Tim, what is your last word of . Dvice well, i am not sure i have any advice, other than, perhaps, to say that there are realities in the world that we live in, which are such that we increasingly need to think about Global Health as intimately linked to our health locally, and i think that means that you not only have to be concerned with the issues that confront us directly and proximately, close to our neighborhoods, but we also have to be as concerned elsewhere,onditions because we are increasingly therefore,ted, and our role in trying to make sure we move towards that principle of valuing equally the lives, wherever they may be lived, is extremely important, a value to see embodied in all forms of governance, and thank you. Tim . As you said, this washington, d. C. Sophisticated audience, because something may seem insurmountable, do not give up. Just because it cannot be done not bet mean it will done. Back in 2002, everyone thought africa would be the fall off the face of the earth with hiv aids, and the program was put together, and people were saying you can never ever get africans to take medicines. You will never get them to lives aate into their daily medication that could save them or prevention, and then they came along and has completely transformed the lives of millions of people throughout health andso global addressing the disparities is something that will take a long time, but if you use that as an example, i think we should be is possible. At it this is a celebration of your work. You get the last word. It is always a good place to pick up on. Some days i get up and am more inspired, but other days i get up and say it is overwhelming. It is useless, but i am saying what you just said. Never give up. We actually can do it. End with we would just camu, and i am paraphrasing, but he said pathogens just come in common, us just come and come us, and we are wildly surprised. Why do we jump from crisis to crisis, from haiti to the to ebola . Sars isnt it obvious . It is affordable. It is doable, so lets just do it. [applause] all for joining us. I want to thank all of the speakers, and i particularly want to congratulate larry, so please join me. So thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] washingtonext journal, a preview of the house and senate races with Nathan Gonzalez and jessica taylor. Also it is discussion of the influence of the terror group eigh. In syria with karen l as always we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Cspan campaign 2014 debate coverage continues sunday, with North Carolina incumbent senator kay hagan and her republican opponent tom tillis, followed by racealifornia governor between jerry brown and neil kari. Cspan, more than 100 debates for the control of congress. Onnext a discussion combating corruption and human rights abuses around the world. It was hosted by the state departments euro of home human rights. From the world bank and groups Like Transparency International and Global Financial integrity attended. It is an hour and 10 minutes. Thanks, everybody. Welcome to the opengov hub. For those who have not been here before, where you are sitting is a hub for organizations that work for transparency. Those who have not been here before those who have been, welcome back. In the interest of time, i will try to go quickly through my talking points. I am the executive director of global integrity, one of the groups that work here at the hub. On behalf of the panel, the u. S. State department, i want to. Elcome everyone this event is sponsored by the state department in close collaboration with the world bank, global integrity, transparency international. We will have brief opening remarks by each panelist. Then i believe a dialogue with questions from me to the panel in response to their presentations and then i will open the floor to the people here and listeners online. There is a whole Team Monitoring on twitter. For those of you out in the please submit teofrights,sing sta which is already being used. Ascertainly use that as soon you can. Im sure everyone here knows, topic of human rights, government transparency. Been a fan from afar. I am real tickled to have you here today. [laughter] not actually tickling. I will start with you, tom, just to kick us off. Let me turn to you, and then we will go to the others. Thank you so much, nathaniel, thanks to all of you for coming out and participating in this discussion. I think we have a big audience. I think there is a viewing party at a viewing arty and out mania. I want to say hello to all of you out there, everybody else. In answer to your question, for countries that keep me up at night, human rights and corruption are the same issue. These are not different, interlocking things. They are the same issue. You are forced to pay to protect yourself any market, for whoch businessman in russia exposes tax fraud and gets murdered for it, you are confronting exactly the same problem, and if you look at authoritarian regimes around the centralorruption is a operating principle. It is the reason a lot of power in theng to first place. You have to be corrupt to be in the inner circle. It gives your master something to hold over you if you ever turn disloyal. And as we have seen so many times, it is an issue around which people who fight for democracy and human rights rally the pub with around like absolutely no other whether it is egypt or tunisia or russia or burma. Is what causes, over all other issues, popular protest in favor of democracy, rule of law, and accountable government. It struck us when the Obama Administration also focusing on corruption was one of the most effective ways to counter human rights abuses of democratic regimes. For a number of reasons. Number one, there is no excuse for corruption in any political culture or society. Everyone claims to be against it. There are regimes that do have excuses for arresting