Following several corruption scandals that occurred in 2013 and 2014 in the procurement and construction processes of EXPO2015 Milano, the President of ANAC (Autoritá Nationale Anticorruzione – National Anti-corruption Authority of Italy) was committed functions of supervision and guarantee of the fairness and transparency of the procurement procedures related to the implementation of the event in June 2014. As part of this assignment in July 2014 ANAC established a special operational unit (UOS) to monitor the projects of the EXPO 2015.

The traditional criminal response has been insufficient in the combat against corruption, money laundering and other financial crimes. Billions of dollars continue to be laundered by individuals and criminal organisations through and ever-growing myriad of complex financial schemes. Official Development Assistance (ODA), a fundamental tool of development policy, is equally prone to corruption, embezzlement and abuse — to the extent that up to 30% of disbursements may be siphoned off by corrupt actors and criminal organisations.

As integrity risks exist throughout the public procurement process, a holistic approach for risk mitigation and corruption prevention is needed. Focusing integrity measures solely on one step in the process may increase risks in other stages. Similarly, addressing only one type of risks may give leeway to integrity violations through other mechanisms. For example, administrative compliance measures in the bidding phase do not root out the risk for political interference in the identification of needs.

Anchored in the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, this report is about using better corporate governance to fight corporate misconduct. The report takes stock of corporate practices tying business integrity considerations into corporate governance frameworks, strategy and operations. It also assesses what factors influence business decisions to implement business integrity measures in practice. 

This report focuses on:

Control of corruption in a society is an equilibrium between resources and costs which either empowers or constraints elites predatory behavior. While most research and practice focuses on legal constraints, this paper investigates normative constraints, deemed to be more important, especially civil society and the press. Fresh evidence—both historical and statistical—is found to support Tocqueville’s assertions regarding the importance of collective action and the joint action of media and associations in not only creating a democratic society, but controlling corruption as well.

Although both the problem of corruption and its detrimental effects on society, economy, and environment has widely been recognized, corruption remains one of the most challenging problems of today. In light of globalization, the exclusive focus on compliance-oriented measures such as sharpening laws seems to be more and more ineffective.