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  • Corrosive

  • catastrophic

  • People feel there is no hope

  • and often covert

  • It's like bloody Monopoly money

  • Corruption costs the world nearly $3trn every year

  • and blights the lives of hundreds of millions

  • But in some parts of the world

  • there's a renewed drive to disrupt corruption

  • We need to act with urgency and purpose

  • to restore our state-owned enterprises

  • From bold moves at the top...

  • We've got to make sure that there's strong, committed, ethical leadership

  • to new technologies shining a light on the problem

  • Now in Ukraine we have the most transparent corruption in the world

  • Communities, companies and countries are learning lessons

  • in how to root out corruption

  • Our country changed to one of the obvious technological leaders

  • hold the guilty to account

  • This was one of the largest cases the SFO had worked on

  • and challenge the culture that allows it to continue

  • Do we accept the way it is or do you stand up for something?

  • This is a notoriously violent and lawless district of Cape Town in South Africa

  • Here in Cape Flats there were almost 1,000 murders

  • in the first six months of 2019

  • And police corruption is helping to fuel this violence

  • Alcardo was a year old here so we decided to give him a little party

  • He grew up in the community as a teenager

  • He got married, had one kid

  • and then in 2015 he was murdered

  • Avril Andrews says both she and the police know the identity of the killer

  • who shot her son, Alcardo, dead

  • But Avril believes police corruption has stalled her search for justice

  • Corruption affects our community very much

  • I've experienced it myself in police

  • even with the recent case

  • One of the guys tried to intimidate my family

  • Our community is going down, people feel there is no hope

  • Since her son's death Avril has spoken out publicly at great personal risk

  • against the corrupt forces undermining the rule of law in her community

  • Alcardo, this is the fourth year that we are seeking justice

  • There are certain things that you've discussed with me

  • that you would have loved to do in the community

  • so I'm doing it for you

  • I believe we're going to get justice

  • In South Africa the police are known to supply weapons to gangs

  • In 2016 a former police colonel pleaded guilty to illegally selling 2,400 guns

  • Most ended up in Cape Flats

  • where nearly 2,500 shootings have been linked to illegal guns since 2010…

  • including 261 child victims

  • Within the South African police, anti-corruption campaigners

  • have documented over 475 reports of bribery

  • and over 300 reports of abuse of power

  • Avril has founded a support group for bereaved mothers

  • campaigning for justice in the face of this corruption

  • Thank you ladies for being here

  • In the past six years 229 dockets, records of court proceedings

  • are reported to have gone missing in Western Cape

  • Lesley Wyngaard, whose son was also murdered in Cape Flats

  • says the files related to his case

  • mysteriously disappeared from the court house

  • The prosecutor told me, “I had the file”…

  • …“I had the file”, so somebody sneaked that file out of his office

  • and made it disappear

  • In South Africa the rot of corruption runs deep

  • This secretly recorded footage captured a successful businessman

  • Gavin Watson, seemingly organising to pay bribes to government officials

  • One, two, three, four, five

  • six, seven, eight, nine, ten, brother

  • Watson, who died in 2019…

  • was a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle

  • and had close links to the ANC party

  • which has been in power for 25 years

  • That's bloody monopoly money

  • Yes

  • During the nine-year presidency of Jacob Zuma

  • this corruption captured the state

  • right up to the very top

  • He and his cronies plundered state-owned enterprises

  • In Zuma's second term alone, about $100bn was stolen

  • just short of a third of South Africa's GDP

  • But South Africans demanded change and in 2019 they elected

  • …a new president on an explicit platform to crack down on corruption

  • Cyril Ramaphosa has set out to provide the clean leadership

  • that is vital in any fight against corruption

  • We need to act with urgency

  • and purpose to restore our state-owned enterprises

  • Those who monitored the excesses of the Zuma years

  • are hopeful his successor will drive change from the top

  • Corruption Watch has been in existence for eight years now

  • mostly during the Zuma administration

  • and working with the two administrations is like night and day

  • We now encounter an administration that is

  • much more willing to work with the likes of us

  • Doesn't mean that we don't have to be vigilant

  • in holding them to account

  • but there's definitely a new spirit afoot in the country

  • although still huge problems to overcome

  • The new leadership has already begun to make its mark

  • I think it's achieved a fair amount in the period since

  • Ramaphosa was installed as president

  • Key Zuma acolytes who were leaders of critical institutions have been fired

  • others put in their place

  • State-owned enterprise boards have been revamped

  • But fighting corruption on this scale

  • demands more than just political leadership

  • Commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo

  • announced yesterday key appointments to his commission

  • In 2018 Judge Raymond Zondo was appointed

  • to head an unprecedented commission of inquiry

  • into how corruption captured the state under the Zuma administration

  • We want to have an idea about the levels of corruption in the country

  • and what forms corruption takes, and so that we can make

  • recommendations as to what the country should do to try

  • and bring it up to the absolute minimum levels of corruption

  • The commission has heard thousands of hours of testimony

  • from over a hundred witnesses to fraud and corruption

  • Zondo's warts-and-all approach to exposing the problem

  • has been compared to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

  • after the apartheid era

  • Above all it educates the public...

