KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast

Thomas Stelzer is the dean of the international anti-corruption academy (IACA) and panelist of the UN high-level panel on international financial accountability, transparency & integrity (FACTI). Thomas outlines how his extensive experience going back to being closely involved in the process of drafting and implementing UNCAC led him to his current position and his work for FACTI. The two discuss...

On this very special -- the 50th -- episode of Kickback the Global Anti-Corruption Podcast, we welcome Olesea Stamate, who served as Minister of Justice in the past Moldovan government and is currently judicial advisor to the Moldovan president Maia Sandu. The podcast covers her unique background, working both for civil society and within the government to fight corruption in Moldova. Matthew and...

Diana Chigas is a professor of the practice of international negotiation and conflict resolution at The Fletcher School and also serves as aSenior International Officer and Associate Provost at Tufts University. Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church is a Professor of Practice in Human Security. Together, Diana and Cheyanne have been working on the topic of social norms of corruption (see references below). T...

This second interview with Gary Kalman (director of the US office of Transparency International) The interview starts discussing the recently passed Corporate Transparency Act and what that progress on the issue of Beneficial Ownership means for anti-corruption efforts in the US. Gary outlines the unique strategies they applied to make headway on the issue and whether this strategy is scalable to...

Eric Kinaga (@EricKinaga) is a Kenyan-born writer, social justice enthusiast, working for Transparency International Kenya (https://tikenya.org/) and is the campaign coordinator for the Shule Yangu Campaign Alliance (https://shuleyangu.co.ke/) aiming to protect public schools via open data initiatives. On this podcast episode, we also welcome another “guest co-host”, Neil Sorensen, who is the Comm...

Lola Adekanye (@lola_kanye) is a Senior Program Officer, Africa at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). Her background in compliance and banking got Lola interested in development and ethics, a stopover at the World Bank. Lola describes CIPE’s work at the intersection of the private and public sector, using market-oriented reforms to tackle corruption, with the key goal: drive u...

We welcome President Obama's “ethics czar” Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) to our first episode of 2021. The interview kicks off with a discussion on what the past four years have revealed about the vulnerability and resilience of American political institutions. Norm weighs in on the Mueller investigation, impeachment and currently ongoing legal investigation against President Trump. Hear Norm’s advice o...

Doussouba Konaté (@DoussoubaKonate) is the Global Program Officer and Moussa Kondo (@Kondoba) is the Country director of Mali for the Accountability Lab (@AccountLab). The two outline how they both became interested in anti-corruption and accountability in Mali. They outline how the accountability lab applies a human-centric approach in the fight against corruption, one of the most famous example...

Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith) and Matthew discuss the recent book After Trump, that Jack and Bob Bauer wrote. The interview begins by discussing the strength weaknesses of current laws preventing malfeasance by US presidents in office, why norms play an important role and how norms are established. To address risks of corruption such as conflict of interest by presidents, the two law professors...

Daniel Freund (@daniel_freund) is a Member of the European Parliament and the parliamentary group’s rapporteur on attaching conditionalities of rule of law for dispersion of funds within the EU. Daniel outlines how he got interested in issues of (anti-)corruption starting with his work at Transparency International’s offices in Brussels. Daniel describes the general procedures of allocating funds...

Judge Claudia Escobar is a former magistrate of the Court of Appeals of Guatemala who resigned from her position because of an executive and legislative interference in the judiciary that forced her to relocate. The interview kicks off with Claudia outlining how the history of more than 36 years of civil war in Guatemala has left a legacy of impunity, civil insecurity, violence and inequity. Up un...

We welcome for a second time, Chief of Party for Democracy International in Afghanistan. James described how he almost overnight became an advisor involved in anti-corruption in a warzone, the challenges he faced and how his experiences in Kosovo, Ukraine and Afghanistan differed from each other. Matthew and James discuss the concrete challenges of dealing with corruption in conflict areas. James...

