Tag Archives | European Union

HOW TO MITIGATE CORRUPTION RISKS IN AID FLOWS?

Corruption is a major threat to public funds – and not just in the developing world. According to a recent report commissioned by the EU anti-fraud agency OLAF, € 901 million should be recovered after proven fraud or corruption in EU funds. One of the greatest concerns of any donor is how to minimise the […]

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Inside Ukraine’s protests

Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, has been racked by protests, the largest since the 2004 Orange Revolution when the country rose up in response to fraudulent presidential elections. Thousands of people have been occupying Kiev’s main square since last November and more recently, government buildings. The varying reports on the reasons for the violence and the range […]

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Can you teach how to fight corruption?

Just last week, around 3,000 high school students protested outside Cypriot Parliament  after Cyprus agreed the 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout with the European Union. Break out of demonstrations around the world makes me wonder- what is it that young protesters really do? Express their anger? Why anger? I can‘t help perceiving angry faces […]

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Integrity Default Alert: EU probes collusion in banking sector

Reposted from the blog of Transparency International’s EU liaison office in Brussels. Corruption thrives in the dark, dank corners where no-one is looking, and banking is no exception. Who had heard of the LIBOR benchmark until the rate-rigging scandal erupted early last year? Now it is a byword for bad behaviour in banks. This week, […]

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The banks of Cyprus and the pursuit of integrity

The bail out of the troubled banking sector in Cyprus has taken on serious political overtones as the crisis deepens. During the past few weeks Cyprus has been accused of failing to combat money laundering and fraud and that Russian oligarchs seek refuge for their money in this “tax haven” country. Now the strongest members […]

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Anti-money laundering: In pursuit of the hidden owners

This text was crossposted from Transparency Internarional EU’s blog. The author is Neil Clark. On 10 January, advocates from the Transparency International EU Office attended a presentation unveiling the results of Project BOWNET. Carried out with financial support from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union, the project aimed at understanding the feasibility of developing an intelligent system able […]

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Bulgaria closes door on election monitors

Last week hundreds of Bulgarians protested in front of the Parliament, with some of them throwing tomatoes at the building of the legislature and calling for the end of corruption and “political hypocrisy”.  Reuters and the Financial Times quickly asked if this was a “tomato revolution against corruption”: “Nikolay Kolev, better known as ‘Bosiya’ (Barefoot), […]

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Transparency comes calling on telecoms, banking sectors

Our recent report on corporate transparency has exposed lamentably low levels of country-by-country reporting across the business spectrum. This means 69 of the world’s biggest companies operate in India, for example, but only two disclose how much money they made there, and not one discloses Indian tax payments on their main corporate website (see the […]

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Who owns what? Trying to clean dirty money in the EU

How do you fancy owning two Bugatti Veyrons, the fastest and priciest street car in the world, with a top speed of 250mph and a cost of €1m a pop? Or how about splashing out €18m on art formally owned by French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent? How about affording all of this on your […]

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Will the fruits of Africa’s commodity boom be lost to corruption?

As the prices of oil and other non-renewable commodities begin to soar once again, anti-corruption activists from DR Congo, Ghana, Liberia and Zimbabwe were in Brussels last week with the message that there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get their economies on a sustainable development path, a path that has been blocked by corruption in […]

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