  • ...it places before the public...

  • ...exactly what happened

  • during the Zuma administration, which as you can imagine

  • was subject to a lot of false news and factual manipulation

  • With the truth now emerging, there's also a fresh push for justice

  • A new chief public prosecutor

  • has promised to clean up the National Prosecuting Authority

  • another institution infiltrated by Zuma's cronies

  • Shamila Batohi is a respected former lawyer

  • from the International Criminal Court in The Hague

  • and President Ramaphosa's most significant appointment to date

  • People know that it's not business as usual

  • If we want to be serious about addressing corruptions

  • we've got to make sure that there is strong, committed, ethical leadership

  • In Shamila Batohi's new job that means getting serious about enforcement

  • We've got to look at prosecuting the right people

  • That is where I think in the past the prosecution, the NPA, lost credibility

  • They failed to demonstrate that they were serious about tackling corruption

  • And that is not just within the NPA

  • but certainly within the broader law-enforcement space

  • This kind of leadership may start to convince South Africans

  • that rhetoric has finally turned into action

  • So I know that the people of South Africa are impatient, understandably so

  • They have every reason

  • What is the greatest deterrent to crime?

  • The certainty that there will be an investigation

  • that there will be a prosecution and there will be consequences

  • And the sad reality is that in South Africa

  • that wasn't the case in the recent past

  • While clean leadership is vital to tackling corruption

  • so is having the ability to spot it

  • In Ukraine, another country with a deep history of corruption

  • the struggle for greater financial transparency has been hard fought

  • In 2014 a violent revolution deposed

  • its notoriously corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych

  • During four years in office

  • he and his associates stole an estimated $40bn from the public purse

  • Activists who helped to depose Yanukovych have since traced the flows

  • of this stolen money and helped to reveal the extent of his corruption

  • One of them is Max Nefyodov, now head of the customs service in Ukraine

  • So we are in Mezhyhirya, the infamous mansion

  • that belonged to ex-president Yanukovych

  • Yanukovych earned an official salary of about $100,000 a year

  • but he used the proceeds of corruption to build this lavish palace

  • on 345 acres of land outside the capital Kyev

  • This is a huge territory with big houses

  • and golf courses and boxing rings and restaurants

  • and his personal zoo with ostriches

  • It's a nice one

  • He has nice eyebrows

  • Kickbacks and bribes from government contracts

  • were one of the principal ways of stealing money from the state

  • $2bn a year used to be lost through government officials

  • paying over the odds for anything from building materials to medicines

  • One of the reasons why those in power could afford little luxuries

  • such as a gold-panelled chapel

  • limited edition John Lennon Steinway piano

  • and even toilet brushes encrusted with Swarovski crystals

  • Everything here was built, obviously using money siphoned from the budget

  • So basically all like a museum to the corruption

  • This kleptocracy was catastrophic for Ukrainians

  • denying them affordable health care and good public services

  • After Yanukovych was deposed, Max and other activists set about

  • changing the system that had allowed corruption to flourish

  • They determined that one thing in particular

  • would be vital to transform Ukraine

  • transparency

  • Specifically the ability to trace and track the flows of public money

  • The beauty of the system is that this is just sort of like a website

  • with explanation and open data

  • This online system made the bidding process

  • for government contracts more transparent

  • Now whenever government officials want to buy something

  • they must put out a tender on a single platform accessible to anyone

  • These are the ongoing tenders for the Kiev region

  • There are just over 10,000 ongoing tenders right now, worth €1.8bn

  • And these are the statuses of procedures

  • and so on and so on

  • Roughly a million tenders go through the system each year

  • And the system must openly log every bid for every government contract

  • As a combination of better usability

  • compulsory auctions and different mechanisms to fight collusion

  • and price fixing and different types of fraud

  • we're able to save about 7-8% of the value of each tender

  • It's estimated that the system, known as ProZorro

  • has contributed to reducing the cost of corruption to Ukraine

  • by $6bn per year since 2014

  • And the system is now being used in other countries

  • I'm actually proud that our country changed its position

  • from being one of the worst places for public procurement in the world

  • to one of the obvious technological leaders and pioneers in this area

  • But whilst greater transparency has helped Ukraine

  • to discover and expose corruption

  • the country still lacks a vital tool to tackle it

  • effective enforcement authorities to hold the guilty parties accountable

  • More than 11m documentsthey reveal what's alleged

  • to be a global network of tax avoidance, evasion and money laundering

  • When the most ruthless of the Mexican drug cartels

  • wanted to hide their money they went to HSBC

  • In today's globalised world

  • enforcement agencies in wealthy countries face a challenge

  • to root out corruption and deliver justice

  • And they're increasingly deploying new technologies to help

  • So the investigation covered three decades across three business sectors

  • and seven different jurisdictions

  • This was one of the largest cases the SFO had worked on

  • In 2013 the Serious Fraud Office in London began investigating

  • systematic bribery by one of Britain's most prestigious companies

  • Rolls-Royce

  • Five years into their investigation

  • the SFO had gathered 30m documents and needed to determine

  • which could be used to prosecute the firm

  • We started reviewing it using the old method

  • which was just to use keyword searches and then instruct

