www.globalcorruptionreport.org 

• "The corrupt were running out of places to hide from whistle-blowers and journalists."
• "Freedom of Information is not enough."
• "However professionally and accurately information is processed, corruption will continue to thrive without the vigilance of the media and civil society, and the bravery of investigative journalists and whistle-blowers."

(Transparency International, 2003-01-23)

London - The corrupt were running out of places to hide from whistle-blowers and journalists, Transparency International said yesterday in its Global Corruption Report 2003, calling for reforms to corporate governance after the Enron scandal.

The organisation, best known for its index of countries by how corrupt their bureaucracies are, issued the report in London.

"Freedom of information is not enough," said Peter Eigen, the chairman of Transparency International. "However professionally and accurately information is processed, corruption will continue to thrive without the vigilance of the media and civil society, and the bravery of investigative journalists and whistle-blowers."

The report said access to information for ordinary citizens was a vital protection against corruption, and pressure for greater access was a worldwide phenomenon. It said constitutional provisions were not enough to ensure the right to freedom of information in practice, and implementing legislation was required. It pointed to countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Britain, Kyrgyzstan, Poland and South Africa, which had passed laws since 2000.

Transparency International campaigns for firms in the oil and mining sectors to declare taxes and royalties paid to the governments where they operate as condition for stock exchange listing.

It said donor agencies and civil society groups in the developing world were demanding fuller disclosure of budgets and a commitment to clamp down on corruption. "Donors have too often appeared to shore up secretive regimes with loans and assistance, the details of which are kept from the citizens they are ostensibly intended to help," the report said.

Fewer journalists had been killed in conflict zones last year, but the powerful continued to threaten journalists investigating corruption. Journalists in Bangladesh, Colombia, the Philippines and Russia were killed while writing about corruption.

The report said the September 11 attacks prompted governments to increasingly deny access to information. In a contribution to the report, Ann Florini, an author and member of the Brookings Institute, said the US had reacted with particularly strong measures.

She said the US government and non-governmental organisations had used measures such as "scrubbing" websites or removing information that might be of use to groups planning attacks.

With acknowledgements to Sapa-DPA and Business Report.

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