Transparency International

Transparency International (TI) describes itself as "the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, brings people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women and children around the world."

TI is largely funded by Western governments, and has been accused of biased activities as a result. It has also been accused of lack of transparency in its own activities.

Controversy
In 2008, TI attracted controversy by claiming in a report entitled Promoting Revenue Transparency that Venezuela's state-owned oil firm PDVSA had failed to disclose basic financial information such as their revenues and how much royalties they paid, and had not produced properly audited accounts. As a result, the report gave PDVSA the lowest possible ranking in assessing the oil companies in 42 different countries, and ranking them according to whether they were of high, medium or low transparency.

In fact, the report was incorrect, and all the data was publicly available, leading to claims of a bias by TI against the Venezuelan government.

When questioned about the apparently biased report, TI initially claimed that information was not available at the time of publication – a claim which was also false - and then refused to answer further questions about the matter.

The data in TI's report was gathered by Mercedes de Freitas, the head of their Caracas bureau and a longtime opponent of President Hugo Chávez. De Freitas' previous job was running a US government funded opposition "civil society" group, the Fundacion Momento de la Gente, which is subsidized by National Endowment for Democracy, a US government agency.

TI Venezuela & Links to Venezeulan Coup
According to a report in the UK's Guardian newspaper, "TI's Venezuela bureau is staffed by opponents of the Venezuelan government. The directors include Robert Bottome, the publisher of Veneconomia, a strident opposition journal, and Aurelio Concheso of the Centre for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge, a conservative think tank funded by the US government. Concheso was previously a director of the employers' organisation, Fedecamaras. The president of Fedecamaras, Pedro Carmona, led the failed 2002 coup and was briefly installed as Venezuela's dictator."

Founders

 * Michael J. Hershman and Frank Vogl are co-founders of Transparency International.

In 2000, they launched The Transparency International Integrity Awards.

Integrity Award Committee Members
Source
 * Sion Assidon - Chair, Integrity Awards Committee
 * Jan Borgen
 * Alfred W. Chanda
 * Boris Divjak
 * Geo-Sung Kim
 * Michael J. Hershman
 * Anke Martiny
 * David Murray
 * Akere Muna
 * Laura Puertas Meyer
 * Agus Purnomo
 * Frank Vogl
 * Inese Voika

Board of Directors
Source
 * Huguette Labelle, Chair
 * Akere Muna, Vice-Chair
 * Nancy Boswell
 * Sion Assidon, Board Member
 * Boris Divjak, Board Member
 * Geo-Sung Kim, Board Member
 * Chong San Lee, Board Member
 * Valeria Merino-Dirani, Board Member
 * Devendra Raj Panday, Board Member
 * Laura Puertas Meyer, Board Member
 * Frank Vogl, Board Member
 * Gerard Zovighian, Board Member

Advisory Council
Source
 * Peter Eigen - Chairman of the Advisory Council - Germany: Founder and former Chair of Transparency International
 * Paul Batchelor - United Kingdom: Non Executive Director of Oxford Policy Management and former Deputy Chair of Global Geographies, PricewaterhouseCoopers
 * Peter Berry - United Kingdom: Chairman of Crown Agents
 * John Brademas - USA: President Emeritus of New York University
 * Jimmy Carter - USA: Former President
 * Ugo Draetta - Italy: Former Vice President and Senior Counsel of General Electric
 * Dolores L. Espanol - Philippines: Former presiding Judge of Regional Trial Court
 * Dieter Frisch - Germany: Former Director General for Development at the European Commission
 * Goh Kun - Korea (South): Former Prime Minister and former Mayor of Seoul
 * Ekaterina Genieva - Russia: Director General of State Library for Foreign Literature, Moscow
 * Fritz Heimann - USA: Founding Member of TI
 * Kamal Hossain - Bangladesh: Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Pascal Lamy - France: Director General of the World Trade Organization, President of Fondation Notre Europe and former Trade Commissioner of the European Union
 * Ronald MacLean Abaroa - Bolivia: Former Mayor of La Paz, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Hans Matthofer - Germany: Former Minister of Finance, former CEO of Beteiligungsgesellschaft der Gewerkschaften
 * Ira Millstein - USA: Senior Partner of Weil, Gotshal & Manges
 * Festus Mogae - Botswana: President of Botswana
 * Miklos Nemeth - Hungary: Former Prime Minister, former Vice President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
 * John Noonan - USA: Federal Court of Appeals Judge
 * Olusegun Obasanjo - Nigeria: President of Nigeria
 * Wiktor Osiatynski - Poland: Board member of the Open Society Budapest
 * Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah - Mauritania: Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for West Africa, former Executive Secretary of the Global Coalition for Africa
 * Khun Anand Panyarachun - Thailand: Former Prime Minister, Chairman of Saha-Union Plc.
 * Mary Robinson - Ireland: Former President and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
 * Peter Rooke - Australia: Former Partner, Clifford Chance
 * Hartmut Ruppel - Namibia: Board of Trustees of the Members of Parliament, Former Attorney General
 * Augustine Ruzindana - Uganda: Member of Parliament
 * Louis Schweitzer - France: Chairman of Renault
 * Soli J. Sorabjee - India: Former Attorney General
 * Virginia Tsouderos - Greece: Former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Jessica Tuchman Mathews - USA: President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
 * Joe Wanjui - Kenya: Chancellor of University of Nairobi
 * Richard von Weizsacker - Germany: Former President
 * Michael Wiehen - Germany: Former Executive of the World Bank and Attorney

Former personnel

 * David Nussbaum - Former Chief Executive

Publications

 * 2005 Annual Report (PDF)
 * Financial Report 2005 (PDF)

Contact
Alt-Moabit 96 10559 Berlin Germany Tel. +49-30-3438 20-0 Fax +49-30-3470 3912 Web: http://www.transparency.org

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Marta Erquicia
 * Jermyn Brooks - Former Executive Director (2000-3)
 * International Anti-Corruption Conference

External articles

 * Dan Burnett, "A little transparency sure doesn't flatter Transparency International", Oil Wars (blog), May 13, 2008.
 * Calvin Tucker, "Seeing through Transparency International", The Guardian, 22 May 2008.
 * Calvin Tucker, "Transparency International's wall of silence", 21st Century Socialism, June 12, 2008.
 * Julie Bajolle, "The origins and motivations of the current emphasis on corruption", www.bulgaria-gateway.org, October 2005.