This Transparency International report evaluates the transparency of corporate reporting by the world’s 124 largest publicly listed companies. The report assesses the disclosure practices of companies with respect to their anti-corruption programmes, company holdings and the disclosure of key financial information on a country-by-country basis. It follows on from a 2012 report which focused on the world’s 105 largest publicly traded companies.

The Integrity Pact (IP) is a powerful tool developed by Transparency International (TI) to help governments, businesses and civil society fight corruption in public contracting. It consists of a process that includes an agreement between a government or government agency (‘the authority’) and all bidders for a public sector contract, setting out rights and obligations to the effect that neither side will pay, offer, demand or accept bribes; nor will bidders collude with competitors to obtain the contract, or bribe representatives of the authority while carrying it out.

This report sheds light on the many shapes and forms that corruption in education can take. It shows that, in all cases, corruption in education acts as a dangerous barrier to high-quality education and social and economic development.

It jeopardises the academic benefits of higher education institutions and may even lead to the reputational collapse of a country’s entire higher education system. In order to assess the way forward, the report also highlights innovative approaches to combating corruption in education.

The Business Principles for Countering Bribery provide a framework for companies to develop comprehensive anti-bribery programmes. Whilst many large companies have no-bribes policies all too few implement these policies effectively.

This report from Transparency International encourages companies to consider using the business principles as a starting point for developing their own anti-bribery programmes or to benchmark existing ones. 

This report addresses the concerns of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) confronted with the problem of bribery. As smaller companies with limited resources, SMEs face challenges in resisting and countering such pressures. Also, there are growing requirements made by large international companies for their suppliers to show evidence that they have appropriate anti-bribery policies and systems in place.

The report aims to set out in a clear and direct manner the process by which smaller businesses can develop an anti-bribery programme relevant to their size and resources.

To overcome corruption it is essential to combat extortion as well as bribery. There has been steady progress in curbing bribery through national laws implementing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.  

Extortion has not received comparable attention. Neither the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention nor the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the most widely enforced anti-corruption law, covers extortion. Extortion is covered by the UN Convention against Corruption, but implementation of that convention is still at an early stage.