February 2025 saw the publication by Oxford University Press of Indulging Kleptocracy, a groundbreaking new book by John Heathershaw, Tena Prelec and Tom Mayne. The book examines how lawyers, real…
Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) are exchanges which allow actors to trade in credits generated from emissions reductions or removals in order to offset their own carbon emissions. In this blog,…
Image Credit: Kevin Ku/Pexels Michael Hornsby, Impact Manager at Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) and David Szakonyi, ACDC co-founder, discuss the value that cross-sectoral collaborations might bring to complex, cross-border investigations…
This publication focuses on groundbreaking research revealing significant shifts in the pattern of global illicit financial flows (IFFs). The study, led by Dr. Daniel Haberly, reveals how and where different types of illicit money flows around the world.
Much attention was devoted to the corruption that dominated emergency responses during the Covid-19 pandemic. My team and I undertook research for Governance & Integrity’s Anti-Corruption Evidence Program on the…
A new report from the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE) entitled “Global Finance and the Enablers of Corruption” reviews the body of evidence that seeks to demonstrate why and how enablers become involved in IFF schemes, what instruments exist to deter them, and how effective these instruments have been in practice. With ample use of case studies and news reporting, the report illustrates how regulatory frameworks do not operate in a vacuum, but within the context of distinct jurisdictions, and with real-world trade-offs related to privacy, security, and the resources needed for development, implementation and enforcement.
This is a crosspost from OpenOwnership, in response to Jackie Harvey’s research on beneficial ownership policy and legislation in Nigeria. Beneficial ownership transparency and the fight against grand corruption…
Both Russian-led intervention and calls for Western sanctions demonstrate the transnational and kleptocratic aspects of Kazakhstan’s crisis of January 2022 On 5 January, following three days of protests which…
Identification and disclosure of beneficial ownership (BO) has been viewed as the ‘silver bullet’ for the international community in its Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Corruption (AML/ACL) efforts. The intergovernmental body, Financial…
This is a crosspost from the Ratiu Forum blog, a joint initiative by the Ratiu Family Charitable Foundation, the Ratiu Democracy Centre and the London School of Economics IDEAS Think…
This is a crosspost from the Basel Institute on Governance, written by GI-ACE researcher Claudia Baez Camargo on her project on harnessing informality. Bila watu hufiki popote. “Without people or…
Professor Robert Barrington has offered some reflections prompted by the recent exchange between Matthew Stephenson and Bo Rothstein, seeking to contest the ‘narrative of anticorruption failure’. He appears to attribute…
Researchers John Heathershaw and Tena Prelec explain the potential benefits in store for the super wealthy politically exposed persons (PEPs) donating to academia in pursuit of reputation laundering.
Researcher Christian Schuster shares research insights demonstrating that civil service reform and management practices cannot be applied indiscriminately in developing and OECD countries, as these reforms have differential effects on corruption.
Researchers John Heathershaw and Tom Mayne describe how the UK may be failing to enforce laws designed to stop illicit financial flows and “foreign dark money” from entering the country.
Researcher Adam Harris discusses the results of surveys of public servants in ten countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe that focused on the experience of public servants in relation to public service management, their integrity, attitudes, and motivation to serve citizens and deliver policies in accordance with the public interest.
GI-ACE researcher Amrita Dhillon explores the challenges of aggregating audit data of Indian government schemes in order to create a database that is accessible to policymakers, economists and academics.
GI-ACE researchers shared insights at the International Anti Corruption Conference on how to foster professional integrity across industries, sectors, and groups of professions.
GI ACE researcher Brigham Daniels describes the challenges of vaccine dissemination in country contexts where the government has been mired in accusations of corruption.
Initial excitement about the potential of open data to help in the fight against corruption over the past decade has slowly given way to the realization that information on its…
GI ACE researcher Dan Haberly analyses the structure behind offshore shell company formation.
GI-ACE researcher Christian Alexander shares learnings from the Cities of Integrity conference that is spearheading research on integrity in urban planners.
GI-ACE researcher Thorsten Chmura discussed focus of research on transnational corruption in international business, pushing the boundaries of citizen science.
GI-ACE researchers Liz Dávid-Barrett and Mihály Fazekas use big data analysis from a recent World Bank procurement reform dataset to show how corruption is a moving target.
Researcher Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling discusses how the interaction of ethics codes and disciplinary codes affects corruption in public service.
