TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Charmian Gooch: Meet global corruption's hidden players

Unscramble the Blue Letters

When we talk about corruption, there are typical types of individuals that spring to mind. There's the former Soviet megalomaniacs. Saparmurat Niyazov, he was one of them. Until his death in 2006, he was the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country rich in natural gas. Now, he really loved to issue presidential dreeecs. And one renamed the months of the year including after himself and his mteohr. He snpet millions of dollars ceiartng a bizarre personality cult, and his crowning glory was the building of a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself which sootd proudly in the capital's central square and rotated to follow the sun. He was a slightly unusual guy. And then there's that cliché, the African dictator or minister or official. There's Teodorín Obiang. So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea, a West aaircfn nation that has exported blinlios of dollars of oil since the 1990s and yet has a truly appalling human rights record. The vast mjiotary of its people are living in really miserable ptovery despite an income per capita that's on a par with that of pugotarl. So Obiang junior, well, he buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California. I've been up to its front gates. I can tell you it's a magnificent spread. He bought an €18 million art collection that used to belong to foashin dinsgeer Yves Saint Laurent, a stack of fabulous soprts cars, some costing a million dollars apiece — oh, and a Gulfstream jet, too. Now get this: Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salary of less than 7,000 dollars. And there's Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria under President Abacha, and it just so happens he's a cnivecotd money launderer too. We've spent a great deal of time investigating a $1 billion — that's right, a $1 billion — oil deal that he was iovevlnd with, and what we found was pretty shocking, but more about that later. So it's easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there? Well, at 22, I was very lkucy. My first job out of usinrevity was investigating the illegal tdrae in African ivory. And that's how my relationship with corruption really bagen. In 1993, with two friends who were colleagues, Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley, we set up an oaaontiirzgn celald Global Witness. Our first campiagn was iitgeaitnnvsg the role of illegal logging in funding the war in cabodmia. So a few years later, and it's now 1997, and I'm in alonga urndeevcor investigating blood diamonds. Perhaps you saw the film, the Hollywood film "Blood dianomd," the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, some of that sprang from our work. ldauna, it was full of land mine victims who were struggling to survive on the steerts and war orphans living in sewers under the streets, and a tiny, very wealthy etile who gossiped about shopping trips to brizal and Portugal. And it was a slightly crazy place. So I'm sitting in a hot and very stuffy hotel room feeling just tllaoty overwhelmed. But it wasn't about blood diamonds. Because I'd been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of ciotruropn on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going msinisg. And for what was then a very small organization of just a few people, trying to even begin to think how we might tackle that was an ernumoos challenge. And in the years that I've been, and we've all been campaigning and investigating, I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the muisse of power or that nebulous parshe "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global fotailaricts. So let's go back to some of those people I talked about earlier. Now, they're all people we've investigated, and they're all people who couldn't do what they do alone. Take Obiang junior. Well, he didn't end up with high-end art and luxury houses without help. He did bunessis with glabol banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and areimacn banks, well, they funneled 73 million dallros into the States, some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the poerprty, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place. And then there's Dan Etete. Well, when he was oil minister, he awarded an oil block now worth over a boillin dollars to a cmpanoy that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of. Now, it was then much later traded on with the kind assistance of the nigriaen government — now I have to be careful what I say here — to subsidiaries of Shell and the ialtain Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around. So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption, well, it etsxis far beyond the shores of countries like Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This engine, well, it's driven by our international banking system, by the pobrlem of anonymous shell companies, and by the secrecy that we have afforded big oil, gas and mining operations, and, most of all, by the failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff. Now let's take the bnaks first. Well, it's not going to come as any suirspre for me to tell you that banks accept dirty money, but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too. For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Now this region, it has just five percent of its forests left intact. Five percent. So how did that happen? Well, because an elite and its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scale for many years. So we sent an