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Brazil needs effective protection for witnesses and victims of corruption

Marcia Reis is an activist from the network Amarribo Brasil, Transparency International’s partner in Brazil, who went to jail when she spoke out against corruption. Unfortunately, in Brazil, all too often whistleblowers are considered traitors and are victims of threats and persecutions. “When an activist reports corruption or irregularities they are chased by those they are […]

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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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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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Give us our daily scandal

When Transparency International announces the results of the Corruption Perceptions Index in December and Italy performs badly again, there will always be at least one commentator who feigns surprise. How could it happen? Italy has the same score as Bulgaria and Senegal again? The index must be wrong.’ The writer unquestionably accepts the scores for […]

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Bribery: ‘redesign public services to cut risk’

Paying bribes to access basic services is rife worldwide: our research shows that globally, it affects the lives of more than one in four people. Bribery that takes place between citizens and officials is illegal and bad for society. It’s an unjust cost for taxpayers to bear, denying people their right to access necessities such […]

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The power of a question in El Salvador

Transparency laws mean nothing if they are not applied, and it sometimes takes brave citizens and active civil society organisations to make sure that they are. In El Salvador, the anti-corruption legal advice centre operated by FUNDE, our chapter in the country, is just over a year-and-a-half old and has already made a name for […]

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‘It has become more difficult to be corrupt in China’

In a blog published by the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, China expert Christian Goebel speaks about Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and how it is helping transform China from collectivist one-party rule to a one-person authoritarian system. In Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), China is among the countries with the largest decline in points, despite a […]

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Youths from Asia Pacific unite in the fight against corruption

Young people constitute a sizeable portion of the Asian Pacific population and tend to be particularly exposed to bribery and corruption as students, pupils, workers, customers and citizens. But young people can play a pivotal role in the fight against corruption, in Asia Pacific and beyond. While people from the older generation tend to see […]

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No such thing as a cheap lunch

Investigations and surveys by Transparency International Slovakia show that healthcare procurement is considered corrupt in Slovakia, but over the past years only a handful of cases have been formally investigated and no one has been brought to justice. That is why monitoring procurement in healthcare has become a priority for us and why we decided to […]

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Image: Creative Commons, Flickr / rh2ox

The potential of fighting corruption through data mining

Two centuries ago, coal mining spurred the European continent’s Industrial Revolution. Today, data mining is fueling the data revolution brought about by exploding streams of data. Using data mining techniques to profile customer preferences and predict purchasing patterns has become common practice in the private sector. But can data mining also be used to fight […]

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