Valentina Rigamonti

About Valentina Rigamonti

Valentina Rigamonti is Senior Regional Coordinator of Western Europe for Transparency International's Europe and Central Asia Department.
Author Archive | Valentina Rigamonti

Fighting corruption in Italy is an uphill struggle

By on 18 February 2013 in Access to information, Financial Markets, Politics and government, Private sector, Whistleblowing

The current scandal of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Italy’s third biggest bank, is a good illustration of how a lack of transparency negatively affects the fight against corruption in Italy. In general, ordinary citizens have little means to monitor and evaluate what goes on in either the public or private sectors. This is [...]

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Spain’s scandals indicate need for reform

By on 25 January 2013 in Access to information, Politics and government

Following days of intense public and media pressure, Spain’s governing Popular Party finally announced that it will investigate the financial activities of former treasurer, Luís Bárcenas, who the national court (La Audiencia Nacional) allege has accumulated an unexplained €22 million in Swiss bank accounts. On top of this, media reports state that during Bárcenas’ time [...]

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Will Berlusconi sentence stick?

By on 26 October 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Impunity

Exceptionally high numbers of cases are being dismissed in Italy: from 2005-2009, 10 to 13 per cent of all criminal court proceedings have been closed because they ran out of time, meaning that one in 10 trials ended with impunity for the alleged offender. That is more than 150 000 cases a year. In Hungary, the rate was less than one per cent. In Finland, it was less than 0.1 per cent.

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Corruption in Greece – a crisis of values

By on 3 April 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Financial Markets

Everyone at the moment is interested in the situation in Greece – the impact of the financial crisis, why it ever happened and the future of the country.  One way to understand it is to talk to the Greeks themselves, of course. We visited Greece for the launch of their important study ‘National Integrity Systems’ [...]

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