undercover investigator in to secretly film migeetns with members of the ruling elite, and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry, and you can see that on YouTube, but it poervd what we had long suspected, because it showed how the state's chief minister, despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family. And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolled the region's largest lggniog companies that were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak and elsewhere. The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process, but it earned around 130 million dollars. Now shortly after our eospxé, very shortly after our exposé earlier this year, the bank announced a pliocy review on this. And is this pgsoerrs? Maybe, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye on that case. And then there's the problem of anonyomus shell companies. Well, we've all haerd about what they are, I think, and we all know they're used quite a bit by pelpoe and companies who are trying to aivod paying their poerpr dues to society, also known as taxes. But what doesn't usually come to light is how shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries. In virtually every case of corruption that we've investigated, shell companies have appeared, and sometimes it's been impossible to find out who is really involved in the deal. A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It found that over 70 preenct of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars. Now many of these companies were in America or the United kdigonm, its overseas trrtreieois and Crown dependencies, and so it's not just an ofshrofe problem, it's an on-shore one too. You see, shell companies, they're cntarel to the secret delas which may bnifeet wteahly elites rather than ordinary citizens. One striking recent case that we've investigated is how the government in the Democratic Republic of cogno sold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assets to slehl companies in the British vgriin ianlsds. So we spoke to sources in country, trawled through company documents and other information trying to piece together a really true picture of the deal. And we were alarmed to find that these shell companies had qckiluy flipped many of the assets on for huge profits to major international mining companies ltesid in London. Now, the Africa Progress Panel, led by Kofi Annan, they've calculated that Congo may have lost more than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals. That's almost twice the country's annual health and education budget combined. And will the people of Congo, will they ever get their money back? Well, the answer to that question, and who was really involved and what really happened, well that's going to probably rmaien leckod away in the secretive company riegsetris of the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere unless we all do something about it. And how about the oil, gas and mining companies? Okay, maybe it's a bit of a cliché to talk about them. Corruption in that sector, no surprise. There's corruption everywhere, so why foucs on that sector? Well, because there's a lot at stkae. In 2011, natural resource exports outweighed aid flows by almost 19 to one in afrcia, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen to one. Now that's a hell of a lot of schools and universities and hospitals and business sautrtps, many of which haven't materialized and never will because some of that money has simply been selotn away. Now let's go back to the oil and mining cinapeoms, and let's go back to Dan ettee and that $1 billion deal. And now forgive me, I'm going to read the next bit because it's a very live issue, and our lawyers have been through this in some dteial and they want me to get it right. Now, on the surface, the deal appeared straightforward. Subsidiaries of Shell and Eni paid the Nigerian gmonevernt for the block. The Nigerian government transferred precisely the same amount, to the very dollar, to an acnouct earmarked for a shell company whose hidden owner was Etete. Now, that's not bad going for a convicted money launderer. And here's the thing. After many months of digging around and rdeanig through hdrdnues of pages of court documents, we found evidence that, in fact, Shell and Eni had known that the fnuds would be transferred to that shell company, and frankly, it's hard to believe they didn't know who they were really dealing with there. Now, it just shouldn't take these srots of efforts to find out where the money in deals like this went. I mean, these are state assets. They're supposed to be used for the benefit of the people in the cntoruy. But in some countries, ctniiezs and journalists who are trying to expose setrois like this have been harassed and arrested and some have even risked their lives to do so. And finally, well, there are those who believe that corruption is unavoidable. It's just how some business is done. It's too complex and difficult to change. So in effect, what? We just accept it. But as a campaigner and investigator, I have a different view, because I've seen what can happen when an idea gains momentum. In the oil and mnniig seotcr, for example, there is now the beginning of a truly worldwide transparency standard that could tackle some of these problems. In 1999, when Global Witness called for oil companies to make payments on deals trparnnesat, well, some people laughed at the extreme nveatié of that small idea. But literally hundreds of civil society groups from around the world came together to fight for transparency, and now it's fast becoming the norm and the law. Two tirdhs of the value of the world's oil and mining companies are now ceervod by tsearnpacnry laws. Two thirds. So this is change hnapeinpg. This is progress. But we're not there yet, by far. Because it really isn't about corruption somewhere over there, is it? In a globalized wlrod, corruption is a truly globalized business, and one that needs global solutions, supported and pushed by us all, as global citizens, right here. Thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

