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State Capture in South Africa

A recently-released report on State Capture indicates that one family could seemingly succeed in skewing the spending priorities of the government in Pretoria. It’s a crisis induced by weak state institutions and it has enraged many South Africans. South African Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela’s much anticipated report on state capture released on November 3, 2016 […]

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What’s next for Ukraine?

Ukraine said it planned to confiscate $290 million of assets believed to be stolen through corruption in 2016. So far they’ve recovered and returned to state budget just $5,683. While that’s a tiny improvement from $3,813 recovered last year, it shows the struggling country has a long way to go before it can successfully recover […]

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Cleaning up Georgia’s elections

Georgians are getting the message: elections are important and tampering with the process has consequences. This year, there were fewer violations, leading to a cleaner election. It was hard work, however. From when the election process started in June to when people went to the polls on 8 October, Transparency International Georgia was on the […]

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Anti-corruption and happiness go hand in hand

There is a clear link between the level of corruption in a country and people’s attitude to corruption. If you shrug your shoulders and accept there’s little to be done, corruption remains high and you are unhappy. If corruption makes you angry and you do something constructive about it, like pass laws and prosecute the […]

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Does Ukraine merit a new handout?

Yesterday the International Monetary Fund approved a further bailout of more than US$1 billion for Ukraine, a country trying to deal with an aggressive eastern neighbour and a ruling elite compromised by corruption. If the decision to resume payments was based on the normal loan conditions, the outcome would have been an obvious no. Ukrainian […]

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Reconstruction in Italy: We need transparency and monitoring activities 

It’s true, “Italians do their best in moments of emergency.” Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said it after the earthquake that devastated central Italy on 24 August. Italy’s President echoed the Prime Minister and we all tell it to ourselves every time that the images remind us that we are a country that rolls up […]

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Let’s celebrate whistleblowers

Four medical doctors received Transparency International Sweden’s Whistleblower of the Year (“Årets Visselpipa”) award earlier this month for speaking up against the gross ethical misconduct of a celebrated surgeon whose organ transplants turned out to be fatal. Whistleblowers provide a great service to society. The case of the Swedish doctors is a good example of […]

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Maldives: islands lost in corruption

The Maldives is an archipelago made up of more than 1000 islands, with a population of about 351,000 people. Most of the islands are uninhabited; 187 are home to people and 106 are designed as beach resorts for the well-heeled traveller. Grand corruption emerged as the biggest problem in the country when a massive scandal […]

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Reporting corruption in Honduras: use our app!

Corruption is a well-known blight on daily lives of Hondurans: from the fear that organized crime brings to daily life to the looting of public funds by corrupt officials or simply the demand for a bribe from a police officer about to give us a ticket. We all suffer in different ways, but that doesn’t […]

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Haiti: trying to stay engaged amid corruption and poverty

It is hard to imagine that Haitians will actually go to polls on 27 December to vote in the second round of the presidential and municipal elections. There has been so much talk of electoral fraud, violence and intimidation from the first round in October, ordinary people just don’t know what to believe. On 17 […]

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