39. Frederik Obermaier on the FinCEN Files, revealing global money laundering systems by KickBack

This week on podcast world-famous UN whistleblower James Wasserstrom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wasserstrom). His case made the headlines around the world (see links in coverage). Brought in to investigate corruption in Kosovo, James soon received hints that some UN officials themselves were involved in corruption. Learn all about the retaliation against James, including death threats, i...

We welcome Michael Hershman co-founder of Transparency International for an in-depth conversation about founding TI, populism, COV-19, FIFA, and politicization of sports. Michael’s shares his experience of being Senior Staff Investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee, how his work on Police corruption in New York inspired the movie Serpico (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070666/) and the chall...

36. Danielle Brian on her work at the Project On Government Oversight and corruption risks in the US This time on Kickback Danielle Brian Twitter: @daniellebrian Executive Director of Project On Government Oversight (POGO, https://www.pogo.org/; @POGOBlog) The first part of the interview provides background info about how POGO’s work was initiated by Pentagon whistleblowers and how it examines - o...

We welcome Franz von Weizsäcker (@franzvw) from the GIZ (German Corporation for International Cooperation) Blockchain Lab and Niklas Kossow (@NiklasKossow) from the Hertie School of Governance. The interview takes a deep dive into how new technologies (ICTs), in particular distributed ledger technology like Blockchain can be used to curb corruption. Franz and Niklas first describe how they became...

This time on Kickback: Asoka Obeysekere (@asokao), Executive Director of Transparency International (TI) Sri Lanka. Asoka describes his work prior to joining TI, provides an overview of the work that TI does in Sri Lanka, zeroing in on how TI offers legal advice to citizens via Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres (ALAC) (https://www.transparency.org/en/alacs) and mobile legal aid clinics. The work o...

This week we interview Irio Musskopf (@irio), one of the founders of the AI-based anti-corruption project Operacao Serenata do Amor (https://serenata.ai/en/) in Brazil. The interview provides detailed insights into how open government data paired with intelligent algorithms can be used to promote integrity. The interview kicks off with a short outline how the panel on AI as an Anti-corruption tool...

Best known for being the lead investigator in the Obiang case, we welcome law enforcement professional Robert Manzanares, who is also the co-founder of Gatekeeper Consulting (https://gatekeeperci.com/) . Robert outlines how he started off as a probation officer and eventually became the lead investigator of the famous Obiang case. Find out the unexpected role that Michael Jackson memorabilia playe...

This week on the podcast: Sarah Steingrüber (@sarahsteino), Independent Global Health Consultant, and the global health lead for the Curbing Corruption Platform (https://curbingcorruption.com/). The interview touches on many topics related to corruption and public health. Sarah outlines how the global health crisis of COVID-19 poses two main corruption threats. 1) Corruption of funds that are devo...

The interview starts with Sam outlining how the documentary about Eliot Spitzer, called Client 9, got him interested in corruption and how it inspired him to study an MA in corruption research at the University of Sussex. Sam describes the research questions he sought to answer with his dissertation on party financing and corruption. Namely, he unpicks the relationship between money and politics,...

29. Mushtaq Khan & Paul Heywood on populism, digital technologies & RCTs (Part II) Social norms of Corruption The interview picks up on a discussion about research on social norms and corruption, mentioning the distinction between descriptive and injunctive norms (for more insights check out our previous episode with Prof Bicchieri https://soundcloud.com/kickback-gap/13-cristina-bicchieri-on-socia...

Taryn Vian (@TarynVian), Prof. at the Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Nursing and Health Professions, University of San Francisco (USF). For people who think about the relationship between corruption & public health, what are some of the main lines of research & what are some of the important findings? Taryn outlines that one main problem lies in the fact that people have to pa...

In the first part Mushtaq and Paul outline the milestones in their carriers as corruption researchers. ACE The next section of the interview takes a deep dive into the Anti Corruption Evidence Program. Paul outlines how it was initiated after concerns about the lack of evaluation of development projects and the risk of development spending being lost due to corruption were voiced. As a response Di...