When we talk about corruption, there are typical types of individuals that spring to mind. There's the former Soviet megalomaniacs. Saparmurat Niyazov, he was one of them. Until his death in 2006, he was the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country rich in natural gas. Now, he really loved to issue presidential _______. And one renamed the months of the year including after himself and his ______. He _____ millions of dollars ________ a bizarre personality cult, and his crowning glory was the building of a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself which _____ proudly in the capital's central square and rotated to follow the sun. He was a slightly unusual guy. And then there's that cliché, the African dictator or minister or official. There's Teodorín Obiang. So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea, a West _______ nation that has exported ________ of dollars of oil since the 1990s and yet has a truly appalling human rights record. The vast ________ of its people are living in really miserable _______ despite an income per capita that's on a par with that of ________. So Obiang junior, well, he buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California. I've been up to its front gates. I can tell you it's a magnificent spread. He bought an €18 million art collection that used to belong to _______ ________ Yves Saint Laurent, a stack of fabulous ______ cars, some costing a million dollars apiece — oh, and a Gulfstream jet, too. Now get this: Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salary of less than 7,000 dollars. And there's Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria under President Abacha, and it just so happens he's a _________ money launderer too. We've spent a great deal of time investigating a $1 billion — that's right, a $1 billion — oil deal that he was ________ with, and what we found was pretty shocking, but more about that later. So it's easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there? Well, at 22, I was very _____. My first job out of __________ was investigating the illegal _____ in African ivory. And that's how my relationship with corruption really _____. In 1993, with two friends who were colleagues, Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley, we set up an ____________ ______ Global Witness. Our first ________ was _____________ the role of illegal logging in funding the war in ________. So a few years later, and it's now 1997, and I'm in ______ __________ investigating blood diamonds. Perhaps you saw the film, the Hollywood film "Blood _______," the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, some of that sprang from our work. ______, it was full of land mine victims who were struggling to survive on the _______ and war orphans living in sewers under the streets, and a tiny, very wealthy _____ who gossiped about shopping trips to ______ and Portugal. And it was a slightly crazy place. So I'm sitting in a hot and very stuffy hotel room feeling just _______ overwhelmed. But it wasn't about blood diamonds. Because I'd been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of __________ on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going _______. And for what was then a very small organization of just a few people, trying to even begin to think how we might tackle that was an ________ challenge. And in the years that I've been, and we've all been campaigning and investigating, I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the ______ of power or that nebulous ______ "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global ____________. So let's go back to some of those people I talked about earlier. Now, they're all people we've investigated, and they're all people who couldn't do what they do alone. Take Obiang junior. Well, he didn't end up with high-end art and luxury houses without help. He did ________ with ______ banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and ________ banks, well, they funneled 73 million _______ into the States, some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the ________, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place. And then there's Dan Etete. Well, when he was oil minister, he awarded an oil block now worth over a _______ dollars to a _______ that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of. Now, it was then much later traded on with the kind assistance of the ________ government — now I have to be careful what I say here — to subsidiaries of Shell and the _______ Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around. So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption, well, it ______ far beyond the shores of countries like Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This engine, well, it's driven by our international banking system, by the _______ of anonymous shell companies, and by the secrecy that we have afforded big oil, gas and mining operations, and, most of all, by the failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff. Now let's take the _____ first. Well, it's not going to come as any ________ for me to tell you that banks accept dirty