Presidents Fox and Havel to join George Soros, Eva Joly, Interpol, NGOs and business leaders at the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Prague, 7-11 October

The IACC will include 72 hands-on workshops on money laundering, the media, corruption in aid, sport, health, education and conflict zones, and party funding

Berlin, 31 August 2001

President Vicente Fox Quesada of Mexico, Milos Zeman, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, and justice ministers and public prosecutors from around the world will converge on Prague on 7-11 October 2001. They will join top representatives of private business, including the mining, petroleum and banking sectors, and leading NGOs, including Global Witness, Greenpeace, Jubilee +, Article 19 and Human Rights Watch - and of course, the world's leading non-governmental organisation fighting corruption, Transparency International, which provides the secretariat for the event - the 10th International Anti-Corruption Conference (programme details are available at www.10iacc.org).

The 10th IACC will be opened on 7 October by Czech President Vaclav Havel and the Transparency International Integrity Awards ceremony, which will recognise the bravery of individuals or groups who have shown outstanding courage in fighting corruption, often at great personal risk. (The first TI Integrity Awards, in 2000, were presented to a citizens' group in the Philippines ensuring that government money reaches the earmarked destinations, a whistleblower in the Moroccan army, and an investigative journalist in Sri Lanka. There was a posthumous award to a whistleblower in the Argentine civil service.)

The IACC plenary and workshops follow on 8-11 October. Speakers include Baltasar Garzon, the investigating judge who sought the extradition to Spain of former Chilean military ruler Augusto Pinochet, Eva Joly, prosecutor in the Elf Aquitaine affair in France, Frene Ginwala, Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa, Soli Sorabjee, Attorney General of India, Kun Goh, Mayor of Seoul, George Soros, financier and philanthropist, and Peter Eigen, Chairman of Transparency International.

The private sector will be represented by Ricardo Semler, President of Semco Industries, Brazil, Heinz Rothermund, Royal Dutch Shell's Regional Business Director in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, and James Schiro, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Other expert speakers include Ronald Noble, Secretary General of Interpol, and Jean Lemierre, President of the EBRD and, from NGOs, Ann Pettifor, Director of Jubilee +, Ekaterina Genieva, President of the Open Society Institute in Russia, Remi Parmentier, Greenpeace Director, and Ayo Obe, President of the Civil Liberties Organisation in Nigeria.

Important: The deadline for media registration is 10 September 2001. Accreditation can be submitted via the www.10iacc.org web site, or by contacting TI at press@transparency.org

Media Contact at Transparency International
Jeff Lovitt
Tel: +49-30 3438 2045
Fax: +49-30 3470 3912
press@transparency.org

Note for editors: The first ever edition of the Global Corruption Report, the new definitive annual overview of the state of corruption around the globe from Transparency International, will be published immediately after the IACC Conference, at a press launch in London on Monday 15 October 2001. As well as expert analysis of party funding, money laundering and corruption in the diamond trade, the GCR 2001 will feature in-depth regional reports from across the globe, and a comprehensive Data and Research section. On an embargo basis, the book will be available for preview by accredited journalists before the launch. For a preview copy, please contact gcr@transparency.org. Further details are available at www.globalcorruptionreport.org