journalists or shutting on the internet are doing a lot of nolanterrible things, but excuseuse no one can people. Opposition tends to be a unifying factor among the populations dictators tried to divide. Whether you are the sunni or shia in bahrain, this is something that brings you together. Northernou are nigerian or southern nigerian, this brings you together. Nationalist, liberals and russia , they are all offended by the corruption of the putin government. The worldople around recognize International Action against corruption is something ist is legitimate, it corrupt and it flows through the International Banking system. Russia, Public Opinion polls have consistently shown that tendordinary governments imposeery happy when we sanctions on corrupt, powerful people who move their money to, say, the french riviera. This is something we have been looking very carefully at in the administration. There is a great deal we have been doing, our allies and partners have been doing. I think we have all noticed that at a time, some of the methods and tools we have in place to deal with corrupt, authoritarian leaderships around the world and to act more like departure for foreign leaders. We have someone like yanukovich in ukraine who is on his way out the door. Things wea lot of could talk about. Getting her own act in order, in terms of Beneficial Ownership legislation, making it harder for people to set up Shell Companies in the United States, being able to more effectively counter that in other jurisdictions. Other banks when we detected the flow of money all theo corruption, way to assistance to Civil Society organizations that are combating this at the grass roots. Emerge youll see this at an even higher level. Super. Tom, thank you. Let me turn to the senior policy director at transnational usa. He is a regular fixture in the community on these issues. Feel free to dive into these slides. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you to my copanelists and others taking part in this discussion. As you know, my organization but corruption in business, government, and International Development and we have learned that the fight against corruption is part of the fight for human rights. , if you have [indiscernible] there are many statistics about corruption my copanelist might copanelists might be giving. Lost by corruption every year would be enough to feed the world 80 times over. Wow. 80 times over. I have slides. I have these examples. I thought this would be a little than just me talking. Lets start with india. I dont know how many of you have heard about the commonwealth thing. India andere held in they were meant to show india as a Rising Economic power. Did anything, they other than that. They were part of many corruption scandals. Almost all of the contracts were inflated. The work done was very poor quality. The games cost nine times more than what was originally addition, it and in 150 workers died in the construction. And a majority were working for less than three dollars a day. Lets go to nigeria. Is rich in natural resources. It is africas riches were dutch producer it is africas riches to reduce her of oil. Thertunately, most of country lives in absolute poverty and in nigeria the infant mortality rate is nearly three times that of [indiscernible] on what the assistant secretary said and talk about state actors, ukraine is a country that has been much in the news recently. Ukraines new Prime Minister this is when the average monthly salary of the ukrainian hundred 50. You see the pictures of nanticoke whichs palatial estate. Yanukovichs palatial estate. But this is because of Shell Companies and facilitating corruption. In addition to that, i would like to point out how it is difficult to recover what is stolen. There are allegations that hosni millions and millions from egypt. Some estimates go as high as 70 70 billion. Only one billion or 2 billion have been traced. [indiscernible] [laughter] for those who do not know, the coordinator of the initiative is the world bank. In some ways the essential global loo that holds a lot of this together. Essential global glue that holds a lot of this together. They said, yeah, we will help you avoid the hague on corruption if you help us get the money back. [laughter] [indiscernible] only kidding. To discuss those issues. Let me ring a bit about the world bank. First, obviously there is the issue with corruption itself and the government. You raise that. The most perfect example we have a the moment is the one of tunisia. The bank recently leased a paper family endedoyal up controlling 30 of the tunisian economy. You have the ability of officials to control that amount of the economy. What to do about it . Between 20imate is billion and 40 billion per year come out of these countries. [indiscernible] i think what is beyond that is the sense of impunity. In this situations, clearly the social contract is at stake. To start, we are looking with the angle of that. The issue is what to do with it. We estimate 40 billion is a killing. Billion was recovered and 2 billion is lost. There is a huge gap. [indiscernible] so we all need to do more. The point earlier by tom. This only works as global action. It is about government. It is about Financial Centers need to do more. They need to do nor to do more. [indiscernible] difficult. Only so muchre is you can do. Bethink that much more can done. Be a cornerstone in recovery. Ctual we have one player in this, the Financial Sector, what is the role of the Financial Sector. Are really making efforts. Still, i do not think there is in a focus on the Financial Sector side on what they can do and how the camper to dissipate. Then there is the role of civilian society. Government perspective, look at it in terms of [indiscernible] done onmore could be the Asset Recovery side of it. The countrys push for more investigation, more cases to be open. The