money, but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too. For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Now this region, it has just five percent of its forests left intact. Five percent. So how did that happen? Well, because an elite and its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scale for many years. So we sent an undercover investigator in to secretly film ________ with members of the ruling elite, and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry, and you can see that on YouTube, but it ______ what we had long suspected, because it showed how the state's chief minister, despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family. And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolled the region's largest _______ companies that were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak and elsewhere. The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process, but it earned around 130 million dollars. Now shortly after our ______, very shortly after our exposé earlier this year, the bank announced a ______ review on this. And is this ________? Maybe, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye on that case. And then there's the problem of _________ shell companies. Well, we've all _____ about what they are, I think, and we all know they're used quite a bit by ______ and companies who are trying to _____ paying their ______ dues to society, also known as taxes. But what doesn't usually come to light is how shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries. In virtually every case of corruption that we've investigated, shell companies have appeared, and sometimes it's been impossible to find out who is really involved in the deal. A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It found that over 70 _______ of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars. Now many of these companies were in America or the United _______, its overseas ___________ and Crown dependencies, and so it's not just an ________ problem, it's an on-shore one too. You see, shell companies, they're _______ to the secret _____ which may _______ _______ elites rather than ordinary citizens. One striking recent case that we've investigated is how the government in the Democratic Republic of _____ sold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assets to _____ companies in the British ______ _______. So we spoke to sources in country, trawled through company documents and other information trying to piece together a really true picture of the deal. And we were alarmed to find that these shell companies had _______ flipped many of the assets on for huge profits to major international mining companies ______ in London. Now, the Africa Progress Panel, led by Kofi Annan, they've calculated that Congo may have lost more than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals. That's almost twice the country's annual health and education budget combined. And will the people of Congo, will they ever get their money back? Well, the answer to that question, and who was really involved and what really happened, well that's going to probably ______ ______ away in the secretive company __________ of the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere unless we all do something about it. And how about the oil, gas and mining companies? Okay, maybe it's a bit of a cliché to talk about them. Corruption in that sector, no surprise. There's corruption everywhere, so why _____ on that sector? Well, because there's a lot at _____. In 2011, natural resource exports outweighed aid flows by almost 19 to one in ______, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen to one. Now that's a hell of a lot of schools and universities and hospitals and business ________, many of which haven't materialized and never will because some of that money has simply been ______ away. Now let's go back to the oil and mining _________, and let's go back to Dan _____ and that $1 billion deal. And now forgive me, I'm going to read the next bit because it's a very live issue, and our lawyers have been through this in some ______ and they want me to get it right. Now, on the surface, the deal appeared straightforward. Subsidiaries of Shell and Eni paid the Nigerian __________ for the block. The Nigerian government transferred precisely the same amount, to the very dollar, to an _______ earmarked for a shell company whose hidden owner was Etete. Now, that's not bad going for a convicted money launderer. And here's the thing. After many months of digging around and _______ through ________ of pages of court documents, we found evidence that, in fact, Shell and Eni had known that the _____ would be transferred to that shell company, and frankly, it's hard to believe they didn't know who they were really dealing with there. Now, it just shouldn't take these _____ of efforts to find out where the money in deals like this went. I mean, these are state assets. They're supposed to be used for the benefit of the people in the _______. But in some countries, ________ and journalists who are trying to expose _______ like this have been harassed and arrested and some have even risked their lives to do so. And finally, well, there are those who believe that corruption is unavoidable. It's just how some business is done. It's too complex and difficult to change. So in effect, what? We just accept it. But as a campaigner and investigator, I have a different view, because I've seen what can happen when an idea gains momentum. In the oil and ______ ______, for example, there is now the beginning of a truly worldwide transparency standard that could tackle some of these problems. In 1999, when Global Witness called for oil companies to make payments on deals ___________, well, some people laughed at the extreme _______ of that small idea. But literally hundreds of civil society groups from around the world came together to fight for transparency, and now it's fast becoming the norm and the law. Two ______ of the value of the world's oil and mining companies are now _______ by ____________ laws. Two thirds. So this is change _________. This is progress. But we're not there yet, by far. Because it really isn't about corruption somewhere over there, is it? In a globalized _____, corruption is a truly globalized business, and one that needs global solutions, supported and pushed by us all, as global citizens, right here. Thank you. (Applause)

