Transparency International

Transparency International (TI) is an NGO operating under the slogan "fighting corruption worldwide". The organisations stated mission is "the relief of poverty, suffering and distress in any part of the world caused directly or indirectly by corruption", "the promotion, for the public benefit, of ethical standards of conduct and compliance with the law by the public and private sectors in international and domestic business transactions and overseas development initiatives", and "increasing awareness of corruption and its effects through communication initiatives to the wider public and active engagement with our membership".

Writing in The Guardian, Calvin Tucker describes the tension between the media perception and funding of Transparency International, he argues that "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".

History

Transparency International was founded in 1993 by Peter Eigen, Michael Hershman, Jeremy Pope, Laurence Cockcroft, Joe Githongo, Michael Hershman, Kamal Hossein, and Frank Vogl. Founding member Jeremy Pope described in an interview the emergence of an idea "that a group could organise to campaign against corruption on the part of the rich multinationals in the North as one way of helping the South with the problem that it was experiencing".

According to Jeremy Pope the World Bank dismissed corruption as a political issue and refused to broach the topic until James Wolfenson became the president of the organisation. Pope describes this example of a shift in policy towards corruption as important because "One of our missions in TI was to reverse the policies of the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme and so on, on the corruption issue and very quickly, we’ve achieved them. It was really quite phenomenal. We thought it might take about 10 years and it had taken months rather than years.".

Activities

Corruption Perceptions Index 2006 by Transparency International. http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2006

Transparency International publish a Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which according to Jeremy Pope "was developed because journalists kept asking, "Who were the worst countries? Who were the best?". The organisation are operate a series of five programmes each tackling corruption in a different area. The programs are designated the following topics:

• Programme 1 - Corruption in the Infrastructure, Construction and Engineering Sector
• Programme 2 - Defence Against Corruption
• Programme 3 - UK Anti-Corruption Strategy and Implementation of International Conventions
• Programme 4 - Domestic Corruption and Reform of Corruption Law
• Programme 5 - Increasing Awareness of the Impacts of Corruption and Fraud.

Controversy

Beth Aub was the general secretary for the Jamaica chapter of Transparency International. She 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.

Spotlighting Venezuela

On 28 April 2008, TI published a report on the transparency of oil revenue accounts of many countries. The curious aspect of the report is the way Venezuela's accounting was reported. The following account is by Calvin Tucker, co-editor of 21stcenturysocialism.com, writing in The Guardian:

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."

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 :
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:

Affiliations

See Also

• Transparency International UK

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

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)