Tag Archives | financial crisis

Ireland: Political leaders need to tackle fundamental governance gaps which enable corruption and undermine our economic stability

It is no coincidence that countries suffering most from the European debt crisis also have major problems with corruption. While international indicators suggest that corruption is less pervasive in Ireland than, say, Greece or Spain, its ravaging impact on public finances is just as tangible. Corruption has played a starring role in our home-grown crisis. […]

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Corruption in Greece – a crisis of values

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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Whistleblowers in Ireland

Paul Hockenos is a Berlin-based writer and consultant who recently visited Dublin to work with TI Ireland to give exposure to its groundbreaking programme to protect and encourage whistleblowers. German photographer Dagmar Morath accompanied him.   You don’t have to walk very far in downtown Dublin to run smack into grim fallout of the financial […]

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Corruption and the world in 2011

The following is adapted from the opening speech by Transparency International chair Huguette Labelle, at the anti-corruption movement’s annual meeting that brings together activists from over 100 countries around the world. The full speech is available here This has been a year of many anti-corruption landmarks and breakthroughs. People are waking up to corruption in […]

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Stress-testing the supervisors: how transparent is the European Banking Authority?

Last week the Transparency International’s EU office was back among the bankers at the European Commission’s Group of Experts on Banking Issues (see previous post here). Quite a lot has happened since that February meeting. Most importantly, Transparency International’s EU Office decided to become a founding member of Finance Watch a new Brussels-based civil society body that will […]

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Licence to kill: banking experts discuss EU crisis management proposals

Commissioner responsible for the functioning of the EU’s internal market – has pledged to improve the representation of civil society groups in these meetingsto avoid the perceived stranglehold that the banking industry had on the European regulators in the run-up to 2008’s financial meltdown. On the evidence of the meeting I attended this week (Monday […]

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Looking back at Davos – Part two

Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director at Transparency International, reflects on the G20, the historic events in the Middle East, and social media and transparency at the 2011 Davos meeting: Looking back, I was struck that there was no longer a great sense of urgency about the economic crisis. Even though the G20 was on the […]

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What is a ‘conflict of interest’?

The financial crisis is awash in so many specialised terms that their sheer number seems to rival the amount of bail-out money being doled out to shore up the faltering economy. One word that is constantly being bounced around, from the Bundestag to the White House, from Wall Street to High Street, is ‘conflict of […]

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