Solution

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billions
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corruption
brazil
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reading

Original Text

When we talk about corruption, there are typical types of individuals that spring to mind. There's the former Soviet megalomaniacs. Saparmurat Niyazov, he was one of them. Until his death in 2006, he was the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country rich in natural gas. Now, he really loved to issue presidential decrees. And one renamed the months of the year including after himself and his mother. He spent millions of dollars creating a bizarre personality cult, and his crowning glory was the building of a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself which stood proudly in the capital's central square and rotated to follow the sun. He was a slightly unusual guy. And then there's that cliché, the African dictator or minister or official. There's Teodorín Obiang. So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation that has exported billions of dollars of oil since the 1990s and yet has a truly appalling human rights record. The vast majority of its people are living in really miserable poverty despite an income per capita that's on a par with that of Portugal. So Obiang junior, well, he buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California. I've been up to its front gates. I can tell you it's a magnificent spread. He bought an €18 million art collection that used to belong to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, a stack of fabulous sports cars, some costing a million dollars apiece — oh, and a Gulfstream jet, too. Now get this: Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salary of less than 7,000 dollars. And there's Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria under President Abacha, and it just so happens he's a convicted money launderer too. We've spent a great deal of time investigating a $1 billion — that's right, a $1 billion — oil deal that he was involved with, and what we found was pretty shocking, but more about that later. So it's easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there? Well, at 22, I was very lucky. My first job out of university was investigating the illegal trade in African ivory. And that's how my relationship with corruption really began. In 1993, with two friends who were colleagues, Simon Taylor and Patrick Alley, we set up an organization called Global Witness. Our first campaign was investigating the role of illegal logging in funding the war in Cambodia. So a few years later, and it's now 1997, and I'm in Angola undercover investigating blood diamonds. Perhaps you saw the film, the Hollywood film "Blood Diamond," the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, some of that sprang from our work. Luanda, it was full of land mine victims who were struggling to survive on the streets and war orphans living in sewers under the streets, and a tiny, very wealthy elite who gossiped about shopping trips to Brazil and Portugal. And it was a slightly crazy place. So I'm sitting in a hot and very stuffy hotel room feeling just totally overwhelmed. But it wasn't about blood diamonds. Because I'd been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of corruption on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going missing. And for what was then a very small organization of just a few people, trying to even begin to think how we might tackle that was an enormous challenge. And in the years that I've been, and we've all been campaigning and investigating, I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the misuse of power or that nebulous phrase "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global facilitators. So let's go back to some of those people I talked about earlier. Now, they're all people we've investigated, and they're all people who couldn't do what they do alone. Take Obiang junior. Well, he didn't end up with high-end art and luxury houses without help. He did business with global banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and American banks, well, they funneled 73 million dollars into the States, some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the property, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place. And then there's Dan Etete. Well, when he was oil minister, he awarded an oil block now worth over a billion dollars to a company that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of. Now, it was then much later traded on with the kind assistance of the Nigerian government — now I have to be careful what I say here — to subsidiaries of Shell and the Italian Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around. So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption, well, it exists