Europe

Transparency laws will release money to tackle poverty

Topics: 
Europe, Anti-corruption efforts, Legislation, Resources industry, Oil & gas industry
Rating: 
2

The European Council and Parliament has reached a historic agreement on transparency legislation so that extractive industry companies will publish what they pay in countries where they operate.

The legislation will help in the global fight against corruption, as well as releasing resources for development in an international context where alternatives to aid are increasingly needed. Natural resource revenues are crucial in the fight against poverty. In 2010 exports of oil, minerals and gas to Africa were nearly seven times what the continent received in international aid.

UK seeks source of horse and pig DNA found in beef

Topics: 
Europe, Food safety, Food industry
Rating: 
2

Dan Flynn – February 7, 2013

Polish horse meat mislabeled as beef is the likely source of the equine DNA found in Irish beef products, but the Food Safety Agency in the United Kingdom is still going ahead with tests on more meat samples collected from retail outlets throughout the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Environmental officers for local health authorities are being asked to follow a sampling plan that will end up with a total of 224 meat samples being collected. Results of the initial screening are to be reported by March 11, with confirming tests to be completed by April 8.

For world's oldest bank, derivatives worse than the plague

Topics: 
Europe, Financial crisis, Financial industry
Rating: 
2

Eric Reguly – January 26, 2013

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest bank, was making loans when Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were young men and before Columbus sailed to the New World. The bank survived the Italian War, which saw Siena's surrender to Spain in 1555, the Napoleonic campaign, the Second World War and assorted bouts of plague and poverty.

But MPS may not survive the twin threats of a gruesomely expensive takeover gone bad and a derivatives scandal that may result in legal action against the bank's former executives. After five centuries of independence, MPS may have to be nationalized as its losses soar and its value sinks.

Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Goes to the SEC

Topics: 
Europe, Financial industry, Reprisals, Whistleblowers
Rating: 
2

December 5, 2012

Eric Ben-Artzi is talking. He’s talking to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And he’s talking in the public square. Ben-Artzi is blowing the whistle on multi-billion dollar securities violations at Deutsche Bank, the Germany-based global investment bank.

“I never wanted or expected to be a whistleblower,” Ben-Artzi, a former quantitative risk analyst at Deutsche Bank, said. “I reported internally first and extensively, in accordance with bank policies and procedures. As the problem was not acknowledged or corrected, I felt compelled to inform the proper law enforcement authorities. Unfortunately, my family and I are paying a heavy price for doing the right thing.”

Deutsche books hid $12bn losses, say staff

Topics: 
Europe, Financial industry, Financial crisis, Corruption
Rating: 
2
The following are selected extracts

Tom Braithwaite, Kara Scannell and Michael Mackenzie – December 5, 2012

Deutsche Bank failed to recognise up to $12bn of paper losses during the financial crisis, helping the bank avoid a government bail-out, three former bank employees have alleged in complaints to US regulators.

The three complaints, made to regulators including the US Securities and Exchange Commission, claim that Deutsche misvalued a giant position in derivatives structures known as leveraged super senior trades, according to people familiar with the complaints.

'Island of the Blind' Riles a Greek Public Facing Cutbacks

Topics: 
Corruption, Europe
Rating: 
2

James Angelos – April 3, 2012

The island of Zakynthos, long known for its Venetian ruins and turquoise waters, lately has new fame in Greece—as "the island of the blind." The Greek health ministry is investigating on Zakynthos after local officials flagged records showing what they said is an implausibly high number of disability claims for blindness.

About 1.8% of the island's population of 39,000 claimed the benefit last year, according to the health ministry. That is around nine times the prevalence of blindness estimated for many European countries in a 2004 study published in a World Health Organization journal. Among those who put in for the blindness benefit on Zakynthos, a local official said, were a taxi driver and a bird hunter.

WikiLeaks on ice: where are digital whistleblowers now?

Topics: 
Wikileaks, Europe, Leaking
Rating: 
0

Luke Allnutt, Tangled Web – August 24, 2012

It is hard sometimes to divide the story of Julian Assange from that of WikiLeaks. But once upon a time, before Bradley Manning, the rape allegations, the house arrest, the TV show on RT, and then the Ecuador gambit, WikiLeaks, as an organization and as an idea, was brimming with promise. For many, the age of the anonymous digital whistleblower was the dawn of a bright new era of radical transparency.

WikiLeaks was just the beginning. Whatever you might think of Assange, it was the game-changer and it spawned a multitude of clones. Expectations about the potential of digital whistleblowing were sky high.

Study Praises Netherlands Integrity System

Topics: 
Transparency International, Research, Europe
Rating: 
0

Samuel Rubenfeld – May 14, 2012

A Transparency International study of the Dutch anti-corruption framework praised the country, but said individuals committing wrongdoing should face more ridicule.

The Netherlands has a “relatively strong” national integrity system, the report said, specifically praising the legislature, executive and judiciary. But the strongest institution, according to the report, is the ombudsman, who has wide latitude to design an integrity policy and has gone further than the law requires.

Are German Lawmakers Finally Listening to the Whistles?

Topics: 
Legislation, Europe
Rating: 
0

Mark Worth – March 26, 2012

In a country where whistleblowers have helped expose poor care in a nursing home, dioxin-laden livestock feed, inadequate emergency services in hospitals, rotten meat, and mad-cow disease, one would think – and certainly hope – that people who call attention to such scandals would be completely protected from all types of retaliation. In Germany, they are not.

Looming over Germany are two international commitments that compel the country to act. It has a long road ahead if it wants to meet the G-20’s deadline to implement whistleblower protection rules by the end of 2012. Germany also has yet to comply with the Council of Europe’s Civil Law Convention on Corruption.

Ireland ex-prime minister took $277,000 in secret payments

Topics: 
Corruption, Europe, Political misconduct
Rating: 
2
Bernie Ahern

Shawn Pogatchnik – March 22, 2012

Former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern received at least €209,779 ($277,000) in secret payments while in office and repeatedly lied about this under oath, a mammoth fact-finding judicial investigation ruled Thursday.

The three judges led by Justice Alan Mahon stopped short of finding Ahern guilty of corruption, because they couldn’t prove that Ahern gave favours to any of his cash donors when he was finance minister in the 1990s.

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