  • independent barristers to review that material

  • And we needed to find a way to speed that up

  • Advances in technology meant that AI and machine-learning

  • based products became available that could help with this work

  • In the first use of AI in a British criminal case

  • the system was able to search documents 2,000 times faster

  • than human lawyers and more reliably

  • And what this tool does is looks for patterns within the documents

  • patterns in communication and what we were able to find was

  • the results were more consistent

  • And that's not to say that the lawyers were making mistakes

  • but the reality is, if you have five different lawyers

  • they will make different determinations

  • The SFO, long seen as impotent, tonight has scored a significant success

  • In court Rolls-Royce admitted that in six countries across the world

  • middlemen had paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes

  • in order to secure contracts for the company

  • Aware that the punishment faced by Rolls-Royce

  • could act as a useful deterrent to other companies

  • the British authorities ordered the firm to pay a record fine

  • of around $650m, in return for avoiding prosecution

  • Critics say that individual prosecutions, rather than just a huge fine

  • would act as a clearer deterrent to future wrongdoing

  • But the Serious Fraud Office insists that money talks

  • A settlement of this size

  • will absolutely act as a disincentive against corruption

  • particularly in a case like Rolls Royce

  • where not only does it have that financial impact immediately

  • but there are certain conditions which they must meet

  • in terms of their systems and processes and how they have to operate

  • in the future to demonstrate to the court that they are not continuing

  • with this sort of behaviour

  • Rolls-Royce says it has made a raft of changes

  • strengthening its compliance and oversight procedures

  • and introducing new technology

  • We now have an app, a code-of-conduct app, rather than a written document

  • That means that everybody on their iPhone has access to support

  • both in respect of the policies and the processes

  • but know who to speak to if they need help

  • The company insists its actions have brought about a culture change

  • which will make corrupt behaviour less likely in the future

  • I can tell you that the exercise we have been through

  • at Rolls-Royce has not been box ticking

  • We provided super co-operation in respect of fixing the past issues

  • We have taken incredibly seriously and frankly

  • spent a lot of money dealing with both the past

  • and trying to set up the framework for the future

  • But none of this would have happened had Rolls-Royce not been caught

  • All too often companies' efforts to educate staff about avoiding fraud

  • are motivated by the demands of compliance regulations

  • rather than a genuine desire to change the culture around corruption

  • Doing that requires a new attitude to the men and women

  • who lift the lid on corruption in the first place

  • Cynthia Stimpel was group treasurer at South African Airways

  • …a state-owned enterprise

  • In 2016 she discovered that the company was apparently

  • planning to avoid due-diligence procedures

  • Cynthia was asked to raise money to finance debts by paying

  • …a new company, substantially over the amount charged by banks

  • I then said, well, I'm not prepared to sign it

  • I'm not prepared to approve it

  • We should go back to the banks, let's get a different costing

  • and I'm sure we will save money

  • But it went ahead and it was approved by board

  • despite my refusal to sign the documents

  • Cynthia blew the whistle on this highly irregular transaction

  • Well at the time was firstly a determination that I need to do this

  • and that it's the right thing to do for my own personal conscience

  • for my personal values, for my own moral compass

  • My name is Cynthia Agnes Soraya Stimpel

  • When she testified at the Zondo Commission into corruption

  • Cynthia hit the public eye

  • as her actions had helped save taxpayers $17m

  • But South African Airways wasn't so grateful

  • Cynthia lost her job

  • She has since joined forces with other whistleblowers

  • who have suffered similar fates

  • Their message is clear

  • if companies are serious about installing an ethical culture

  • they need to reward whistleblowers, not punish them

  • Glad to see you again

  • Most of the people here held senior positions at major companies

  • All alleged fraud at those companies

  • Yet all ended up losing their jobs for blowing the whistle

  • I thought I would be protected because I followed everything to the tee

  • But what?

  • The first thing that happened

  • …I was called in and immediately suspended

  • without even being able to speak

  • I wasn't able to give my side of the story

  • I still haven't had a hearing

  • The end result is that I've lost my job

  • Without whistleblowers we wouldn't have the Zondo Commission

  • Everybody asks, but why are people not speaking up?

  • But if you look at all the people that's gone to all these commissions

  • all of them have lost their jobs

  • So what does that teach you?

  • Don't speak up because you will lose your job

  • The culture in companies may be slow to change

  • but the increased visibility of whistleblowers is helping drive

  • …a broader shift in South African's collective will to challenge corruption

  • Do we accept the way it is?

  • Or do you stand up for something?

  • I think the people around this table decided to stand up for something

  • We've got some of the key changemakers

  • that the globe has ever seen in our history

  • We have that fortitude, the resilience

  • We want a better South Africa

  • This determination of the few to make a stand

  • is a vital step to tackling corruption

  • But it doesn't happen in a vacuum

  • Seeing corrupt individuals or companies held to account

  • may encourage others to think twice

  • New tools make it easier to expose wrongdoing in the first place

  • And together, they feed the momentum for change

  • from the public, from business and from those in power

  • that's the key to disrupting corruption

Corrosive

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