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)
Kada pričamo o korupciji, postoje tipične vrste pojedinaca koje padaju na pamet. Imamo megalomanijake iz bivšeg Sovjetskog Saveza. Saparmurat Nijazov je bio jedan od njih. Do svoje smrti 2006. bio je doživotni predsednik Turkmenistana, srednjoazijske zemlje bogate prirodnim gasom. On je zbilja voleo da izdaje predsedničke dekrete. Jednim od njih je preimenovao mesece u godini po svom imenu i imenu svoje majke. Potrošio je milione dolara stvarajući bizaran kult ličnosti, a krunu njegove slave predstavljalo je građenje pozlaćene statue sopstvenog lika, veličine 12 metara, koja je ponosno krasila prestonički centralni trg i okretala se prema suncu. Bio je pomalo neobičan momak. I onda imamo taj kliše, afričkog diktatora, ministra ili zvaničnika. Tu je Teodorin Obijang. Njegov tatica je doživotni predsednik Ekvatorijalne Gvineje, zapadnoafričke nacije koja je izvezla milijarde dolara u nafti od devedesetih godina prošlog veka, a ipak ima zbilja užasan tretman ljudskih prava. Najveći deo stanovništva živi u velikom siromaštvu uprkos prihodu po glavi stanovništva koji je isti kao u Portugaliji. Tako da, Obijang mlađi, pa, on sebi kupuje vilu vrednu 30 miliona dolara u Malibuu, u Kaliforniji. Bila sam do prednje kapije. Mogu da vam kažem da je prizor veličanstven. Kupio je umetničku kolekciju vrednu 18 miliona evra, koja je pripadala Iv Sen Loranu, modnom dizajneru, gomilu predivnih sportskih automobila, neki su koštali i do milion dolara, kao i Galfstrim mlazni avion. Pazite sad ovo: do skoro je dobijao zvaničnu mesečnu platu manju od 7 000 dolara. Onda, tu je Den Etete. On je bio bivši ministar za naftu Nigerije tokom vladavine predsednika Abača, i slučajno se desilo da je i osuđen za pranje novca. Potrošili smo mnogo vremena istražujući ugovor od milijarde - da, da, jedne milijarde dolara gde je on bio umešan i ono što smo otkrili je prilično šokantno, ali malo više o tome kasnije. Lako je misliti da se korupcija događa negde tamo, od strane gomile pohlepnih despota i pojedinaca koji čine zlo u zemljama o kojima mi lično ne znamo baš mnogo i ne osećamo baš vezu sa njima i ne pogađa nas šta se tamo možda dešava. Ali, da li se to samo tamo dešava? U 22. godini, ja sam baš imala sreće. Moj prvi posao posle fakulteta bio je da istražujem nelegalnu trgovinu afričkom slonovačom. I tako je počela moja veza sa korupcijom. 1993, sa dvojicom prijatelja koji su mi bili kolege, Sajmonom Tejlorom i Patrikom Elijem, osnovali smo organizaciju pod imenom Globalni svedok. Naša prva kampanja bila je istraživanje uloge ilegalne seče drva u finansiranju rata u Kambodži. Nekoliko godina kasnije, sad je 1997, nalazim se u Angoli na tajnom zadatku i istražujem krvave dijamante. Možda ste pogledali holivudski film "Krvavi dijamant'' sa Leonardom Dikapriom. E pa, nešto od toga je proisteklo iz našeg rada. Luanda je bila puna žrtava nagaznih mina koje su se borile da prežive po ulilcama i ratnih siročića koji su živeli u kanalizaciji ispod ulica i malog dela veoma bogate elite koji je tračarao o šoping putovanjima do Brazila i Portugala. I to bilo je malo ludo mesto. I tako, ja sedim u toploj i veoma zagušljivoj hotelskoj sobi, osećajući se potpuno skrhano. Ali ne zbog krvavih dijamanata. Već zato što sam pričala sa mnogo ljudi tamo koji su pričali i o drugom problemu: o masivnoj mreži korupcije svetskih razmera i milionima dolara u nafti koji su nestali. I od onoga što je tad bila veoma mala organizacija od jedva nekoliko ljudi koji su pokušavali da samo zamisle kako da se zabave time bio je ogroman izazov. I u godinama kada sam radila, i svi smo vodili kampanje i istraživali, iznova sam viđala šta omogućava korupciju na globalnom, visokom nivou, pa nije to samo pohlepa ili zloupotreba moći ili ona nebulozna fraza "slaba vlada". Mislim, jeste