highlights
September 2008:
At the high level meeting on aid effectiveness held in Accra, Ghana, the
Publish What You Fund
initiative was launched, Transparency International
called for urgent action on transparency, accountability and citizen
participation and civil society set out its demands in its
Better Aid statement.
August 2008:
On 22nd August, the UK secured its
first conviction for foreign bribery, when the Managing Director of a
security company, The CBRN Team, admitted bribing Ugandan public
officials. Earlier, in Japan, prosecutors arrested the former president of
Pacific Consultants International (PCI) on
suspicion of paying bribes in Vietnam for projects funded by Japanese Official Development
Assistance.
July 2008:
In the UK, on the 30th July, the
House of
Lords overturned the judgment of the High Court that the Director of
the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when he terminated the
SFO's
investigation into alleged corruption by BAE Systems in its arms deal with
Saudi Arabia. Earlier, the G8 published its
first report
setting out the progress made by members in implementing their
corruption commitments.
June 2008:
Transparency International released its annual
Progress Report on the OECD Anti-bribery
Convention. The World Bank Institute published its
latest
Worldwide Governance Indicators, measuring six dimensions of
governance for 212 countries. UNDP released its
Asia-Pacific Human Development Report, which examined
corruption from the perspective of
development and democracy-consolidation in the region.
May 2008:
The Woolf Committee published its
report
on BAE Systems plc and ethical business conduct, which contained 23
"robust and challenging" recommendations. BAE had already committed itself to
fully implementing all recommendations.
April 2008:
The Serious Fraud Office in the UK was given leave to
appeal
against a High Court
judgment
that it "acted unlawfully" when it halted the investigation into BAE
Systems and the Al Yamamah arms deal. Earlier,
the OECD carried out an
examination of the UK's implementation of the OECD Anti-bribery
Convention.
March 2008:
The UK Government published its
Draft
Constitutional Renewal Bill, containing proposals to increase the
powers of the Attorney General to stop criminal investigations on 'national security' grounds. The Swiss Bank, Julius Baer,
dropped
its lawsuit against Wikileaks.
February 2008: Wikileaks,
which publishes 'anonymous, untraceable and uncensorable' documents, was
taken
offline after a fire and a restraining order. The High Court
(London) heard
the
Judicial Review
brought by The Corner House and Campaign Against Arms
Trade (CAAT) contesting the legality of the decision to terminate the investigation into alleged bribery by BAE
Systems.
January 2008:
The head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria,
Nuhu Ribadu, agreed to
stand down for a year, following pressure from
the President to attend a training course. Earlier,
Human
Rights Watch described efforts to remove Ribadu as a "thinly veiled
attempt to gut the only law enforcement agency that has tried to hold
prominent ruling party politicians to account for their many crimes".
December 2007:
Siemens allegedly made
improper payments to senior officials of the Association of
Independent Employees, an employer-friendly competitor to the main
trade union at the company IG Metall. Earlier in the month
Nigeria debarred
Siemens for corruption.
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The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) organised an
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