GI ACE researcher Jackie Harvey discusses commitments that appeared to address two recent criticisms made of Nigeria’s anti-corruption regime – overlapping mandates and lack of inter-agency cooperation – that had been identified by various authors in recent years
GI-ACE researcher Tom Mayne discusses project investigating laundering of monies and reputations by professional enablers for African and Central Asian elites.
One year further into its GI ACE-supported research concerning the role of integrity and corruption within the planning profession in Zambia and South Africa, the African Centre for Cities’ “Cities of Integrity” (COI) research team has hit new milestones and made progress in achieving its research objectives.
One year further into its GI ACE-supported research concerning the role of integrity and corruption within the planning profession in Zambia and South Africa, the African Centre for Cities’ “Cities of Integrity” (COI) research team has hit new milestones and made progress in achieving its research objectives.
ACE is an interdisciplinary program, encompassing political science, economics, business, anthropology, sociology, law, public health, and urban studies. ACE’s research questions require a combination of methodologies and substantial fieldwork to generate new data, as well as a range of experimental methods.
We are inviting applicants to apply for the position of Research Associate/Fellow within the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, one of our partner institutions.
GI ACE researcher Dan Haberly analyses the changing international regulatory landscape has impacted shell company use since the turn of the millennium.
GI ACE researchers Jacqueline Klopp, Alissa Krueger, and Melissa Trimble highlight the implications of COVID-19 on small scale cross-border trading in Kenya and Uganda.
GI ACE researcher Claudia Baez Camargo investigates the social norm of gift-giving in the Tanzanian health sector.
GI ACE researcher Jackie Harvey discusses the issue of increasing the transparency of beneficial ownership, with Nigeria as a prime example.
GI ACE researcher Tom Mayne explores the consequences of recent Unexplained Wealth Order cases in the UK
GI-ACE researcher Amrita Dhillon explores compositie indicators across Indian states and what insights might exist for greater service delivery and curbing corruption.
In a new report Liz David-Barrett, Mihaly Fazekas, Agnes Czibik, Bence Toth, and Isabelle Adam make observations and offer recommendations around their experience trying to gather procurement data in India.
Highlights from an ethnographic study in revenue-sharing projects in Bwindi National Park–Uganda One reason that corruption is difficult to address is because it manifests differently depending on social expectations in…
How might knowledge about the centrality of informal social networks be used to inform the design of innovative anti-corruption approaches?
GI-ACE researchers explore the multitude of ways traders interpret bribery on East African borders. Especially for small-scale traders with perishable goods, the cost and time involved drive traders to seek out shortcuts.
GI-ACE researcher Matthew T Page presents key takeaways from new policy-relevant research into effectiveness of anti-corruption law enforcement in Nigeria.
Project research assistant Dorothy Ndhlovu reports on the GI-ACE Cities of Integrity project’s networking panel at the tenth annual World Urban Forum.
GI-ACE researcher Ryan Jablonski explores findings from surveys exploring Malawians’ experiences with accessing their medicines and shares additional analysis that sheds light on why Malawians believe individuals are motivated to steal drugs.
The problems of corruption research can be properly addressed only through the coordinated use of different methodological approaches from different actors, including academia, civil society, and policymakers. A real multidisciplinary perspective on the phenomenon will require the coordination of politics, research, and advocacy.
Liz David-Barrett discusses importance of having the right teams in place to use the available data to fight corruption, as exemplified in recent workshop in Jamaica building on procurement work.
GI-ACE project aiming to harness the power of social networks to promote positive anti-corruption outcomes among health providers and users through behavioral interventions and dissemination of interventions through trusted and influential social networks.
GI-ACE researchers Dorothy Ndhlovu, Gilbert Siame, and Laura Nkula-Wenz reflect on the Qualitative Action Experiment (QAE) experiment conducted in Lusaka, Zambia, in partnership with the Centre for Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Zambia and the Zambian Institute of Planners.
How might knowledge about the centrality of informal social networks be used to inform the design of innovative anti-corruption approaches?
GI-ACE researchers explore the multitude of ways traders interpret bribery on East African borders. Especially for small-scale traders with perishable goods, the cost and time involved drive traders to seek out shortcuts.
GI-ACE project research in Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania shows that anti-corruption agencies’ independence has turned out to be a major impediment.
GI-ACE project on beneficial ownership and corruption in Nigeria investigating financial data to try to locate something that is not apparently observable—laundering the proceeds of corruption through disguising the beneficial owner—by removing from the picture what might be explained legitimately.