second part is about detection. We have seen examples. Ist we have seen emerging society engaging, and this is another opportunity to force action and criminal justice and prosecution of people. Inky. Thank you. At last, but not least, heather love, from the center for local integrity. Not global integrity. Even though we get some goals for each other on a daily basis. You very much. Really pleased to be here. Thanks to everyone in cyberspace around the world. Is exciting to have an opportunity to talk to you and hopefully get some questions and get a discussion going. Based for organization here in bce and we are best known for our numbers on a listed financial flows. We estimate that some 850 leaves to 1 trillion developing economies in a listed financial flows every year. That is a devastating at devastating amount of money. That is money that could be working within a developing economy. That is money that could be taxed to create nested revenue. It is also money that could be escaping or leaving or being transferred from governments proper to government treasuries. This is a really huge problem. And it is absolutely a driver of, essentially, poverty around the world. Based onumbers are world bank data, imf data, publicly available data, and you can look at what we do and how we do it in a reports. But really it is sort of broken down into two sections. Figuresell 20 of that in just money that is disappearing from the Global Economy we cant tell exactly how, but some ways that happens is things like rides that may be paid out in one place, but not recorded in another, or money taken out of government treasuries. Wireer is lets see transfers. International wire transfers that are sent, but disappear in the International Financial system. That is about 20 of the number. What is the other 80 . The other 80 based on the datasets we use is something mist invoicing. That is when the invoice for International Trade and goods does not match up on either side of that transaction. That is a really interesting concept. We are just talking about global trade. People say, oh, that is trade, whatever. There are only three situations where you would have this. The first is tax evasion. Substanceat is evasion, income tax evasion, basic innovation. The second is where youre trying to disguise the movement of illicit money flowing around the world. Youre actually using trade to cover up that transaction. Your coming playing the proceeds f bribery, drug crimes, etc. So it does not appear to have been moved. The third, of course, is human error. People do make mistakes. They do show up in invoices. They do not show up to the tune of 800 billion in the Global Economy, however. I think we can discount that. That is what we have, and 80 20 split. I would think most people would think the 20 , most of what goes into the 20 , the bribe payments he would see, money moving from government treasuries that is what we traditionally think of as corruption, right . That is our definition. What about that 80 , that trade related stuff . Is that corruption . Of a live debate right now. I think a lot of people are talking about it. Actually, the assistant will refer totate some of the financial interlinkages between corruption, human rights, and actually moving your trade around the world. That is certainly a lot of debate. If you step back and look at the definition of corruption not the legal definition, because that is very narrow at the accepted definition of what corruption is, you come up with integrity, moral perversion. And to be corrupt is to be guilty of dishonest that,. Acking integrity, crooked im pretty sure that all of the that taxet evasion part, covering up the thatent of illicit money, falls pretty squarely in that definition of corruption, right . Thate do not think of it way. And when we addressed internationally, we are addressing it looking at the global trade regime and making adjustments to Global Trading practices. Would we do that with bribery . I dont think so. Would we do that with stolen assets out of the treasury . I dont think so. So, why are we doing it when it comes to these sort of trade practices . Wire we not putting them squarely in that category of corruption . That is something for discussion. Something i want to throw out there for people to think about. To bring that back to human rights, to give an example, the case that just came down, this billionch bank 8. 9 fine for evading u. S. Sanctions. Sanctions we put in place with respect to sudan. We put the sanctions in place with respect to sudan because the Sudanese Government was involved in genocide. And it was the u. S. s view that we did not want to have u. S. Dollars supporting that type of activity. So, we put the sanctions in place. It was an attempt by us to try and prevent the financing of the government perpetrating genocide. A big issue. A big human rights issue, right . Really met for a bank around the world was they could not do u. S. Dollar transactions with anybody in sudan, including the government. They could do euro transactions. Poundsuld do transactions, yen transactions, but not dollar transactions. Paribasection of bnp bank decided that was not something they were willing to comply with because that would be way too much of a cost on business to do that. The section of the bank that said, yeah, were going to come up with this intricate, impressive way of avoiding u. S. Actually thee, was trade finance group. The trade finance group was the group that could not bear not to do u. S. Dollar transactions with the Sudanese Government. And those were transactions with the Sudanese Government among others. It is important, that link between trade, trade finance and is torights corruption read it matters that much to that bank. Just to give you that sort of context. I will just end today by saying we at cfi are really pushing for a new target in me Sustainable Development goals, and that is to reduce those trade related illicit financial flows by 50 by 2030. And we are hoping that people around the world will join us in pushing for that as a target, because it is such a critical issue for development, for human rights, that we are really helping people will get behind that. That is about all i have. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody, for opening remarks. Abuse thel do is chair for a moment to ask questions, and then we will go to twitter and facebook to field others from around the world. Was i was thinking of doing offering you three really hard questions. You can each choose one that you can answer. So far, we have had a lot of good enthusiasm questions. Now let me make it harder and sort of. 2 let me make it little bit harder and sort of dig in. The choices are one is the growth myth. And studies that show corruption can have an impact on growth, but we have a really hard time of explaining why. China, indonesia, rwanda and singapore today. How do we square that circle . What is the answer . Are they outliers . That is one to choose from. The second 1 the secretary talked about the galvanizing effect a corruption can have added critical political moments in a countrys trajectory, but what happens with the aftermath . And think of egypt in ukraine today where the glue seems to come on don and evaporate fairly quickly in certain college countries, not all. Are we expecting too much . Are we setting ourselves up for frustration and failure in the aftermath . That is the second choice. The third would be i would be curious for anybody to read given the dissonance in u. S. Farm policy itself, in a number of countries this is sort of famous in afghanistan and iraq, but any countries where we spend a lot of money, time, or Political Capital pushing for is aparency, and yet it tool of the toolbox for intelligence agencies around the world, including our own. How do we square that circle . Cia chief walks in with a briefcase of cash and says, dont forget, that is the way this really works. Went last, so we will start with her last. Assistant secretary, if you would like to take a shot at any of those, feel free. Yeah, i question on that let me take a couple of them. First, the frustrations that we face in countries that have had these kinds of movements and they dont always succeed. Yeah, they dont always succeed. That has always been true and it always will be true. It is true on every Foreign Policy issue we work on. I have a saying that my folks are probably tired of hearing. Human rights diplomacy and all Foreign Policy is like baseball. If you are batting 300, youre going to go to the hall of fame. So, yes. You will have the egypts, where things appear to be revolutionary in the literal sense and they have come back to the beginning of the circle. But then you will have other success or his or potential Success Stories like tunisia, like potentially burma, we hope, where movements were galvanized in part because of popular repulsion over political and economic corruption, do lead to somewhat better, somewhat cleaner government, taking in it count that of restaurant by human beings and we are imperfect. I will take those Success Stories. And in terms of contradictions and american foreignpolicy, again, governments are run by human beings and we are full of contradictions. But i think the way in which we can resolve some of that is to recognize honestly there are deal,in which we have to as the president has acknowledged and others in the administration have acknowledged, we have to deal and make deals with governments that do not live up to our expectations and our ideals in a whole host of areas. But we can also simultaneously are resigned to enforce our laws and values, and the job of diplomats are to deal with any contradictions that arise. In terms of anticorruption, a lot of the tools and mechanisms we have our kind of neutral Law Enforcement type mechanisms that are the purview of professionals in a justice department, in our treasury department, in parts of the u. S. Government that are nonpolitical, and if told to do their jobs in a nonpolitical way, will do their jobs in a nonpolitical way, even if it sometimes makes life harder for diplomats and for those conducting other aspects of our Foreign Policy, and that is a good thing. Those contradictions are healthy. I prefer that to policies of wayistent looking the other on these problems. Trudy, which one do you choose . Im going to choose your question about egypt and certain countries like that. Something started out as an Anticorruption Movement. Certainly china and egypt do have one thing in common and that is expression on Civil Society. Suppression of Civil Society. To sustain an Anticorruption Movement you need a little bit , more than an initial revolution. You need an enabling environment. Whistleblower protection, really respecting Civil Society and enabling Civil Society. I think that distinguishes certain other countries, which have been more successful than others. I also wanted to add you made the link between corruption and growth i grew up in india and certainly i would not adhere to the view that corruption has helped the growth in certain economies. I think anticorruption activities increases the momentum of growth. To look at certain countries which do not have an active democracy like china and other countries and to take a very skewed view of the last 45 months, where india has had a new Prime Minister and a new party come to power on the basis of an anticorruption message, you have already seen india increase to higher than it has been in the past years. On the corruption and growth. I think that is something that needs to be looked at. We all assume there was a negative impact and you have outliers. Im not sure we totally understand the Economic Perspective on what are the drivers and the channels. I think there