sve od toga, ali korupcija je omogućena delanjem globalnih moderatora. Da se vratimo na ljude o kojima sam pričala ranije. To su sve ljudi o kojima smo istraživali, i ti ljudi nisu to što rade mogli da rade sami. Recimo Obijang Junior. On nije završio sa skupocenom umetnošću i luksuznim kućama bez pomoći. Poslovao je sa svetskim bankama. Banka u Parizu držala je račune kompanija koje je kontrolisao, od kojih je jedna bila za kupovinu umetnina, a američke banke su slivale 73 miliona dolara u SAD, od čega je jedan deo iskorišćen za kupovinu te vile u Kaliforniji. A ovo nije sve uradio u svoje ime. Koristio je kompanije paravane. Jednu bi iskoristio da kupi imovinu a drugu, koja je bila na tuđem imenu, da plati ogromne račune neophodne da bi sve funkcionisalo. Tu je i Den Etete. Kada je bio ministar za naftu, dodelio je kvadrant nafte sada vredan preko milijardu dolara kompaniji koju je, čik pogodite, da, posedovao u tajnosti. Ona je dosta kasnije promenila vlasnika, uz srdačnu pomoć vlade Nigerije - moram da budem pažljiva šta ću sada reći - uzele su ga kompanije ćerke Šela i italijanske Eni, što su dve najveće naftne kompanije. Stvarnost je ta da srce korupcije postoji daleko od obala zemalja poput Ekvatorijalne Gineje, Nigerije ili Turkmenistana. Pokretač tog srca je međunarodni bankarski sistem, problemom anonimnih kompanija paravana i tajnošću koju smo pružili velikim operacijama koje se tiču nafte, gasa i ruda, i pre svega, nemogućnošću političara da stanu iza svojih reči i urade nešto zaista bitno i sistematski da se izbore sa ovim. Hajde prvo da pogledamo banke. Nije iznenađenje što ću vam reći da banke prihvataju prljav novac, ali stavljaju za prioritete zaradu i na druge destruktivne načine. Na primer, u Saravaku u Maleziji. U ovoj regiji postoji samo pet procenata netaknutih šuma. Pet procenata. Kako se to desilo? Tako što su elita i njene vođe zarađivali milione dolara podržavajući seču drveta na industrijskom nivou dugi niz godina. Poslali smo tajnog istraživača da u tajnosti snima sastanke sa članovima vladajuće elite, i snimci koje smo dobili su neke ljude veoma naljutili i to možete videti na Jutjubu, ali to je pokazalo ono na šta smo dugo sumnjali, jer je pokazalo da je premijer države, uprkos kasnijem poricanju, koristio kontrolu nad zemljištem i šumskim dozvolama da sebe i svoju porodicu učini bogatim. A za HSBC znamo da su čuvali novac najvećih kompanija za seču drva u regiji koje su bile odgovorne za deo te destrukcije u Saravaku i na drugim mestima. Banka je prekršila sopstvene polise o održivosti u samom procesu, ali je zaradila oko 130 miliona dolara. Ukratko nakon našeg ekspozea, veoma ubrzo nakon ekspozea početkom ove godine, banka je najavila prikaz polise. Da li je ovo napredak? Možda, ali ćemo budnim okom paziti na ovaj slučaj. Onda je tu i problem anonimnih kompanija paravana. Mislim da smo svi čuli šta su one, i svi znamo da ih dosta koriste ljudi i kompanije koji pokušavaju da izbegnu plaćanje svojih dugova društvu, to jest poreza. Ali na svetlo obično ne izađe to kako se ove kompanije koriste za krađu ogromnih suma novca, transformacionih suma novca, iz siromašnih zemalja. U skoro svakom slučaju korupcije koji smo istraživali, pojavile su se kompanije paravani i ponekad je bilo nemoguće otkriti ko je zapravo uključen u posao. Skorašnje istraživanje Svetske banke pokrivalo je 200 slučajeva korupcija. Oktriveno je da su u 70% tih slučajeva korišćene anonimne kompanije paravani, a ukupna suma bila je 56 milijardi dolara. Dosta tih kompanija bilo je u Americi ili Ujedinjenom kraljevstvu, teritorijama preko okeana i Krunskim posedima, tako da to nije samo problem sa ofšor kompanijama, već i sa onim u zemlji. Vidite, kompanije paravani su ključne za tajne ugovore koji mogu da koriste bogatim članovima elite umesto običnim građanima. U jednom