Transparency International
Contents
Background
Transparency International, (TI) was co-founded by Peter Eigen and Michael Hershman. Another founding member of Transparency International, and Secretary-General for Jamaica, Ms Beth Aub, resigned her membership of the ‘global anti-corruption body’ in 2004, alleging corrupt practices such as "facilitation payments" by TI, a term she described as another name for bribery and corruption. [1]
Transparency International's origins
TI's origins are in the World Bank:
- "But then [James D] Wolfensohn came to the World Bank and we immediately made contact with Wolfensohn. And he invited us over to Washington to make a presentation to the senior staff on the effect of corruption on World Bank projects because our argument was that corruption was an economic matter, not a political one. This was about 1995. And then Wolfensohn made a very famous speech in Hong Kong when he said the World Bank was going to take on the corruption issue and not one government opposed this."[2]
An interview with Jeremy Pope tells us of the organisation's origins:
- Peter Eigen was the first chair. In fact, he's retiring next month. Laurence Cockcroft, who is a British development economist; Joe Githongo, a Kenyan, who is an accountant; Michael Hershman, an American, who had been in control of USAID, who is very strong on corruption in institutions. There was Kamal Hossein, a former minister of justice, minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, a very distinguished international lawyer, and considered in Bangladesh to be the most honest person in the country - that's why when he stands for Parliament, he loses. Frank Vogel was in there as well. He was a former correspondent in Washington for the London Times and had spent two or three years at the World Bank running their information division."[3]
This adds that the initial money was provided by the Rowntree Foundation, and the Nuffield Foundation. The German development agency guaranteed their rent, and then, the Ford Foundation came in. "Finally, what really made TI was when USAID came with about $3 million. At that stage, I decided I didn't want to manage this thing anymore."[4]
Michael Hershman was a Special Agent with U.S. Military Intelligence and both the Ford Foundation and USAID have close connections with the US Secret State. Jeremy Pope has started up his own organisations Tiri with similarly high level funders.
According to TI The first Board comprised Chairman Peter Eigen (Germany), Vice-Chairman Kamal Hossain (Bangladesh), Vice-Chairman Frank Vogl (USA), Laurence Cockroft (UK), Dolores Espanol (Philippines), Theo Frank (Namibia), Joe Githongo (Kenya), Michael Hershman (USA), and Gerry Parfitt (UK).[5]
The first Advisory council comprised Oscar Arias Sanchez (Costa Rica), Paul Batchelor (UK), Peter Berry (UK), Alberto Dahik (Ecuador), Boubakar Diaby-Ouattara (Ivory Coast), Ugo Draetta (Italy), Hansjörg Elshorst (Germany), Dieter Frisch (Germany), Johan Galtung (Norway), Roy Herberger (USA), Gerhard Kienbaum (Germany), Alain Marsaud (France), Ian Martin (UK), Hans Matthöfer (Germany), Ronald MacLean Abaroa (Bolivia), Peter MacPherson (USA), Ira Millstein (USA), Festus Mogae (Botswana), Miklos Nemeth (Hungary), Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah (Mauritania), Devendra Raj Panday (Nepal), Joe B. Wanjui (Kenya), Andrew Young (USA).
According to TI funding from the Ford Foundation was organised by Fritz Heimann Counselor to the General Counsel, General Electric Company and founding member and director of Transparency International. Heimann writes for the Council on Foreign Relations'[6] Foreign Affairs journal with John Brademas, Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, and a member of Transparency International's International Advisory Council. Fritz Heimann was Chair of Transparency International USA from 1993 to 2005.