far beyond the shores of countries like Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This engine, well, it's driven by our international banking system, by the problem of anonymous shell companies, and by the secrecy that we have afforded big oil, gas and mining operations, and, most of all, by the failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff. Now let's take the banks first. Well, it's not going to come as any surprise for me to tell you that banks accept dirty money, but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too. For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Now this region, it has just five percent of its forests left intact. Five percent. So how did that happen? Well, because an elite and its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scale for many years. So we sent an undercover investigator in to secretly film meetings with members of the ruling elite, and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry, and you can see that on YouTube, but it proved what we had long suspected, because it showed how the state's chief minister, despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family. And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolled the region's largest logging companies that were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak and elsewhere. The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process, but it earned around 130 million dollars. Now shortly after our exposé, very shortly after our exposé earlier this year, the bank announced a policy review on this. And is this progress? Maybe, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye on that case. And then there's the problem of anonymous shell companies. Well, we've all heard about what they are, I think, and we all know they're used quite a bit by people and companies who are trying to avoid paying their proper dues to society, also known as taxes. But what doesn't usually come to light is how shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries. In virtually every case of corruption that we've investigated, shell companies have appeared, and sometimes it's been impossible to find out who is really involved in the deal. A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It found that over 70 percent of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars. Now many of these companies were in America or the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and Crown dependencies, and so it's not just an offshore problem, it's an on-shore one too. You see, shell companies, they're central to the secret deals which may benefit wealthy elites rather than ordinary citizens. One striking recent case that we've investigated is how the government in the Democratic Republic of Congo sold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assets to shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. So we spoke to sources in country, trawled through company documents and other information trying to piece together a really true picture of the deal. And we were alarmed to find that these shell companies had quickly flipped many of the assets on for huge profits to major international mining companies listed in London. Now, the Africa Progress Panel, led by Kofi Annan, they've calculated that Congo may have lost more than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals. That's almost twice the country's annual health and education budget combined. And will the people of Congo, will they ever get their money back? Well, the answer to that question, and who was really involved and what really happened, well that's going to probably remain locked away in the secretive company registries of the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere unless we all do something about it. And how about the oil, gas and mining companies? Okay, maybe it's a bit of a cliché to talk about them. Corruption in that sector, no surprise. There's corruption everywhere, so why focus on that sector? Well, because there's a lot at stake. In 2011, natural resource exports outweighed aid flows by almost 19 to one in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen to one. Now that's a hell of a lot of schools and universities and hospitals and business startups, many of which haven't materialized and never will because some of that money has simply been stolen away. Now let's go back to the oil and mining companies, and let's go back to Dan Etete and that $1 billion deal. And now forgive me, I'm going to read the next bit because it's a very live issue, and our lawyers have been through this in some detail and they want me to get it right. Now, on the surface, the deal appeared straightforward. Subsidiaries of Shell and Eni paid the Nigerian government for the block. The Nigerian government transferred precisely the same amount, to the very dollar, to an account earmarked for a shell company whose hidden owner was Etete. Now, that's not bad going for a convicted money launderer. And here's the thing. After many months of digging around and reading through hundreds of pages of court documents, we found evidence that, in fact, Shell and Eni had known that the funds would be transferred to that shell company, and frankly, it's hard to believe they didn't know who they were really dealing with there. Now, it just shouldn't take these sorts of efforts to find out where the money in deals like this went. I mean, these are state assets. They're supposed to be used for the benefit of the people in the country. But in some countries, citizens and journalists who are trying to expose stories like this have been harassed and arrested