Last week we reported on corruption cases in the United States border patrol. The solitary and remote nature of border crossings, plus the authority inherent in the border police, creates a classic scenario of “Opacity + Discretion = Corruption”. Here, Global Integrity’s Farid Abbasov looks at corruption on the borders of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan: Border Patrol…
The story of shoddy construction in Chinese schools, and the grim — and uneven — tally of the May 12 quake is not going away. Well-built government offices still stand near collapsed schools, and parents are demanding answers. Faced with such horrible news, Chinese citizens are demanding accountability: why were schools so poorly built? Who…
We’ve been frequently making the case that corruption is about more than just bribes — it’s the sweetheart contracts to military suppliers; it’s campaign finance systems that allow unlimited or undisclosed donations; it’s public misinformation through complacent media. We take this moment to observe that corruption is also about big envelopes fat with cash. The…
The New York Times reports on an uptick in corruption cases against U.S. border patrol agents protecting the U.S.-Mexico border. It would seem that killing the Border Patrol’s internal affairs unit was a rather bad idea. The fact that there is corruption tied to smuggling drugs and people across the border is not a surprise…
Global Integrity’s Nathaniel Heller reports from Tanzania on the latest Global Integrity Dialogues workshop. The Dialogues are a new offering from Global Integrity that gather key local stakeholders to identify problems and plot future anti-corruption efforts. Nathaniel writes, via email: In collaboration with the Partnership for Transparency Fund, Global Integrity held a Dialogue workshop in…
Sameh Fawzy tells a grisly story of how cozy relationships between business and politics threatened to infect — literally — the people of Egypt. Egypt: Bad Blood By Sameh Fawzy In January of 2007, an employee of the Egyptian Ministry of Health, Sohier El Sharkawi, claimed to have found 200,000 contaminated bags used to package…