is more work being done in that respect. Interestedly in the g 20 context, they looked at those issues. We are currently working on key sectors. Extractive industries. I think we need more work and that maybe to some unexpected that may lead to some unexpected results in some cases. I think it is good we have that discussion rather than pushing aside. I think one other element is what timeframe are you looking at and what are the elements of the redistribution of growth . To the tunisian example, where there was a social contract in tunisia, suddenly went state capital increased, the social contract goes down and things explode. These also are things we need to look at. Without going into the political angles of some of the other questions i think there was one , element we are confronted when you have regime change and things like this come you have this expectation that everything will be perfect overnight. This is not going to happen. On the other hand, the downside of that is that if things do not go perfect immediately, everyone says lets give up, it is not worth it. It is important to put all of our resources on a time horizon, insisting and being able to deal with the surface and recognize what is not working and recognizing that that is important. It is the long agenda that is very important. I agree with a lot of what was said. Im not going to try the cia question. Im curious to see what my file looks like in the cia, quite frankly. On the growth issue, the ballgame is the important issue the long game is the important issue. Shortterm gains over at period of time can be explained by any number of economic factors. Economics is not about corruption or no corruption. Theres a lot that goes into that and development of markets. What is clear to everybody is that corruption is destabilizing. It is certainly destabilizing over the longterm. The more corruption happens, the more it infiltrates an economy, the more destabilizing that is. That does affect fdi etc, as well. I would say, lets wait and watch to some degree. On the issue of the political uprisings and the big anticorruption uprisings and whether that leads to a better situation, that is definitely going to be a country by country issue. You have a situation where the political uprisings, the people standing up and saying no more of this, it is a movement to push for change. Then the question is is what happens after that and what sorts of political vacuums are created as a result of that . If you have good, positive, strong people who can lead positively in that power vacuum, then you are going to end up with a more positive tone . If you dont, you will end up with a more negative result. To me, i am still very much and people a favor standing up and saying, the corruption has got to stop, this has to stop in my society. It sets markers, it sets a town tone, it sets the baseline for participation of people in their government and what is happening to them on a daily basis. Lets turn to questions coming in digitally from twitter and facebook to rid facebook. Stateofrights. I will try to keep up in real time. I will abuse my privilege and cherry pick once i find most interesting. This is a question from ali in bahrain. The criminal Justice System has become corrupt, how can one come back corruption combat corruption . When the system is rigged or impartial not impartial, what is to be done . Corruption is a system that is rigged against people who play by the rules. By definition. Whenever you are fighting deeply entrenched corruption and a country, that is what you are facing. What is your recourse . If possible, you work for Civil Society organizations. You organize your community to expose corruption through social media, through the press. You organize campaigns, forge alliances with other student do not agree with you on everything, but corruption has to go. We all recognize that it is easy for us to say those things and many societies, if you try to do those things i mentioned, you could be severely persecuted. That is where the International Community also has a role to play, at the very least and making sure that we are not complicit in corruption in countries such as what i described. We need to make sure that they cannot park their money and our institutions without our Law Enforcement doing something. That is the least we can do. I would add that Civil Society internationally is something you can really lean on. It may be difficult to do anything as Civil Society in your own country, but if you have good evidence of x, y, or z happening, global witness, for example, might be able to do an investigation. Transparency international. Human rights watch. There is a real International Community when it comes to these issues. I would also add that the department of justice and the United States has a unit specifically looking at stolen assets, in particular. If you have hard evidence of that, that is something the department of justice wants to hear about, if those assets are in the u. S. I would encourage people around the world to go that route if you have good evidence that there are assets in the u. S. I have to say i agree with all the remarks. The issue of immunity against prosecution is really a big issue. Yes, the International Movement launched on monday a new campaign to an immunity around the world. That is called unmask the corrupt. It is everything to and Shell Companies end Shell Companies and increase transparency on Beneficial Ownership. It is essentially to ask sellers of luxury goods around the world to scrutinize who they are selling these to. The expensive cars and lamborghinis are not being sold to people with stolen money from their own country, to point that out. We will come out next week with a report. There are five or six entries in the world that has a systematic approach to going after corruption to rid corruption. We need something broader. None