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The FATF report on the USA: More roof than holes on average

You arrive in a new city on a rainy day and check into your top floor hotel room, only to find the roof is leaking. When the receptionist comes to check, he looks up and says, “I don’t see what the problem is, madam. There is clearly more roof than holes on average.” This has […]

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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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The real reason banks aren’t stopping dirty money

Last week, Barclays bank was fined £72 million (US$110 million) by the UK authorities for failing to use anti-money laundering checks on a prominent customer, the bank’s seventh financial penalty in the last six years. This time Barclays did not carry out the proper background checks on unidentified senior foreign political figures or their family […]

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Cuando la transparencia manda

¿Cuál es el verdadero poder del acceso a la información? Recientemente en el Salvador las autoridades confirmaron que la ciudadanía tiene derecho a pedir información sobre el patrimonio de los servidores públicos. El caso es una poderosa contribución al debate sobre si la transparencia es una herramienta efectiva para la rendición de cuentas y la […]

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A bill to limit access to property registers in Russia will hide corruption

In Russia, finding out who owns that Italianate villa or luxury apartment is currently possible thanks to the Unified State Register of Rights to Immovable Property, a government database managed by ROSREESTR, the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre, and Cartography. USRR data is in the public domain. It costs just 200-600 rubles (US$3.27-US$9.80) to […]

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New milestone in fight against global corruption

On 25 September 2015, the world’s leaders assembled at the UN in New York and made a historic statement in approving 17 key objectives to focus actions across the globe to bring the core strengths of our civilisation to its real potential. The UN General Assembly adopted new global goals, the “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” […]

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Practicing open data: publishing court decisions in Germany

In order to hold government to account, people need to know what it is doing. That is why it is so important for civil society to be able to have access to information on all types of government actions. Advocating for what we call “open data” is at the heart of the anti-corruption movement. In […]

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Fighting corruption in Greece must be a priority

Greece now has a new government, its fourth in six years. One of the returning Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ priorities remains constant: to fight of corruption. Previous incarnations of this government had appointed a minister to strengthen this fight. This was definitely a good move but it did not deliver. The previous minister of state […]

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Berlusconi’s latest corruption conviction: integrity for sale

Last week a Naples court sentenced Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to three years in prison for corrupting the political process by bribing a politician for his vote. Valter Lavitola, his “fixer” in this act, was also convicted. Neither will serve time. This was only the first court decision and both men have the […]

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Deutsche Bank settlement: does the punishment fit the crime?

Germany’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay a record US$2.5 billion in fines to US and UK authorities after one of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty to wire fraud for its role in manipulating LIBOR. This is more than your everyday bank scandal: LIBOR has an impact on millions of people, if not billions […]

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