Takeaways from GI-ACE workshop on ‘Audit and Anti-Corruption Measures in India.’
Recent fieldwork in Tanzania and Uganda demonstrates the potential for data transparency to improve accountability will depend on commitment, not just to open data but also to pursue accompanying reforms that facilitate oversight and promote fair competition.
Reseracher Tom Mayne discusses GI-ACE project aiming to look at possible enabling or complicit practices regarding money-laundering in three different but related areas: banking, real estate, and reputation management.
Researcher Claudia Baez Camargo writes about GI-ACE project, we adopt two perspectives to explore the question, “What would anti-corruption practice look like if we shift the unit of analysis from individuals to networks?”
GI-ACE researcher Mark Buntaine’s team has pursued a fully paired ethnography and randomized field experiment to study anti-corruption strategies in the context of revenue-sharing for Bwindi National Park.
GI-ACE researcher Daniel Haberly’s first project workshop, “Dark Architectures: Advancing Research on Global Wealth Chains,” provided an opportunity to present in detail on the preliminary version of the historical financial secrecy database compiled over the past several months, including a preliminary overview of how the world map (in 61 jurisdictions) of secrecy-related regulation evolved between the years of 2000-2015.
In a new Red Flags Explainer, Liz David-Barrett, Mihaly Fazekas, Agnes Czibik, Bence Toth, and Isabelle Adam draw on their experience of building and analysing datasets of government procurement over the past ten years to answer some Frequently Asked Questions about their work.
GI-ACE researcher Claudia Baez Camargo explores how we can diagnose whether there is a social norm that is underpinning observed behaviours.
Dorothy Ndhlovu reports on the GI-ACE Cities of Integrity project’s launch in Zambia
GI-ACE researcher Thorsten Chmura discussed focus of research on transnational corruption in international business, pushing the boundaries of citizen science.
Researcher Gerhard Anders discusses GI-ACE research project spearheading the most systematic, comprehensive study to date of the legal frameworks, prosecutorial strategies, institutional constraints, and external influences shaping these countries’ anti-corruption efforts.
A new analysis of corruption and corruption reform in the electricity sectors of Ghana and Kenya suggests a new interpretation of how and why successes against corruption seem so elusive.
Researcher Dan Haberly discusses GI-ACE project attempting to understand how years of specific offshore financial secrecy regulatory reform either have, or possibly have not, impacted the use and shape of illicit financial architectures.
The scourge of corruption in urban development has corrosive and far-reaching effects that can hardwire injustice into the fabric of cities and undermine social cohesion and trust within communities.
Researcher Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling discusses GI-ACE project taking up the challenge of developing a state-of-the-art ethics training for civil servants in order to contribute to the ambition of building a more professional and ethical civil service in Nepal.
Researcher Ryan Jablonski discusses GI-ACE project focused on identifying and preventing drug theft in Malawi, a country where issues of medicine theft are particularly acute. The impact of drug theft is a matter of life and death, and falls particularly hard on the poorest who cannot afford commercial medicines.
Researcher Amrita Dhillon discusses GI-ACE project focusing on two major public works programmes in India, asking how corruption in these programmes relates to the frequency of past top-down audits and/or to the frequency and intensity of social audits.
In this GI-ACE project, data is used to develop new proxy indicators of corruption risk, based on ‘red flags’ in the tendering process, and then used to test how patterns of corruption differ across contexts and whether anti-corruption efforts work.
Researcher Mark Buntaine discusses GI-ACE project testing a fundamentally different approach to anti-corruption — recognizing officials for properly managing public funds.
Researcher Jackie Harvey discusses GI-ACE project nvestigating how the current international anti-corruption frameworks function within Nigeria and how they can be better targeted to reduce opportunities for the proceeds of corruption to be moved across the globe while the beneficial owner remains hidden.
GI-ACE research Jacqueline Klopp explores the wider transformation needed for more seamless and integrated borders to become a Pan-African reality, rather than simply a dream.
GI-ACE researcher John Heathershaw discusses project investigating laundering of monies and reputations by professional enablers for African and Central Asian elites.
How do we – organizations and individuals working to strengthen transparency, accountability, and participation – more effectively fight corruption? For many of us, this is perhaps the perennial question.
The Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) programme supports 14 research partners around the world in generating actionable evidence that policy makers, practitioners, and advocates can use to design and implement more effective anti-corruption programmes.
We are delighted to announce a new partnership between Global Integrity (GI) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID): The Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE).