of it is perfect, but it is not after the fact. To pivot to another question, this is from the netherlands. Is the character of a person in politics, is this just a culture problem . Im biased in my perspective. Im curious about reflections. Is this endemic to a place or not . I want to answer this question particularly because i grew up in a different country, though now i am a u. S. Citizen. I grew up in india. Culture in india has been used to justify many things. To that i say that it is really an interpretation of culture in favor of people who stand to benefit from it. Culture can be changed. You see that in countries were other issues not related. Similarly with corruption and issues around corruption, it can be changed. It takes time, but it can happen. I dont buy that it is solely a cultural thing. I would agree with that. I would ask the question, is that really working for you . I think the answer is probably no. I think it is probably not working for most people in your country. While it may be cultural, it may not be a cultural issue you want to continue. Ask a question, is that really working for you . Let me combine a couple of questions. What a view of democracy of civil rights and labor can help fight corruption . Another one was asking about the state of play. For those who are nerds on these issues, it is a wonky way of understanding who is behind Shell Companies. It is trying to unmask actual ownership of companies and corporations. They twin, combined questions. What are you doing about these issues and what are the prospects, and european capitals or in washington, to making additional progress around very thorny issues of Beneficial Ownership and Shell Companies . We talk about petty administrative corruption. What happens when you have political capture here in the u. S. That makes it very difficult legislatively to solve these problems. No easy ones. But feel free to dive in. My little piece of the u. S. Government, our primary job is to document, expose, thwart, explain the problem, explain the connections between this problem and every other problem we face in our Foreign Policy, which is not hard to do. To help lead the policy discussion about what we should do about it. We also fund Civil Society organizations around folks who make fighting corruption their mission in communities. Most of the response that will really matter and make a difference from the u. S. Government fall within the cliche of whole of government approach. We really need treasury, state, justice, white house, everybody to be working together with a whole variety of enforcement tools that we have. In terms of legislation, we have told the congress that we very strongly support legislation that will make it much harder for Shell Companies to exist in u. S. Jurisdiction. There are several proposals out there. We want to be very pragmatic. That is something that has the greatest chance of attracting bipartisan support in the congress. I said to friends on the hill that this is the most important piece of human rights legislation that they can vote on right now. There is momentum on the issue of Beneficial Ownership, transference he. Transferency. The antimoneylaundering rules that would essentially mean that European Countries have to ownership and make them available to a central authority. It has to go back to parliament and there has to be discussions. Several European Countries have taken moves along those lines. The u. K. Has announced that they would have a public register of Beneficial Ownership. It is time for the u. S. To reassume their leadership position. There is legislation pending in the house and senate. This is a matter of great importance, not just to people who work in difficult countries, to ensure that corrupt leaders cannot park their money and Shell Companies with great ease. I have been working on this issue for 15 years. Only in the last three years have i seen political momentum. It is a complicated issue. This is a good sign. The fact that the g 20 is also looking at it is a good sign. It is not just about the bloc countries. The fact that we are not seeing it in an offshore center. We are seeing onshore centers all this goes in the right direction. One is the temptation to think that there is only one solution. I think there are Different Solutions and we need to push for every country to focus on how theyre going to make it, what is going to be the outcome, rather than onesizefitsall. We need to see action. We need to make sure we are not losing the momentum. Lets get to the detail. There are good signs. We need to stay focused and make sure that they are changing on the ground everywhere. Otherwise you are creating new holes in the system. I do quite a lot of work on this issue. It is important to think about this issue as knowing who you are doing business with. Being able to figure out who you are doing business with. That is important from the banking standpoint. It is important from the patient procurement standpoint. Who the government is actually contracting with. Making sure they are not debarred folks, etc. Making sure youre not doing business with a political official that is hiding behind a shell company. If you are, then taking the appropriate measures. Doing that business is not necessarily illegal. It is how you do that business. Quite frankly, any businessman who is trying to do business and that who their suppliers might be vet who their suppliers might be. You are you actually doing business with. That is what it comes down to. That is why most of the Civil Society organizations are putting for pushing for public registries. It is not just about the government knowing this information. It is everybody being able to figure out who they are doing business with. Companies operate worldwide. Having one person in one country figure out who is behind one country in another country who they do business with is