Tag Archives: world bank

Reflections on the Anticorruption Movement

31 Friday Oct 2014

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By Rick Messick

The World Bank’s Integrity Vice-Presidency is celebrating its 15th anniversary.  It recently asked a number of individuals for their thoughts on the anticorruption movement over the past 15 years.  INT’s questions and my replies below.

1) How has the anti-corruption movement changed in the past 15 years?

Fifteen years ago consensus about corruption was lacking.  Didn’t it foster development by providing a way around bureaucratic roadblocks to economic growth?  Wasn’t bribery a reflection of the gift-giving culture of many countries?  How could rich Western countries, many of which permitted their companies to take tax deductions for bribe payments, complain about corruption in poor countries? 

 The greatest change in the past 15 years is that those and other tired questions about corruption are no longer heard.  Instead an extraordinary consensus on the need to combat corruption now exists, the most visible sign being the overwhelming support the United Nations Convention Against Corruption enjoys.  Read More...

The Future of the Anti-Corruption Movement

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

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speak up corruption

“Corruption was a taboo word in 1996. My advisors were worried about using the c-word in my speech.”

Nearly 20 years have passed since the former World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, gave his groundbreaking speech on the “cancer of corruption” at the World Bank’s 1996 Annual Meetings. And the anti-corruption movement has come a long way.

At the World Bank’s discussion Speak Up Against Corruption, which featured Wolfensohn; Dr. Jim Kim, World Bank Group President; Paul Volcker, Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Cesar Purisima, Secretary Finance of the Philippines; and Haguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International, the panelists reflected on how much work there remains to fight corruption at the international and local levels.

Volcker emphasized how imperative it is for both developed and developing nations to focus on this evasive problem. “Corruption is not just about losing money in transactions…it’s also about destructing the rule of law of a society.”

Citing examples like the Open Government Partnership, which is a multilateral initiative in which over 60 countries have voluntarily committed to becoming more transparent governments, the panelists agreed that the global anti-corruption movement is moving in the right direction.  Read More...