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The Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI) is a donor collaborative working toward a world where citizens are informed and empowered; governments are open and responsive; and collective action advances the public good.
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Dear Readers,
The anti-corruption community is playing a prominent role in regards to sanctioned Russian assets, tracing ownership of yachts, mansions and other accoutrements of the super-rich, but we start this week with a reminder of how illicit activity hurts the poorest. Bryan Harris details the risks run by favela dwellers in Petropolis in the mountains of Brazil, which are made much worse by systemic corruption that diverts monies intended for reinforcing infrastructure from landslides.
What else this week? Transparency of supply chains, the shift to open by default, open contracting for smart cities, how project funding might not always be a bad thing and some interesting upcoming events in the calendar section. Enjoy!”
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Image Source: Macomb.edu
Some good news to start – verifiable improvements in labor conditions. The Cotton Campaign, a global human rights coalition supported by more than 260 apparel manufacturers and retailers, has ended its campaign to boycott Uzbek cotton. Find out why!
Koa, a Swiss-Ghanaian start-up is making its payments to farmers publicly available in real time using (you guessed it!) blockchain. This should improve supply chain traceability “from seed to shelf” in the cocoa sector.
Is there enough scrutiny of metal supplies? Seems not. Big brands, such as Ikea, have product using nickel sourced from the Fenix mine in Guatemala, operated by Swiss-registered Solway Investment Group. Complaints by local communities about the contamination of Lake Izabal (Guatemala’s largest body of freshwater) were dismissed, but now leaked documents suggest Solway knew all along that it was contaminating the water.
Greening procurement along the supply chain in a transparent way will be important to achieving climate goals – so we are excited to see the launch of the G20 Smart Cities Open Contracting Model Policy.
Of course, it’s not just those in procurement who should be thinking about going green. Financial regulators have a critical role. Gary Gensler, head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, offers an accessible explainer timed for yesterday’s meeting on new climate risk disclosure rules. Let’s hope more regulators follow his lead.
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Matthew Taylor and Luciano Da Ros provide a framework for evaluating the bottlenecks to effective accountability in Brazil and analyze the successes and failures of anticorruption efforts from the early days of the democratic transition through the demise of the massive Lava Jato investigations in their new book Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption and Reform Under Democracy.
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Last week we featured innovative uses of public domain data, this week Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, further makes the case for open source data – starting with documenting Putin’s war crimes.
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What makes it hard to fight digital disinformation? A review of studies finds that the most significant challenges are limited access to social media data, inconsistent and inflexible funding, and piecemeal collaboration within and between CSOs and the private sector.
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Last Wednesday, Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, the UK, and US, agreed to increased cooperation to target Russian assets via a new task force to share information to inform and assist with sanctions, asset freezing, seizures and criminal prosecution.
This comes as reports surfaced about how Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov sold £1bn worth of his shares in Tui, the world’s biggest tourism company, despite being sanctioned. How did he do it? By use of a British Virgin Islands company. This is just another example of how secrecy jurisdictions are helping oligarchs evade sanctions.
Of course, there is also the issue of money spent to influence. Great to see the work of Anti-Corruption Data Collective - supported by TAI members – shed light on oligarch giving in the U.S., showing that over 20 years Russian billionaires gave as much as $435 million to 200 institutions in the United States. Non-profits need to vet their donors, too.
Check out this new effort to track down and catalogue the vast wealth held outside Russia by oligarchs and key figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Image Source: openownership.org
Kate Beioley of the Financial Times picks up on the Financial Action Task Force shift to demand countries set up a “beneficial ownership register” or sufficient alternative, as we covered last week - noting that these stricter standards will help sanctions hit their targets. Further momentum, as the UK government approved the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard to collect, exchange, use, and distribute beneficial ownership data among key agencies.
One hotspot is to address money laundering through real estate, so interesting to read new research on FinCen’s Geographic Targeting Program (GTO), which requires title insurance companies to collect data on the ultimate beneficial owner of companies buying real estate in cash. The authors found that the GTO did not yet lead to a reduction in corporate cash purchases. Why? Most likely due to imperfect implementation. Just as we’ve found on other types of disclosure, authorities need to act on the demanded data to create a meaningful deterrent effect.
The research is useful reading for Canadian officials, given the rush of real estate purchases by overseas entities. Transparency International Canada call for measures to stop the country being marketed as a secrecy jurisdiction for foreign money.
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There has been a helpful shift in philanthropy toward flexible “core” funding of late, but is there still a place for project grants? The funder collaborative Funders for Real Cost, Real Change argue yes, if done well. Dive into the first of the three-part series “Project Grants Need Not Be the Enemy” to learn about ways to tackle the nonprofit starvation cycle, structure project grants to do a better job of supporting the organizational health of recipients, and more.
Want to build out your theory of change? This new workbook from USAID is designed to help you do just that. Useful for funders and partners alike.
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Ford Foundation President Darren Walker will be a featured speaker of Skoll World Forum.
MacArthur Fellow Saul Griffith explains why we need to "electrify everything."
Luminate’s CEO Stephen King spoke with Maria Ressa, journalist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and Peter Pomerantsev, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Agora Institute, about disinformation and its threat to democracy at South by Southwest (SXSW).
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Calendar
Trust between government and citizens: the key to responsiveness? - 22 March 2022
Tackling the Foundations of Inequality: Understanding Barriers to Women’s Participation in Public Procurement in Eastern Africa – March 23, 2022
SSRI Frontiers of Social Innovation Annual Conference –March 22-24, 2022
Environmental Democracy- the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)– 29 March, 2022 - 31 March 2022
Making Anti-Corruption Real: How to Stop Wasting Money and Make Progress - The Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) research consortium - March 29, 2022
Skoll World Forum - April 6–8, 2022
Call for papers in advance of the Shifting Narratives Conference on the political economy of public services, spending and production – 10 April 2022
International Convention on Anti-Corruption, Good Governance, and Human Rights – April 21-22, 2022 (Boston, MA)
Natural Resource Governance and Energy Transition: Policies and Practice course - 23 May to 22 July.
United Philanthropy Forum – July 18-20, 2022
SVRI Forum – September 19- 23, 2022
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