“Good News” in the Fight Against Corruption
Roberto Laver Monday, 29 November 2010
When I joined the World Bank (the Bank) in 1989, corruption was a taboo subject. For its own lending operations, the Bank had legal safeguards against the misuse of funds. But corruption was not openly recognized or addressed as a major obstacle to development and poverty reduction. This attitude generally characterized other international development agencies as well. While the Bank gave increased attention to the concept of governance, the "c" word was too sensitive—deemed a "political matter" outside of the Bank's legal mandate.
This stance began to change, however, as countries opened up their political and economic systems after the Cold War. Evidence of corruption's adverse effects on development accumulated. In 1996, the then President of the Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, publicly committed the organization to fight the "cancer of corruption"; the "prohibition era" had officially ended.
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