Wesley A. Cragg and William Woof's The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its implications for the Control of Corruption in Political Life, states that when American MNC Westinghouse claimed that the commissions paid in the course of its contract for nuclear generating facilities for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos were proper and that no US laws were violated, the company’s assertions were challenged by other sources within the Philippine government who claim that commissions of $50 million were actually paid, out of which Marcos himself received $30 million. The arbitration of the case was heard by the International Chamber of Commerce, which ruled in December 1991 that there was insufficient evidence to support charges of bribery against Westinghouse. Of Heimann they say:
- "Fritz Heimann notes in correspondence to Wesley Cragg, dated December 18, 2000, that ‘the ICC ultimately decided that the Westinghouse payment to the brother of Imelda Marcos was not a bribe because he was not a government official and the Philippine government had produced no evidence that any of the money had been paid to a government official’. It should be noted that the US courts refused Westinghouse’s attempt to throw out the case based on the ICC decision. We replied to Fritz Heimann that Mr. Romualdez served in various government posts and could hardly claim to have an arm’s length relationship to the Marcos family."[7]
Spotlighting Venezuela
On 28 April 2008, TI published a report on the transparency of oil revenue accounts of many countries.[8] The curious aspect of the report is the way Venezuela's accounting was reported:
- The credibility of Transparency International, a global "non-partisan" organisation which "promotes transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business", is on the line. Their latest report on Venezuela, which was produced after months of research, is factually inaccurate in almost every respect. TI say that they "stand by their report" and stand by the person who compiled the data, an anti-Chávez activist who backed the 2002 military coup against democracy.
The full report, dated April 28 2008 and titled Promoting Revenue Transparency examined the published accounts of oil companies in 42 different countries, and ranked them according to whether they were of high, medium or low transparency. Venezuela's state-owned oil firm PDVSA was given the lowest possible ranking. Transparency International say that "comprehensive corporate reporting diminishes the opportunities for corrupt officials to extort funds".
PDVSA was directly accused of failing to disclose basic financial information such as their revenues and how much royalties they paid, and of not producing properly audited accounts. The international corporate media considers TI to be a reliable source, despite the fact that almost all their funding comes from western governments and big business. The British government is one of the major donors, contributing £1 million in 2007. Other donors include the US government, Shell and Exxon Mobil. Unsurprisingly, TI's damning report was seized upon by rightwing newspapers and websites and used as another stick with which to beat Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez.
When Dan Burnett, a New York-based blogger who runs the popular Oil Wars website, read the TI report, he almost choked on his cornflakes. Burnett had been analysing PDVSA's accounts for several years, and regularly writes about the financial information that TI claims does not exist.
I checked the PDVSA website. Burnett was right to be astonished. On page 127 of their financial statement it says that revenue for 2007 was $96.242bn, and that they paid $21.9bn in royalties. On page 148, PDVSA's auditors state that the accounts were prepared in accordance with international accounting standards. Further research showed that PDVSA's financial statements are also published in hard copy, and are widely reported in the domestic media, both in newspapers and on television.
…
However, TI's explanation for their inaccurate report on PDVSA contained a much more serious problem. It was wrong. The March 29 edition of El Universal, a major opposition newspaper, featured a report on PDVSA's financial statement, together with a photograph of PDVSA's president, Rafael Ramirez, holding up a copy of the 2007 report and accounts. The information that TI claimed was being withheld by PDVSA, was published four weeks before they made their allegations. Armed with this additional information, I attempted to contact TI's press spokesperson again for a comment. My calls were not returned.
…
Transparency International denies that they pursue an anti-Chavez agenda. "We are not a political organisation", their spokesperson told me. Despite this denial, TI's Venezuela bureau is staffed by opponents of the Venezuelan government (pdf). The directors include Robert Bottome, the publisher of Veneconomia, a strident opposition journal, and Aurelio Concheso of the Centre for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge, a conservative thinktank funded by the US government. Concheso was previously a director of the employers' organisation, Fedecamaras. The president of Fedecamaras, Pedro Carmo, led the failed 2002 coup and was briefly installed as Venezuela's dictator.
