Anti-Corruption Day 2011

Posted 9 December 2011

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“For too long, the demands of citizens for more accountable government have met promises for change, but too little action.

From this anti-corruption day on, we must judge commitments to good behaviour by the transparency and accountability with which leaders of government and business conduct their affairs.”

Huguette Labelle, Chair of the Board, Transparency International

Read the full statement here.

Fighting corruption has been high on the agenda in 2011. People have taken to the streets to demand accountability from their leaders. Additional countries have adopted anti-corruption legislation. More people are coming forward to report corruption.

However, the cost of corruption to economies and societies remains high.

Corruption and Anti-corruption in figures

One-fifth: estimated proportion of the income of poor Mexican families spent on petty bribes.Five per cent: amount of Malawi’s economy the World Bank estimates is income derived from corruption.
15 per cent: proportion of respondents to a national household survey in Guatemala that reported that they paid a bribe when trying to (re)connect to the public water system.
30-40 per cent: countries which have a higher risk of civil war because of weak governance, control of corruption and rule of law, according to the World Bank.
73 per cent: proportion of countries on the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index that score less than 5 out of ten.
15 years: longest prison sentence ever handed down in a U.S. foreign bribery case that involved the former president of a telecoms company in Florida.
US $6 million: value of the 11 sports cars belonging to the leader of Equatorial Guinea confiscated in Paris in September, a result of Transparency International France’s legal action on stolen assets.
US $37 billion: Libyan assets frozen in the United States. More on stolen assets here.
US $57.2 billion: amount Egypt lost to illicit financial activities and official government corruption from 2000 to 2008. Global Financial Integrity says Egypt is losing more than US $6 billion per year.
$160 billion: amount of money lost by Greece in unrecorded payments through its balance transfers over the last decade, according to Global Financial Integrity. Tax arrangements cost between €300 and €15.000, TI Greece finds.

Anti-corruption milestones in 2011

14 January – Public anger following the suicide of bribery victim Mohamed Bouazizi causes Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down after 23 years in power

11 February - Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is deposed by popular uprising which ends his 30-year hardline rule

25 February – China passes amendments to its corruption legislation that makes foreign corrupt practices illegal

13 April – Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak is detained and his two sons are being held in prison as officials investigate allegations of corruption and abuse of power

12 May – India ratifies the UN Convention Against Corruption

25 May – Russia is asked to join the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention

5 April – Indian activist Ana Hazare begins an anti-corruption hunger strike to pressure the governments to fulfil anti-corruption commitments as envisaged in the Lok Pal Bill. Nation-wide protests erupt to support his cause.

1 July – UK Bribery Act comes into force

28 August – Ana Hazare ends another fast, after the Indian Government promised to work towards devising an effective anti-corruption law (Lokpal bill).

7 September – thousand of people join anti-corruption demonstrations in Brazil

Read about what Transparency International has done to fight corruption in 2011 here

Anti-corruption stories

Transparency International runs Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres in more than fifty countries so that people (names have been changed) pursuing accountability are not alone.

These centres help Rwandans working in a commonly-owned mine whose local leader sides with the influential figure using a legal loophole to take it away from them.
They assist small time entrepreneurs, like Kerem in Azerbaijan, who are subject to land and property corruption.
They help people like, Leeroy, a migrant worker from Zimbabwe, who are forced to work for free, to launch a complaint against the recruitment company.
They push authorities to address the complaints of Ghanaian students who are asked to buy better grades.

These are only some of the 100,000 cases that we have dealt with since 2004. In so many of these cases, we have seen, time and time again, that the ability to hold authorities to account makes the difference between justice and tragedy.