• combating conflict diamonds
• natural resources in conflict
• ending impunity
• forests
• corruption in oil, gas and mining
• banks and corruption
• independent forest monitoring
• climate change and energy security

Banks and corruption

View latest releases on banks and corruption

The rich world's leaders have promised to make poverty history. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to ensure that natural resource revenues are available for development, by preventing banks facilitating the looting of them.

Global Witness investigates the role of financial institutions in supporting corruption and conflict, and uses this information to exert pressure on policy-makers, law-enforcers and the financial industry itself to make the global financial architecture more transparent, just and accountable.

Our report Undue Diligence: How banks do business with corrupt regimes names and shames British, European and US banks who have done business with corrupt regimes and who are thus contributing to poverty in these countries. It sets out what governments, regulators and banks need to do in order to tackle this complicity in corruption.

In May 2009 Global Witness testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on corruption and the role of Western financial institutions. Read the testimony.

In November 2009 Global Witness attended the UN Convention against Corruption in Doha, and lobbied for the introduction of an effective review mechanism which wich would give the treaty some real teeth. Global Witness and its civil society partners were profoundly disappointed by the coalition's failure to agree such a mechanism.

Our latest investigation, The Secret Life of a Shopaholic, uncovered evidence suggesting that the lavish lifestyle of Teodorin Obiang, son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, is financed by corruptly acquired funds. It questioned his continuing freedom to enter the US, in clear contravention of the country's visa laws, and examined the role of major international banks in allowing him to move millions of dollars from Equatorial Guinea to the US. Produced with the help of investigative journalist Ken Silverstein, the report ran on the front page of the New York Times.  

 Global Witness' partner organisations

The UNCAC Coalition was formed in 2006 and is composed of more than 100 civil society organisations in more than 60 countries. Its goal is to promote ratification, implementation and monitoring of the UN Convention against Corruption. More information can be found at www.uncaccoalition.org.

BankTrack is a global network of civil society organisations and individuals tracking the operations of the private financial sector (commercial banks, investors, insurance companies, pension funds) and its effect on people and the planet. Global Witness is an associate member of Banktrack. More information can be found at www.banktrack.org.

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development is a unique global coalition of civil society organizations and more than 50 governments working together to address inequalities in the financial system that penalize billions of people. More information can be found at www.financialtaskforce.org.