The data in TI's report was gathered by Mercedes de Freitas, the head of their Caracas bureau and a longtime opponent of President Chávez. De Freitas' previous job was running a US government funded opposition "civil society" group. The Nation reported on her response to the 2002 military coup: "... on the night of April 12 - after Carmona suspended the assembly - Mercedes de Freitas, a director of the Fundacion Momento de la Gente, a legislative monitoring project subsidized by NED [National Endowment for Democracy, a US government agency], emailed the endowment defending the military and Carmona, claiming the takeover was not a military coup."[9]
Funders
| ABB | AMEC | Anglo American |
| Bombardier | BP International | Consolidated Contractors |
| EBRD | Fluor Corporation | Halcrow Group |
| Hilti Corporation | Hochtief | International Federation of Inspection Agencie |
| ISIS Equity Partners | KPMG | Motorola |
| Novo Nordisk | Obayashi Corporation | Pfizer |
| PricewaterhouseCoopers | Rio Tinto | SGS |
| SIKA | Skanska | SNC Lavalin |
| Deutsche Bank | ||
| Between € 50,000 AND € 200,000: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Federal Foreign Office - Germany | Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA) | Chr. Michelsen Institute - Norway |
| Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) | Ireland AID | The Charles S. Mott Foundation USA |
| Over € 200,000: | ||
| European Commission | Ministry for Foreign Affairs - Finland | Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) - Germany |
| Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) | US Agency for International Development (USAID) | Department for International Development (DFID) - UK |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs - The Netherlands | Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) | Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) |
| The Ford Foundation - USA | AVINA Group - Switzerland | Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) |
| Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs | ||
| Private Sector | ||
| TI also received "generous contributions" from participants in the Global Corporations for Transparency International (GCTI) initiative [10]: | ||
| Exxon | General Electric | Lafarge |
| Merck | Norsk Hydro | SAP AG |
| Shell International | Sovereign Asset Management Sovereign Global Development Anglo American | Nexen UBS |
| Companies participating in this initiative typically contribute 50,000 Euro per year to Transparency International. | ||
| Participants in private sector projects | ||
| ABB | Amanco | Bombardier |
| BP | Calvert | Consolidated Contractors |
| F&C Asset Management | Fluor Corporation | Halcrow |
| Hilti | Hochtief | International Federation of Inspection Agencies |
| ISIS | Merck | Motorola |
| Norsk Hydro | Pfizer | PricewaterhouseCoopers |
| Rio Tinto | SGS | Sika |
| Skanska | SNC Lavalin | TRACE |
| Individuals and Other Donors | ||
| William F. Biggs (USA) | Hartmut Fischer (Germany) | Arnesto Gonçalves Segredo (The Netherlands) |
| Basel Institute on Governance (Switzerland) | Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE USA) | Deutsche Investitions und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG Germany) |
| European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) | Fondation Pro Victimis (Switzerland) | Gesamtverband Kommunikationsagenturen (GWA Germany) |
| KPMG | IHK Frankfurt (Germany) | Lahmeyer International |
| Ministry for Foreign Affairs Norway | Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand (NZAID) | Partners of the Americas (USA) |
| Stockholm International Water Institute (Sweden) | The World Bank (IBRD) | |
|
Source: [11] |
||
Affiliations
See Also
Contact, References and Resources
Websites
- Transparency International Secretariat
- Alt-Moabit 96
- 10559 Berlin
- Tel. +49-30-3438 20-0
- Fax +49-30-3470 3912
- Principal: www.transparency.org
- Ireland: transparency.ie
Contact
Resources
- The origins and motivations of the current emphasis on corruption by Julie Bajolle, Joint Research Centre on Transnational Crime, Italy This article offers a critical analysis of the development of the anticorruption movement and of the anticorruption NGO Transparency International. It looks at the self-interest underlying some anti-corruption initiatives, and at the composition and management of Transparency International.
- Dr. Michel van Hulten (2007) Ten years of Corruption (Perceptions) Indices
- The International AntiCorruption Movement
- Mondialisation & délocalisations
- The "International Anti Corruption Movement”,
- ECPR Joint Sessions, Nicosia 2006 Workshop directors: Luís de Sousa (CIES ISCTE, Portugal) and Barry Hindess (ANU, Australia)
References
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ Ref needed
- ↑ Tiri interview with Jeremy Pope
- ↑ Ref needed
- ↑ In October 2002, parliamentarians from different parts of the world set up the Global Organization of Parliamentarians against Corruption (GOPAC). In 2003, a committee made of representatives of the private sector (including General Electric, PricewaterhouseCoopers (Gerry Parfitt mentioned above is PwC) and Shell International), non-governmental organizations, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD elaborated the Business Principles for countering bribery. See Julie Bajolle (2005) The origins and motivations of the current emphasis on corruption: The case of transparency international paper for Common Session on Criminal Justice and Critical Criminology, Univresity of Hamburg, May 8 – 10, 2006 Hamburg, Internationalisation of Criminal Justice and Security Policy.
- ↑ Foreign Affairs
- ↑ Ref needed
- ↑ Promoting Revenue Transparency (Accessed: 23 May 2008)
- ↑ Calvin Tucker, Seeing through Transparency International, Comment is Free, 22 May 2008.
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ [3]
