CurbingCorruption’s Blog records progress against corruption – practical, reflective, theoretical, even anecdotal. We encourages readers of CurbingCorruption – whether politicians, officials, company executives, activists, researchers, students or citizens – to submit their own contributions of tackling corruption. We also include blogs originating from CurbingCorruption authors published on other blog sites.
2023
Interesting new work on quantifying sector losses from corruption and inefficiency
From Andrew Laing of Artificial Fiscal Intelligence Costing corruption and efficiency losses from weak PFM systems. And a LinkedIn post from me.
2022
2020
By Mitchell Watkins and Mushtaq Khan from SOAS University of London (SOAS-ACE) The authors show how small subsidies can reduce investor risk, increase competition and save billions of dollars for governments and consumers. November 2020
Faith Muniale
By Faith Muniale. As a Kenyan, a keen kitchen gardener and with a PhD in anti-corruption, I wanted to know: Is there demonstrable progress in curbing corruption in the Kenyan seed industry? You and I have personal stakes in this. So I conduct my own experiment on progress in Kenya. As the saying goes: ‘At least once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman and a preacher; but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer’. July 2020
By Jonathan J. Rusch, Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and at American University Washington College of Law. In improving policing, one of the articles of faith in law enforcement circles is the importance of training. But if training involving use-of-force is not well controlled, then the law enforcement officers and role-playing participants participating in that training are also at risk. June 2020
Matthew Gardner
By Matt Gardner, former head of Police Professional Standards at Scotland Yard, 2015-2019. Gardner led a team of 430 police officers and civilians responsible for following up all complaint allegations relating to racism, harassment, bullying and corruption. The most crucial issue of all for a police service is that of legitimacy; if lost, it is a long way back for any policing authority. To re-start on the path of legitimacy requires three areas of action for police forces: values, transparency and consistent application. June 2020
By Mark Pyman, Founder of CurbingCorruption. International experience shows that achieving high police standards with good police morale and good community support is possible, but also strewn with failures. Mechanisms such as internal control, through police Professional Standards Departments (PSDs) or Internal Affairs Departments (IADs), and external control, where the town, city, state or some authorised body exerts independent or semi-independent oversight of police rarely work well enough. June 2020
By Matt Gardner, former head of Police Professional Standards at Scotland Yard, 2015-2019. The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring body, GRECO, is examining ‘corruption and prevention at the top executive function in the central government’ and ‘corruption and prevention in law enforcement agencies’. The inadequacy of codes of conduct for Law Enforcement Agencies in Europe is made clear, with some countries lacking a code of conduct for internal professional standards altogether. May 2020
By Birgitta Nygren. Telecoms lead for CurbingCorruption, former Ambassador with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She was co-ordinator for Sweden in international anti-corruption initiatives and formerly on the Board of TI Sweden. Of the ten companies that have paid the largest FCPA penalties ever for corruption, four of them are telecom companies: Ericsson and Telia (both from Sweden), Mobile TeleSystems (Russia), and Vimpelcom (Netherlands). March 2020
Sarah Steingrüber
Sarah Steingrüber, Health Lead for CurbingCorruption, announces in GAB blog here the following new resource on fighting corruption in the health sector: week, the open-source academic journal Global Health Action, published a special issue on anticorruption, transparency, and accountability in the health sector. This special issue—a joint undertaking with the World Health Organization—addresses crucial and highly relevant issues related to the health sector’s ability to prevent, detect, and sanction corruption, in order to address the threats that corruption poses to the health system’s ability to perform effectively during both crises and normal times. March 2020
2019
By Sofia Tirini. Argentinian lawyer Tirini argues that clients of law firms should require their law firms to have robust compliance programmes. In a longer article, published on the ‘Legal Service Sector’ page of CurbingCorruption, here, she proposes seven further measures to strengthen the profession. November 2019.
By Matt Gardner, who previously served as the Head of Anti-Corruption at New Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police, and who is currently covers police-related issues for CurbingCorruption.Com . Four measures are essential: an effective internal police command with a minimum staff level is at about 1% of serving police officers; Rigorous external and internal oversight of the police; In-depth peer review from police agencies in other countries; and preventative “integrity testing” of officers. October 2019
Dr Festus Boamah
By Festus Boamah. An original analysis of the dramatic progress in electricity supply in Ghana and Kenya. . The reporting was mostly about corruption issues, despite many successful reforms. These included introduction of pre-paid metering systems, improved revenue collection/tariff payment mechanisms, establishment of legal frameworks to punish criminals involved in power thefts, effective oversight roles of civil society organisations and vibrant media engagement. See also his full paper here. August 2019
By Mark Pyman, founder of CurbingCorruption. If you Google “corruption,” you get 344 million hits. A large number, yes, but dwarfed by “change management” with 4.1 billion hits. Cultures can be changed by business leaders and regulators who believe that better business comes from actually reducing the corruption in their sector, not just by limiting their exposure to it. Every now and again we see good examples of this. July 2019
By Mark Pyman, founder of CurbingCorruption. Anti-corruption strategies have more chance of success when modest in scope and tailored to the specifics of each particular sector. New blog on Ministry anti-corruption plans in Afghanistan. in the series ‘Corruption in fragile states’ at the Henry J. Leir Institute, Fletcher School of Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA. May 2019
2018
Mark Pyman, FCPA Blog July 31, 2018.
Mark Pyman and Hussain Rezai,Global Anti-Corruption Blog March 29, 2018.
Mark Pyman, Global Anti-Corruption Blog, January 11th, 2018.
Mark Pyman, Blog Henry J Leir Institute, Tufts University, April 21, 2017.
2017
Mark Pyman, Blog Henry J Leir Institute, Tufts University, Jan 24, 2017.