critical. Company in another country to the do business with is critical. Europe is definitely advanced. The European Parliament passed amendments saying that they thought the public registries of Beneficial Ownership of press and companies was critical. The European Council of ministers has indicated that they would be more favorable for private registries held by governments only for government use. That will have to get worked out in the process. That is continuing. In the u. S. , we have had legislation pending for several years, seven years, in the house and the senate, and we cannot get it to move. One of those reasons is the secretaries of state in the u. S. Have been opposed to that legislation for years and years. Quite frankly, it is a compromise bill. Civil society would like it to be stronger. I would point that out. We had some problems with what were seeing as the proposals were expecting to see from the u. S. Government. It is a real mindset issue that i would like the government in the u. S. 200 and, to understand to understand, the variety of issues. Beneficial ownership is not finding out who legally owns the company. It is finding out who controls the company, who benefits from the company. That may not be true ownership. That is really crucial to point out. It is not just pushing for knowing Beneficial Ownership, we are pushing for a bunch of things. To find out who the customers are, to verify the information, to know who you are doing business with. Lets pivot to a different part of the world. South of nigeria asks a question. We had the big u. S. Africa summit in august. Most African Leaders lack courage and willpower to fight corruption and will not make way to those who want to and can. How can we help support those who want to initiate change . How political can we get as external actors or not . Another easy question for everybody to dig into. How do we support the individuals who we think are willing to champion these difficult agendas . [laughter] i think it is always a mistake to try to pick political winners, whatever the issue may be. We should stand up for principles, not personalities. That is a good operating principle for u. S. Foreignpolicy. We have been talking about the principles that we should be standing up for. In terms of standing up for people, it should be Civil Society and a free press and the institutions that are at the heart of this fight. There are specific cases. When you have a government that has a strong anticorruption watchdog and that anticorruption watchdog is pushed aside or persecuted for what they are doing, then i think the u. S. Government and others should rally. We should not say this is the candidate for Public Office that we think will do the job. That would probably tarnish that person. These movements have to be indigenous, they have to come from within the society, they have to be supported by objective, nonpolitical campaigns that try their best to treat everybody equally. Anyone else . Other than just to say that Civil Society does not generally try to give people a platform to be heard to the extent that we can. We usually try to give a platform for people who are standing in line with the values and beliefs we are trying to perpetuate. We have a few more minutes for a couple more questions. Stateofrights. If you want to throw a couple questions into the twitterverse. Given the nature of corruption, what message methods exist for accurately measuring it . To take the management adage, if you cant measure it, you cant manage it. Am curious for an analyst perspective on that. What are better or worse ways . We do a lot of measurement. What frankly, you dont need a measurement to know that a problem exists. You just need to live in that problem. You can tell when there has been a decrease in corruption you can feel it. You are living it. We are focusing a huge amount in all areas of policy on data. As a graduate of the university of chicago, one of the most economically focused universities in the world, on the first day of my economics class at chicago, my professor said, let me be very clear, there is a 60 margin of error in all of economics. That is because there are assumptions that have to be built and in order for you to come up with some sort of model. Those assumptions can be really significant in some cases. We need to be careful about just relying on the numbers and using only numbers to back up what we are saying. I wanted to throw that out there. I come from a math background. [laughter] for years, i thought it was not important to measure. I think it is going to be extremely difficult and we should be extremely careful with numbers. We dont know. There is magnitude, but we dont know. What is very important is to measure the policy. We are looking at the right things. What is the impact of one policy against another. That is a huge challenge in enforcement. You have cases that are less important than others. The measure of the impact of policy, the understanding of the risk, that is very important. It is good to argue. At least were are trying to push the envelope. The impact of policy is very important. Is our success to recover any every dollar . Or are we claiming that the International Community has recovered 50 . I dont know. Very quickly on that discussion of whether you need to measure corruption. A professor likened corruption to a blackhole. You can tell that corruption exists by how Everything Else around it behaves. You can feel corruption if you are living in society. You can feel it by how everybody around you acts. I just wanted to throw that out. A quick followup. The state Department Human rights reports had a powerful, galvanizing effect on the broader movement. Do you think there is a need for a corruption set of country reports . Would that help people like you instead of government to better or worse . Would it hurt . Well, when you were sworn