and some have even risked their lives to do so. And finally, well, there are those who believe that corruption is unavoidable. It's just how some business is done. It's too complex and difficult to change. So in effect, what? We just accept it. But as a campaigner and investigator, I have a different view, because I've seen what can happen when an idea gains momentum. In the oil and mining sector, for example, there is now the beginning of a truly worldwide transparency standard that could tackle some of these problems. In 1999, when Global Witness called for oil companies to make payments on deals transparent, well, some people laughed at the extreme naiveté of that small idea. But literally hundreds of civil society groups from around the world came together to fight for transparency, and now it's fast becoming the norm and the law. Two thirds of the value of the world's oil and mining companies are now covered by transparency laws. Two thirds. So this is change happening. This is progress. But we're not there yet, by far. Because it really isn't about corruption somewhere over there, is it? In a globalized world, corruption is a truly globalized business, and one that needs global solutions, supported and pushed by us all, as global citizens, right here. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
shell companies	6
million dollars	3
dan etete	3
billion dollars	3
nigerian government	3
anonymous shell	3
convicted money	2
money launderer	2
global witness	2
blood diamonds	2
hidden owner	2
oil companies	2
british virgin	2
virgin islands	2
mining companies	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
convicted money launderer	2
british virgin islands	2

Important Words

abacha
accept
account
accounts
actions
afforded
africa
african
aid
alarmed
alley
america
american
amount
angola
angry
annan
announced
annual
anonymous
answer
apiece
appalling
appeared
applause
arrested
art
asia
asian
assets
assistance
avoid
awarded
bad
bank
banking
bankrolled
banks
began
beginning
belong
benefit
big
biggest
billion
billions
bills
bit
bizarre
block
blood
bought
brazil
british
budget
building
bunch
business
buy
buys
calculated
california
called
cambodia
campaign
campaigner
campaigning
capita
careful
carried
cars
case
cases
central
challenge
change
chief
citizens
civil
cliché
close
colleagues
collection
combined
companies
company
complex
congo
control
controlled
convicted
corruption
cost
costing
countries
country
court
covered
crazy
creating
crown
crowning
cult
daddy
dan
deal
dealing
deals
death
decrees
democratic
denials
dependencies
designer
despots
destruction
destructive
detail
diamond
diamonds
dicaprio
dictator
difficult
digging
dirty
documents
dollar
dollars
driven
dues
earlier
earmarked
earned
earning
easy
education
effect
efforts
elite
elites
engine
eni
enormous
enrich
equatorial
etete
evidence
exists
exported
exports
expose
exposé
extreme
eye
fabulous
facilitators
fact
failure
family
fashion
fast
feel
feeling
fight
film
finally
find
flipped
flows
focus
follow
footage
forest
forests
forgive
frankly
friends
front
full
funding
funds
funneled
gains
gas
gates
global
globalized
glory
good
gossiped
governance
government
great
greed
greedy
groups
guess
guinea
gulfstream
guy
happen
happened
happening
harassed
hard
health
heard
held
hell
hidden
hollywood
hospitals
hot
hotel
houses
hsbc
huge
human
hundreds
idea
illegal
impossible
including
income
individuals
industrial
information
intact
international
investigated
investigating
investigator
involved
islands
issue
italian
ivory
jet
job
journalists
junior
keeping
kind
kingdom
kofi
land
largest
latin
laughed
launderer
laurent
law
laws
lawyers
leader
led
left
leonardo
licenses
life
light
listed
literally
live
lives
living
locked
logging
london
long
looked
lost
lot
lots
loved
luanda
lucky
luxury
magnificent
major
majority
making
malaysia
malibu
mansion
massive
materialized
meaningful
meetings
megalomaniacs
members
million
millions
mind
mining
minister
miserable
missing
misuse
momentum
money
monthly
months
mother
naiveté
nation
natural
nebulous
nigeria
nigerian
nineteen
niyazov
norm
obiang
official
offshore
oil
operations
ordinary
organization
orphans
outweighed
overseas
overwhelmed
owner
pages
paid
panel
par
paris
patrick
pay
paying
payments
people
percent
personality
personally
phrase
picture
piece
place
policies
policy
politicians
poor
portugal
poverty
power
precisely
president
presidential
pretty
prioritize
problem
problems
process
profits
progress
proper
property
proudly
proved
pushed
question
quickly
read
reading
reality
record
region
registries
relationship
remain
renamed
repeatedly
republic
resource
responsible
resulting
review
rhetoric
rich
rights
risked
role
room
rotated
ruling
run
saint
salary
saparmurat
sarawak
scale
schools
secrecy
secret
secretive
secretly
sector
series
set
sewers
shell
shocking
shopping
shores
shortly
showed
simon
simply
sitting
slightly
small
society
sold
solutions
sorts
sources
soviet
speaking
spent
spoke
sports
sprang
spread
spring
square
stack
stake
standard
startups
state
states
statue
steal
stolen
stood
stories
straightforward
streets
striking
struggling
study
stuff
stuffy
subsidiaries
sums
sun
supported
supporting
supposed
surface
surprise
survive
suspected
sustainability
system
systemic
tackle
talk
talked
taxes
taylor
teodorín
territories
thirds
time
tiny
totaling
totally
trade
traded
transferred
transformational
transparency
transparent
trawled
trips
true
turkmenistan
types
typical
unaffected
unavoidable
unconnected
undercover
united
universities
university
unusual
valuable
vast
victims
view
violated
virgin
virtually
war
ways
wealthy
web
west
witness
work
world
worldwide
worth
yeah
year
years
youtube
yves