Interview with Frank Vogl.

• Author: Peters, Laurence
• Position: Interview

Interview with Frank Vogl by Laurence Peters January 3, 2104

Vogl's interest in corruption began when he was sent as a young London Times correspondent to cover the Watergate scandal for the London Times. Taking Bob Woodwards' advice to "follow the money" he stayed in DC to cover the story after most of the world's media left following President Nixon's resignation and discovered the trail that the same US corporations who were funding the infamous Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) were also funding overseas governments to gain a variety of procurement favors. Vogl went onto work for the World Bank and subsequently co-founded Transparency International (TI) helping over 20 years to grow the organization from a single office in Berlin to 100 chapters worldwide. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Waging War on Corruption: Inside the Movement fighting the Abuse of Power (2012)

We started our discussion by talking about a recent forum led by the World Bank entitled Speak out Against Corruption that featured both the current World Bank President Jim Kim, and former World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn along with Paul Volcker former head of the Federal Reserve and Huguette Labelle, the Chair of Transparency International. I asked Frank first about the World Bank's role in fighting corruption.

The truth of the matter is that an increasing number of Sub-Saharan countries in Africa today have more foreign direct investment than foreign aid. They are becoming less and less dependent on the World Bank. The World Bank's leverage in China for example is zero. Its leverage in India is incredibly marginal and I would argue that is also the case in most of Latin America. If leverage by the Bank is measured by the amount of money it provides then it is not as big as it was 10 or 15 years ago. The only way it can really have leverage is through its "moral" voice as a leader of global development and as a catalyst working with as many partners as possible in promoting transparency and accountability in government. But coalition building against corruption was not something that President Kim mentioned.

Is the World Bank not taking as active a role Is that because they don't see that corruption as a big issue or for policy reasons they don't want to upset various people?

It really is neither. It is because at the core of their work, not their research on corruption which has been very good they keep on looking at their projects and their programs as being the defining point for their interventions on good governance. When President Kim talks about investigations these are investigations into the World Bank's own procurements and whilst they are doing a good job on that it is tiny compared to world trade or world investment. When he announces that the very first decision he had to take was to stop a bridge project in Bangladesh because of alleged corruption that did not change the state of corruption in Bangladesh. I don't think that he does not mean well and he is absolutely right on the broad issues that he raises, but when it comes to implementation they might want to explore how they can be a good coalition partner rather than going it alone.

Is there something about the structure of the World Bank that they have been organized in such a way that they don't have a lot of outside people helping them. Has there been a failure to follow up on Jim Wolfensohn's brave effort to at least mention "the C word" in one of his speeches when he was World Bank President?

Jim Wolfensohn did acknowledge in 1997 that corruption was a big issue and said he would make it a Woprld Bank priority, but a few years later after a lot of criticism that the rhetoric was out of synch with the action, Wolfensohn's successor Bob Zellick asked Paul Volcker to head an investigation to ask what was going on in terms of effective anti corruption work and he came out with a scathing indictment of the bureaucracy who did not see any real incentives to be tough on corruption. Bob Zellick said he would do something about it. I am not sure how really effective he was, although he created a high level group to look at these things including appointing Huguette Labelle. President Kim now says that he will make corruption a major focal point, he wants to create a whole new entity within the Bank, a department or strategic area to make sure that this becomes a very central part of the Banks' activities. That is good, but the key is to see as they move forward that they recognize the point that you cannot reduce corruption on a sustainable basis from outside a country--citizens inside the country have to do it themselves and it is not going to happen top down. When the World Bank tells corrupt leaders that they need to reform they are not going to, even if they do some good things on one project here and one project there. You need to get the citizens of the country to increase the pressure on government for reform and monitoring actual activity. This means that the Bank has to partner with civil society in a far more comprehensive and substantive way, country by country. Until the World Bank understands that clearly, I don't think its impact on anti corruption can be that great . Having said that, President Kim has declared that his highest priority for the Bank is to end extreme poverty. This demands that that the delivery of basic services to the poor is done within an environment of good governance. It is outrageous that the extremely poor have to pay for basic health services from public hospitals and clinics that are meant to be free. If you are going to get good service delivery to the poor you have to ensure that free services are indeed free and that they are free from extortion by lower level officials and my guess is that in some areas in healthcare, for example, is that the Bank may be able to make some difference in this regard. The current World Bank President...