Transparency International UK
Transparancy International UK is the UK wing of Transparency International. It is based on the 3rd Floor of the Downstream Building, 1 London Bridge, London SE1 9BG. It is part of a collective called Mezzanine2 comprising some 50 organisations including Internews. This is a development from the Mezzanine office used by groups such as Demos, CAN, ERA, Foreign Policy Centre, Ashoka and The Policy Network as a nexus of lobby front groups, think tanks, astroturf organisations, funding bodies, venture philanthropists and political action committees. TIUK had a connection with this previous group through Peter Eigen of Transparency International now also with The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
Contents
Advisory Council
- Peter Berry, CMG, President and Chairman of the International Management Committee of the Charities Aid Foundation[1],
- Paul Batchelor: recently retired member of Pricewaterhousecoopers' Global Management Team (The company's divisional heads are called 'Global Leaders'), responsible for strategy development and of the Supervisory Group of AIESEC. A member of the Advisory Council of Transparency International, and Chairman of Oxford Policy Management and a non-executive board member of Crown Agents.[2]
- Baroness Chalker of Wallasey
- Philippa Foster-Back
- Lord William Goodhart
- Sir Nicholas Monck
- Baroness Whitaker
Board
Laurence Cockcroft, Chairman
Jeremy Carver, CBE
Former Directors:
David Murray: Senior Adviser to the Chairman, The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative International Advisory Group, and former Deputy Chairman, TI(UK).
Staff
Chandrashekhar Krishnan - Executive Director
Graham Rodmell - Director Corporate and Regulatory Affairs
Jan Lanigan - Company Secretary
Ian Trumper (Forensic Accounting) - Treasurer
Jeremy Carver, CBE (Clifford Chance) - Legal Advisor
Notes
- ↑ One can see an interesting relationship between the Charities Aid Foundation and Transparency International and their lobbying abilities. At the 13th meeting of the Scottish Parliament's Standards Committee on Lobbying on 11th September 2002, the Committee 'considered an invitation' from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) 'Consulting and Development' to the Deputy Convener to attend a conference on lobbying. The conference – entitled ‘Regulating Lobbying Activities in Central and Eastern Europe’ – is jointly organised by CAF and Transparency International (TI) to take place in Budapest. The 'organisers' offered to meet accommodation and related costs in Budapest but have requested that delegates meet the cost of their own airfares. The Committee agreed that it "would be appropriate to seek further information about the conference organisers before making a decision to apply for Committee travel funds for the Deputy Convener." Page 12 of the document sets out "more information about CAF and TI". Most of the information was simply "taken from web sites set up by both organisations". Although the information "has also been checked with a third party organisation (CAF with the Charities Commission and TI with BDO (accountants) and the Department for International Development)." Earlier the Executive had met to discuss the role of Lobbyists in the parliament.
- ↑
Cohen, N. (2002) Half-baked bean counters, The Observer, Sunday July 7. According to Cohen: "The big five accountancy firms, whose indifference to corporate fraud is the immediate cause of the stock market and pensions crisis, boast of their global reach." Cohen cites Austin Mitchell MP and Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex, Prem Sikka's, Dirty Business: The Unchecked Power of Major Accountancy Firms. This argues along the lines of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? and its findings (with its numerous indictments of PWC) would imply that people involved in Pricewaterhousecoopers are not particularly qualified as the guardians of morality the TIUK assume and posture themselves to be:
- "Accountancy firms enjoy a state guaranteed monopoly of external auditing and insolvency markets. Yet no independent regulator regulates them. Major accountancy firms will do almost anything to make money. In pursuit of profits they operate cartels, launder money, devise tax avoidance/evasion schemes, bribe officials and obstruct inquiries into their affairs. They use external audits as a loss leader to sell other services. The internal organisation of accountancy firms encourages falsification of audit work. The absence of ‘duty of care’ to individual stakeholders affected by audits dilutes the economic incentives to deliver good audits. The longevity of auditor appointments encourages personal relationships with company directors. Frequently, audit staff are auditing their own former senior colleagues and partners, now enjoying a directorial position in a client company."
