#36 Sean Hagan – Why is it important to fight against corruption?

The detention of the anticorruption activist and leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny in Moscow has brought tens of thousand of protesters to the streets of Russia. President Vladimir Putin´s government is rattled. 

In our CONVOCO! Podcast Corinne M. Flick speaks with Sean Hagan, Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and former General Counsel & Director of the Legal Department at the IMF, about:

Why is it important to fight against corruption?

Here’s what he said:

Corruption becomes a real problem in a society where corrupt behaviour is normalised and has become acceptable.

If you are going to have effective anticorruption reform you need to begin by reforming the institutions.

Anticorruption reform cannot be imposed from the outside, it must be a push from within the country. The reason is simple: where corruption is systemic, reform creates a lot of losers.

For every bribe that a foreign government takes, there has to be someone who’s offering the bribe. Often, these bribes are offered by foreign companies that want to get access to certain resources in that economy. It’s really important that these companies are held to account.

A key issue is to strengthen the ability of whistle-blowers to come forward and report corruption without fear for their own safety and their livelihoods.

(In a disaster) people sometimes feel they don’t have the time to put in place all the checks and balances that would address the risk of corruption. In the pandemic, the government is throwing a lot of money at it with tremendous urgency, and as a consequence of that, you have problems with corruption.

A challenge for our global institutions is to reform their governance structure, to give a greater voice and vote to emerging market economies, to low-income countries – not only to make them more legitimate but to make them more effective as institutions.

The assault on the Capitol was an assault on democracy and an assault on the truth.

Previous #33 Philipp H. Pattberg – On the Verge of a New Green World

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