The project aimed to enable non-governmental actors to help develop, implement and monitor national anti-corruption strategies in Arab countries. The project was a major component in a broader regional anti-corruption initiative that generated context-specific knowledge and supported inclusive anti-corruption policy reform in Arab countries.

The overarching, long-term goal of this project is to improve credibility of corporate compliance programs. Achieving this will help increase public confidence and enhance credibility with investors, rating agencies, financial institutions, export credit agencies and government procurement agencies, which increasingly expect corporations to demonstrate effective compliance programs.

The project aims at designing a sound framework to avoid misuses and illegal practices, enhancing awareness in the business environment and among public institutions, promoting fair market conditions through clear and transparent procedures, and disseminating results to raise awareness on the issue.

Business Membership Organizations (BMOs) have become important players in the process of promoting transparency and fair markets. To strengthen anti-corruption initiatives in China, the project made available the expertise of German BMOs (German chambers of commerce and sectoral associations and their umbrella associations such as DIHK, BDI, etc.) and their members, in combination with the expert network of GIZ GmbH and sequa gGmbH.

Procurement is one of the areas most vulnerable to corruption in the Czech and Slovak Republics. The main root causes for intransparent procurement are weak laws and lack of oversight. The project’s objectives are to prepare a set of law amendments based on economic research and legal analyses of current weaknesses of the legal system. Furthermore, the project will aim at identifying potential loopholes, and analyse current practices of state oversight over procurement.

Governments, international organisations and the business community have adopted legally binding and non-binding anti-corruption and integrity instruments at the regional and global levels. A majority of Arab countries have ratified, and are consequently bound to implement, the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC).

The project aims at initiating Collective Action between foreign and local businesses in order to support fair market conditions. The Integrity Initiative will encourage companies to commit to having no tolerance for corruption, and to commit to sustainable development. The specific objectives are to:

Maala concentrated its efforts on promoting and encouraging a culture of ethics and integrity in the Israeli business community. Rather than treating ethics and integrity as only a technical compliance issue, it was approached more comprehensively as a human-behaviour and corporate culture issue in order to bring about behavioural change.

Main activities:

The 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games provided an opportunity to set an example in the fight against corruption and to ensure that resources invested in infrastructure are spent in a transparent and efficient way.

The project’s specific objectives were to raise the:

• level of transparency in public procurement and expenditure;
• integrity level of public-private sector relations and agreements;
• level of social control over public budget and expenditure.

The main activities are: