Photo Credit: Wikipedia via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flags_south_america.png What makes the Odebrecht case so special? In December 2016, Brazil’s biggest construction company Odebrecht and its petrochemical subsidiary Braskem agreed to pay at least $3.5 billion to Brazilian, US, and Swiss authorities in a multi-country Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) settlement. Aside from this record-breaking settlement, the Odebrecht case… Read More
Photo Credit: Heather (via Flickr) Recently I listened to a webinar focused on a somewhat unexpected topic: what can improvisation teach us about ethical behavior? The webinar was hosted by NYSE Governance Services, the leading governance, compliance and education solutions provider for companies and their boards, and Second City Works, the B2B side of The… Read More
Photo Credit: Transparency International The interplay of corruption and inequality feed off each other to form a destructive cycle between corruption, unequal distribution of power in a society and unequal distribution of wealth. This is the main conclusion from the recently published Transparency International’s (TI) 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which highlights the connection between… Read More
Photo Credit: Puro Periodism Last month I was in Panama, attending the 17th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC). Not surprisingly, the Panama papers were looming large over the event and became a major point of discussion. To me, however, an equally important thread concerned another key issue: governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and its significance for… Read More
Photo Credit: Wikipedia Business associations, as advocates for the private sector, play important roles in promoting good governance and sound policy-making, maintaining the private sector as the engine of economic growth, and helping create an open society and transparent government. However, recently, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), one of Korea’s five largest business associations,… Read More
Photo credit: Flickr For years, France has faced international criticism for its loose enforcement towards corruption. As a result, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has imposed severe sanctions on French companies. On November 8, 2016, France sealed the first step in a renewed campaign to tackle the problem of corruption by adopting a new… Read More