Corruption is never beneficial – except to a self-serving few – but it adds an extra, unwanted challenge to those already facing South African youth, writes Mzwandile Banjathwa, Corruption Watch’s project coordinator. Unemployment is one of the biggest concerns, but when the very agencies that are tasked with helping young people gain skills and find Read more >
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By Zachary MeskellFirst published on the Global Anticorruption Blog Most readers of this blog are likely to support rigorous anti-corruption laws. But a modicum of caution is necessary: If poorly designed, even anti-corruption laws adopted with the best of intentions can be weaponised by bad-faith actors. This is not only a modern problem. Indeed, a Read more >
A new report released by Corruption Watch (CW) today, South Africa Needs Clean Hands, highlights the corruption issues that have plagued municipalities throughout South Africa for almost 10 years, as reflected in the more than 5 000 whistle-blowers that have reported cases of corruption within local government to the organisation since its inception in 2012 until Read more >
Corruption Watch will release the report South Africa needs clean hands on Wednesday 18 August 2021. This report homes in on the extent to which municipalities have been captured to serve private interests, how municipal managers have abused their power, and how procurement irregularities have diverted resources for essential services, resulting in communities deprived of Read more >
Image: Wilson Lau, TRAFFIC A humble marine mollusc, Haliotis midae, has been the inadvertent cause of one of South Africa’s biggest poaching/smuggling challenges. The largest abalone in South Africa, it is known locally as perlemoen, from the Dutch meaning ‘mother of pearl’. Occurring naturally along the South African coastline, perlemoen is nothing more than a Read more >
A new study titled Convergence of wildlife crime with other forms of organised crime, released in May 2021 by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), sheds light on this phenomenon of crime convergence, which has been noticed more and more over the last two decades. The report shows that criminal networks are dealing in wildlife Read more >
Consider this statement: “Bribes can make up to 10% of the wholesale value of ivory in Asia.” And given that according to an investigation by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), raw ivory currently commands a price of between US$597/kg and $689/kg, on the Asian market – down from a mind-boggling high of $2 100/kg in Read more >
Image: Flickr/gmacfadyen Corruption is an enabler of wildlife, forest and fisheries crime. There are no surprises in that statement, as many will be aware that corruption occurs at every stage of the wildlife trafficking supply chain – and it’s a big reason for the continued prevalence of wildlife trafficking routes and networks. There are also Read more >
Image: Michael Kuhlmann for UNCTAD Over one trillion dollars. That’s the amount of money that Africa is estimated to have lost in illicit financial flows (IFFs) over the past 50 years (Kar and Cartwright-Smith, 2010; Africa Growth Initiative, 2020). The current estimate is an annual amount of around $50-billion, and possibly more – a significant Read more >