in as a system secretary for democracy and human rights you have to sign a blood of oath to oppose any other reporting. Im not sure i come down on it. Im not sure where i come down on it. I think it would be harder than the task we already have, to expose abuses of human rights by governments around the world. That is just my feeling. If that job can be done extremely well by an organization Like Transparency International or other institutions that can do it is absolute objectivity and then can turn to us to do our real job, Law Enforcement cross the board, then i think that is a very good division. Im just looking at the clock. Let me do one more question and then we will pivot. I have been heavily indoctrinated. That is a fair point. Lets get one final virtual question. Thoughts or questions from folks here. What if a new 1, 2, 3 row quick starting from the back. We do have a mic. Lets take the three questions in succession and try to answer them in one fell swoop. I will be quick. I wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about the role of Anticorruption Commissions run by states in global indices. Whether or not they inform one another or are operating on different tracks . Anybody else anybody else fast enough to to the mike to dash to the mic. Hang on one sec. A quick passing of the mike. There has been a lot of discussion about how corruption starts at the top. There are some that believe that grand corruption in particular should be considered an international crime. Right now we only have the icc that is able to indict heads of state. Would it be a good idea to create an International Corruption court to deal with the top levels of corruption . And upfront here. What can be done to get more of this on the internet so that people can see what is happening . How deals are put together . How much each party is putting in and what their criteria are . Lets go down the line. Not to abuse toms proximity to me. I take your question, the one about the International Court to try leaders of corruption. This is an issue which is being discussed right now a lot. There was an oped in the washington post. It brought out this debate again. Transparency international has not come out with an official position. We are looking at this issue. Impunity is such an issue. We are working with so many different environments across the world. We are in discussions. We are looking at this issue. We have been looking at this issue for some time. There are practical challenges to do with sovereignty, to do with whether you could get countries to sign up to this, whether what good it would do if countries that india or china or other countries dont sign up, what would it mean . These are complicated issues, but were looking into this, just given that this years theme is unmasked the corrupt. On the Anticorruption Commissions, there is a debate on this. The evidence is pretty mixed on whether the creation of an Anticorruption Commission bears expected truths. It depends on the country context. It creates a lot of issues in terms of integration into the ecosystem. I think we need to be careful about the solution to anticorruption. We need to look at the local context and the integrity of the existing institution, etc. Making sure that there are authorities in charge. On the International Court, the bank has no views on that. On corruption, there is a huge enforcement gap. You have the antibribery convention. If you just look at the existing instrument, the enforcement gap is very significant. Lets first choose what we ask and really make sure that all of the tools that are available are first used as far as they can. Maybe then we discover a remaining gap to issues. There is always the foundation to create something new rather than use first what we have and really understand. If you look at anticorruption and bribery, it has taken years before some of this these countries begin to do enforcement actions. An International Court may be a way for them to say, none of our business anymore, the court will do without. At the end the day, that would be a major downside in terms of global, collective action. I will go with something provocative. When we talk about an International Criminal court, for me it is a much bigger issue. It is the fact that we have a world where money has no borders. It can be transferred from one country to another at the blink of an eye with not a lot of controls on it, etc. And yet we have a legal structure in the world that is entirely divided by sovereign nations and sovereignty rules that. The Law Enforcement cannot follow the money in the semi that that money is actually moving. This is not to say that globalization is bad. It is to say that we have not figured out a way to catch up with globalization, when it comes to enforcing our laws around the world. That is something we need to do a lot more thinking about in general. I would say that. On the getting this stuff out on the internet, the deals, obviously some deals are never going to be out on the internet. That makes sense. There were certainly much Bigger Movement now to get different contracts, government contracts out in the Public Domain so that people can look at those. They can see whether or not there is scope for private deals to have been made and are fair deals being had, etc. Is there evidence that a corrupt deal might have been made . You will find in many of those government contracts very clear sovereign immunity clauses in those contracts, Something Else to watch out for. There is a Little Movement to try to push for that to happen. That is happening in some countries. The philippines are looking at that very seriously. Columbia has been doing a lot of work in that area. Look for that if you are doing google searches and things to get involved with. An Exciting Development is a new movement called the over contracting movement. If you want to talk to folks