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Italy: Putting the brakes on Berlusconi’s impunity

As victories in the fight against corruption go, the confirmation yesterday that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did commit tax fraud is a major battle won in a war that is still going on. Berlusconi was sentenced for a 2012 conviction that initially gave him up to four years’ jail with a five-year ban […]

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REDD+: what you see isn’t always what you get

A colleague recently likened his experience tracking climate and REDD+ money in Mexico to an archaeological dig. Little by little, fragments of your object begin to reveal themselves, but not without a significant amount of time, resources and tenacity. At Transparency International we have been monitoring climate finance flows in six countries – of which […]

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Follow the Money: Tracking Public Expenditure in Education

This blog post was written by Bernard Gauthier, Professor at the Institute of Applied Economics, HEC Montréal, Canada, with contributions by Apollinaire Mupiganyi, Executive Director of Transparency International Rwanda. One of the most common tools to estimate public corruption is the method known as Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) pioneered by Ritva Reinikka and Jakob […]

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Marching against Corruption in Brazil: Day One

  This post is authored by Lirian Pádua, a Journalism graduate who works as a reporter, editor, and photographer and is volunteering for the NGO Batra (Bauru Transparente), a member of Amarribo Brasil’s network.   About 25 volunteers from a number of different organisations gathered today in Guaribas, a town of 4,800 in the arid bushland in the […]

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Sexual favours are not considered corruption in China

The conviction of a high-ranking Chinese official for corruption and the continuing reports of alleged sexual favours as part of the ongoing scandal involving drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in China, exposes gaps in the anti-corruption legislation in the country. The high profile corruption case against China’s former minister of railways Liu Zhijun is being heralded as proof […]

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Egypt in crisis: A look at corruption figures for the last two years

Egyptians are sharply divided over the military’s recent ousting of President Morsi on the back of large-scale popular demonstrations against his rule. They are far more unified, however, in their views on what ails the country. Corruption is at the forefront of those concerns. On 9 July 2013 Transparency International released the Global Corruption Barometer […]

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Curaçao: small island, big challenges?

Imagine an island around 250 kilometres north of Venezuela, where you can find idyllic beaches, pastel coloured colonial Dutch architechture, iguana soup and copius amounts of a lurid blue coloured liqueur. This is Curaçao, one of the newest countries in the Americas and home to a population of just 150,000 people. Put in context, that’s […]

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Are high bribery rates in poor countries blocking development?

New findings from the United Nations show that global development commitments – called the Millennium Development Goals – are off track. Governance and corruption are one of the culprits. Yet whole regions are behind on achieving the targets set for 2015, such as making sure all children are in school and that women get proper […]

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Corruption is still a problem for Croatia

Croatia becomes EU member number 28 on 1 July. After Tudjman and Milosevic and a bloody war 20 years ago in the Balkans, this is definitely good news for both the European Union and Croatia. The new story of the Balkans started with disintegration 20-odd years ago, but Croatia’s membership is a clear sign of […]

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