $500,000. From th ..read more

Can foreign aid be used to spur anticorruption reforms? Many donor agencies have tried. The typical approach is to make aid to a recipient country conditional on the adoption of a series of substantive anticorruption or good governance reforms. Unfortunately, there is little data to suggest conditional aid buys reform. To the contrary, grants of conditional aid have been associated with increases in corruption, slower policy reform, and the deterioration of governance generally. While one might expect that, all else equal, conditional aid would result in relatively more aid flowing to more hon ..read more

Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Putin’s childhood judo partner, is living large. Despite using his relationship with Putin to facilitate state capture, gaining lucrative contracts for everything from constructing the bridge between Russia and Crimea to hosting spurious “anticorruption trainings” for state employees, and being subject to American sanctions since 2014, Rotenberg maintains extensive links with the global economy. He has used Deutschebank to move millions of dollars out of Russia, channeled investments through a technology firm co-owned with a member of the British royal family, and hi ..read more

Capping off a series of scandalous events that shook Canadian politics to its foundation, in February 2019, Jody Wilson-Raybould––the country’s then-Justice Minister and Attorney General––resigned from the cabinet and alleged that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office had pressured her to intervene in a criminal case against the Canadian construction firm SNC-Lavalin. Wilson-Raybould claimed the Prime Minister’s office ordered her to arrange a more lenient remediation agreement with the firm, which was facing bribery and fraud charges for its 2001–2011 dealings with the Muammar Gaddafi regime ..read more

A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett speaks to Richard Nephew, the US Department of State’s Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption. The conversation focuses principally on the US strategy on countering corruption, including the practicalities involved in implementing different pillars of the strategy, such as attempts to strengthen the multilateral anti-corruption architecture. The conversation also touches on the key outcomes to emerge from the recent UN Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Conv ..read more

Defamation is a scary word for the anticorruption community. After all, anti-defamation laws are frequently abused to harass, deter, and discredit people who accuse politicians of misconduct. But defamation suits can also be an important tool for anticorruption activists to defend against false and misleading attacks designed to undermine their work. As smear campaigns deter and diminish anticorruption advocacy, we must be cautious in our attempts to weaken or repeal anti-defamation laws, for they may prove to be a necessary line of defense. To understand why anti-defamation laws can be so imp ..read more

GAB sadly reports passing of Gretta Fenner, Managing Director of the Basel Institute on Governance and Director of its International Centre for Asset Recovery. A close friend of this writer and a true champion of the global fight against corruption, she died Saturday evening in an automobile accident in Nairobi. A message from Basel Institute’s President is here ..read more