transparency international they all helped us write a set of policies. after i took the helm here in new york we decided we wouldn t accept any money from the alcohol industry the sex industry the tobacco industry all the arms industry. consensus kind of to where no man i m so name. along with the new ethics committee interpol also created a new position the due diligence officer. was tasked with deciding whether a potential partnership was ethical or not. we notice the bigger a company is the more problems it has so the question for interpol is do we want to exclude entire sectors such as pharmaceuticals such as banks or google or whoever because we know that all big companies have some kind of problem if someone. is on
were being attacked from all sides should stand in a passion to have all of that holding on to say that it will never be that. i don t think it was. six months earlier fifteen had made some surprising decisions on the bids to host the twenty eight thousand and twenty twenty two world cup. full . combat i think for the. moment. this was six months before interpol signed its partnership deal with. why would an international police organization ally itself with an association that was under deep suspicion. as. the secretary general of. the deal was signed just three weeks before the sixty first fifa congress. letter
supplier and this product actually it s a victim of the illicit smack a trade and part of the solution but nothing could be further from the truth. how could it in our poll and its secretary general have signed an agreement with philip morris knowing that going back to nine hundred eighty nine there are eighty million documents that testify to all the misdeeds of the tobacco industry we believe they show that the industry hasn t respected the law and that it has knowingly collaborated with criminal organizations known for us that raises many questions safaga. the partnership between interpol and the tobacco industry certainly was eyebrow raising. the tobacco industry stood accused of participating in cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting over decades in collaboration with the italian and the balkan mafia. in two thousand and four philip morris international agreed to pay one point
losing sales while governments and taxpayers are being robbed forty to fifty billion dollars in money that could be funding important public services and helping local communities by working together legal industry law enforcement government stance civil society. stanfield legal system. together we can stop illegal cigarettes. if philip morris was to be believed stamping out cigarette smuggling could do wonderful things for our communities and our children. so why then did the world health organization see red when this partnership was announced to the point of refusing interpol observer status at their conference on tobacco control. over the course of the last fifteen years the tobacco industry has managed to convince governments around the world international agencies like interpol even last. attention like that rather than being as pariahs
ninety two member countries come to hardly more than fifty million euros by comparison the f.b.i. s budget is some seven billion euros sixty times more. so right now in opposing a budget deficit we ve reduced our operating budget we ve reduced our travel budget and we ve frozen new highs essentially since i ve joined we ve had three people. here construct who was elected interpol secretary general in late twenty fourteen was supposed to enforce this new austerity regime. a daunting task even more so because his predecessor ronald noble had sought to make interpol on the present and indispensable with a budget to match. gaining your trust the trust of my staff. and acting in the best interest of the organization. have been my number one priority as your secretary general. noble spent fourteen years at the head of