upečatljivom slučaju koji smo skoro istraživali, vlada u Demokratskoj republici Kongo prodala je dosta vredne državne imovine gde se kopa ruda kompanijama paravanima na Britanskim devičanskim ostrvima. Pričali smo sa izvorima u zemlji, prošli kroz dokumenta kompanije i druge informacije, pokušavajući da sklopimo pravu sliku o dogovoru. Bili smo uznemireni kada smo saznali da su ove kompanije paravani brzo preprodale većinu imovine velikim međunarodnim kompanijama za rudarstvo iz Londona za ogromne zarade. Odbor za napredak Afrike, na čelu sa Kofijem Ananom, izračunao je da je Kongo možda izgubio više od 1,3 milijarde dolara na ovim poslovima. To je skoro dvostruko više od godišnjeg budžeta ove zemlje za zdravstvo i obrazovanje zajedno. Da li će ljudima iz države Kongo ikada biti vraćen novac? Odgovor na to pitanje, i to ko je zaista bio umešan i šta se zaista desilo, to će verovatno ostati zaključano u tajnim registrima kompanija na Britanskim devičanskim ostrvima i drugde, osim ako zaista ne uradimo nešto povodom toga. A šta je sa kompanijama koje se bave naftom, gasom i rudama? Možda je kliše pričati o njima. Korupcija u tom sektoru nije iznenađenje. Svuda ima korupcije, zašto bi se usredsredili na taj sektor? Zato što je ulog velik. 2011, izvoz prirodnih resursa bio je 19 puta veći od iznosa pomoći u Africi, Aziji i Latinskoj Americi. 19 puta veći. To je veoma mnogo škola, univerziteta, bolnica i započetih biznisa, od kojih se mnogi nikada nisu ostvarili i nikada neće jer je deo tog novca jednostavno ukraden. Vratimo se na naftne i rudarske kompanije, na Dena Etetea i taj posao od milijardu dolara. Oprostite mi, ali ovaj deo ću pročitati jer je problem veoma aktuelan i naši advokati su detaljno pretresli ovo i žele da uradim sve kako treba. Posao na prvi pogled izgleda sasvim jasno. Ćerke kompanije Šela i Eni su platile vladi Nigerije za kvadrant. Nigerijska vlada je prebacila tačno isti iznos, do poslednjeg dolara na račun povezan sa kompanijom paravanom čiji je tajni vlasnik bio Etete. Nije loše za nekog ko je osuđen za pranje novca. Evo u čemu je stvar. Nakon dosta meseci prekopavanja i čitanja stotina strana sudskih zapisa, pronašli smo dokaze da su Šel i Eni zapravo znali da će sredstva biti prebačena na tu kompaniju paravan i iskreno, teško je za poverovati da nisu znali sa kime tačno imaju posla. Ne bi trebalo da se uloži ovakav trud da se otkrije gde odlazi novac u ovakvim poslovima. Ovo je državni posed. Treba da se koristi za dobrostanje ljudi u toj državi. Ali u nekim državama, građani i novinari koji pokušaju da prikažu priče poput ove doživljavaju maltretiranje i hapšenje a neki su čak i rizikovali svoje živote. Konačno, postoje oni koji veruju da je korupcija neizbežna. Tako se prosto obavljaju poslovi. Previše je komplikovano i teško za promeniti. Šta je posledica? Jednostavno to prihvatamo. Ali kao borac i istraživač, imam drugačiji pogled, jer sam videla šta može da se dogodi kada se ideja pokrene. U sektoru nafte i rudarstva, na primer, sada se počinje sa pravim svetskim standardom transparentnosti koji bi mogao da reši neke od ovih problema. Kada je 1999. Globalni svedok pozvao naftne kompanije da učine plaćanja poslova transparentnim, neki ljudi su se smejali ekstremnoj naivnosti te malene ideje. Ali bukvalno stotine grupa građana iz celog sveta se sastalo da se bori za transparentnost, i to sada brzo postaje norma i zakon. Dve trećine vrednosti svetskih naftnih i rudarskih kompanija sada je pokriveno zakonima o transparentnosti. Dve trećine. Ovo je promena na delu. Ovo je napredak. Ali još nismo tu, ni blizu. Ovde se zapravo ne radi o korupciji tamo negde, zar ne? U globalizovanom svetu, korupcija je zaista globalizovan posao, kome su potrebna globalna rešenja koja podržavamo i guramo svi mi kao globalni građani, upravo ovde. Hvala vam. (Aplauz)