We have developed this website to appeal widely to people who want to take action to reduce corruption within their sector of society, and/or within their organisation. This includes Members of Parliament, the private sector, civil society organisations, professional associations, the media and the judiciary. The website is nonetheless oriented towards two groups more than others: public officials within government or related agencies who wish to develop initiatives, or who have been charged with doing this, and are not sure how to proceed; and politicians, whether in government or in opposition, looking how to develop and implement anti-corruption initiatives within their sphere of responsibility.

Mark Pyman is working with a group of editors led by Prof. Paul Heywood, together with Michell man and Ton Shipley. Besides the editorial team, CurbingCorruption develops its research and knowledge through volunteer collaboration with academics, researchers, grad students, practitioners, public officials, company execs and others. Join us!

Mark Pyman is an experienced anti-corruption professional. From 2015 through 2017, he was one of three International Committee Members on the Afghanistan independent Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee. Established by the President of Afghanistan, the Committee – known as the ‘MEC’ – comprises 6 people, three well-respected Afghans and three internationally known anti-corruption experts, supported by a supporting secretariat of 25 professionals in Kabul. They monitor what is going right and wrong in anti-corruption efforts in the country, carry out detailed analyses of the corruption issues, and press for change. Mark was astonished at how some of the most imaginative anti-corruption solutions – impressive even by developed world standards – were emerging out of this unpromising Afghan soil. But at the same time he was horrified to discover that the world’s anti-corruption knowledge in almost every sector – from education to telecommunications – was poorly organised and, where it even existed, difficult to access. Worse, he found that many international sector specialists avoided the subject of corruption, perhaps because of the risk that they would lose funding.More detail can be found here.

From 2004 to 2015, he founded and then led the global Defence and Security programme at the NGO Transparency International. This large, ground-breaking programme works on tackling the ways that corruption undermines security and military forces in countries. He led the team’s field work in over 30 countries, including Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, UK and the USA; and pioneered detailed, comparative analyses of the defence corruption risks of some 130 countries.

His work was instrumental in shaping the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (2013), in influencing NATO policy and operations in respect of counter-corruption, in shaping the military doctrine of several countries, and in policy forums such as the Munich Security Conference.

Working with militaries and Defence Ministries in country after country from 2004 to 2015, Mark was struck how senior officials and senior officers were open about their participation in corrupt or questionable practice. They knew very well the political constraints on what they could do, but many were nonetheless taking small actions to reduce the corruption. They knew how deeply corruption went against the ethos of military leadership, and many were ashamed. Their question – almost every time – was ‘What do you suggest I could best do, and where do I find the necessary knowledge?’ For many, finding that defence-specific anti-corruption knowledge existed was like finding water in the desert.

From 1985 to 2003, he was a senior executive at Shell International. He was Chief Financial Officer of Shell companies in West Africa (Gabon), China, Taiwan and South Korea. Other senior roles included Director of major change programmes for Shell across Europe, leading a transformation team of 700, and manager of Shell’s investor relations with the City of London.Mark developed a detailed understanding of how the corporate community more broadly can do to be more honest and more engaged.

From 1981-1985, he was one of the founders of the market-leading technical risk consultancy ‘Technica’.

He holds a PhD from the University of Western Australia, an MSc from Bath University and a first-class honours degree from Birmingham University. He has authored or supervised many blogs and some seventy publications on tackling corruption.

Paul Heywood

Paul Heywood PhD, FRSA, FAcSS holds the Sir Francis Hill Chair of European Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, UK.  Prior to taking up his Chair in 1995, he taught at the University of Glasgow and Queen Mary College, London.  He studied at the University of Edinburgh and did his doctorate at the London School of Economics.

His research focuses on political corruption, institutional design and state capacity, and he is author, co-author or editor of eighteen books and more than eighty journal articles and book chapters. Recent funded research includes an ESRC/Hong Kong project on Integrity Management in the UK, HK and China; an EU FP7 project, ANTICORRP, on anti-corruption policies; and TACOD ,an EU project on tackling corruption through open data.  He served at the EU DG Home Affairs UK expert on corruption (2012-16), contributing to the 2014 EU Anti-Corruption Report.

Professor Heywood is leader of the $7m Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence programme (GI-ACE), funded by DFID (2018-21), which follows an earlier British Academy/DFID programme (2015-18) that he also led.  He is a Trustee of Transparency International UK, where he chairs the Advocacy and Research Committee.  Professor Heywood is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2002), a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2012), and a Fellow of Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (2013).

Michelle  Man is a strategy consultant working in the third sector. Her experience spans the public, private and third sectors, and she has specific expertise in international financial crime risk, electoral policy and democratic processes, education policy, and social mobility. She has a master’s degree in international relations and anti-corruption strategies, and previously led Transparency International’s work on corruption in the defence industry.

Tom Shipley is a PhD researcher at the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption, where he is undertaking a comparative study of anti-corruption reforms and strategies in four states in Nigeria. He began his career in anti-corruption with the Transparency International defence and security programme. He subsequently held positions focused on anti-corruption in the private sector, at the consultancy Control Risks and then at CDC Group, the UK development finance institute. He is an expert contributor to the Transparency International U4 Helpdesk and the Global Integrity Africa Integrity Index.