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)
当我们谈论腐败时, 有几类典型的人会映入脑海。 例如前苏联的自大狂。 萨帕尔穆拉特 · 尼亚佐夫(Saparmurat Niyazov)就是其中一个。 直至2006 年他去世之前, 他一直是土库曼斯坦最有权利的领袖, 这是一个中亚国家,天然气丰富。 他很爱颁布总统令。 其中之一是他曾经更改月份的名字 包括用他本人和他母亲的名字取而代之。 他花了数百万美元 建立了一个怪诞的个人崇拜, 他至高无上的荣耀是 为自己修建了一座40英尺高的镀金雕像 这个雕像傲然屹立于该国首都的中心广场 并能随太阳旋转。 他是个有点异常的人。 另一个就是老生常谈的人物, 被称为非洲的独裁者、部长或官员。 特奥多罗·奥比昂(Teodorin Obiang)。 他父亲是赤道几内亚的终身总统 这是一个西非国家, 自从1990 年代以来,已出口了数十亿美元的石油, 但该国也有着骇人听闻的人权记录。 绝大多数老百姓都 生活于非常悲惨的贫困中 尽管其人均收入相当于 葡萄牙。 小奥比昂(Obiang junior)给自己 在加利福尼亚州的马里布买了一栋3000万美元的豪宅。 我到过那豪宅的大门前。 可以说,那真是气势恢宏。 他买了价值1800 万欧元的艺术收藏品 该收藏品原属于时装设计师伊夫 · 圣洛朗(YSL), 小奥比昂还有多辆豪华跑车, 有些车单价超过100 万美金 哦,他还有一驾湾流喷气机。 现在我们来看看: 直到最近,他官方的月薪 仅有不到7,000 美元。 还有另一位丹·埃泰特(Dan Etete) 他是尼日利亚的前石油部长 隶属于阿巴查(Abacha)总统政府 丹·埃泰特也恰巧被定罪洗黑钱。 我们花了大量的时间 针对10亿美金— — 是的,10 亿美金的一笔交易进行追查— — 这是他所参与的石油交易的金额 结果非常令人震惊, 我们稍后再谈这个吧。 所以,我们很容易就下结论认为 腐败发生在那边, 被一群贪婪的专制统治者 和对国家无一益处的腐败者把持着 这些,对我们来说,可能是知之甚少的 感觉真得和自己没什么关系 而且我们也没受什么影响。 但腐败仅仅只发生在那边吗? 在我22岁时,我非常幸运。 我大学毕业后的第一份工作 是调查非洲象牙非法贸易。 那是我参与反腐的开始。 1993 年,我与两个朋友,也是我同事, 西蒙 · 泰勒(Simon Taylor)和帕特里克· 埃里(Patrick Alley) 一起成立了一个组织叫做“全球见证”(Global Witness)。 我们第一次行动就是调查 非法伐木在柬埔寨战争的资助方面所扮演的角色。 几年后,1997 年, 我在安哥拉秘密调查血钻。 也许你看过 好莱坞电影"血钻", 莱昂纳多 · 迪卡普里奥主演的。 电影的部分情节是根据我们的调查而来的。 罗安达,到处都是地雷受害者 他们在街上挣扎求生 战争孤儿生活在街道下的下水道中 极少部分富裕的精英们 在闲谈着到巴西和葡萄牙的购物之旅。 那是一个相当疯狂的地方。 所以我坐在一个非常闷热的酒店客房 感觉完全不知所措。 但这和血钻无关。 因为我和当地许多人都交流过 他们谈到另一个不同的问题: 在全球范围内一个巨大规模的腐败网 以及与石油相关的数以百万美金不知去向。 对于一个只有几个人 的组织来说, 试图思考我们怎样解决这个问题 真是一个巨大的挑战。 在这些年, 我们一直在行动和调查, 我一次又一次看到, 是什么让腐败在全球巨大的范围内发生, 这不仅仅是贪婪或权力滥用 或用含糊不清的"无能治理"可以解释的。 我的意思是,刚刚提到的都是原因, 但是腐败,之所以出现 是因为全球协调者的所作所为导致的。 所以让我们谈谈我之前提到过的那些人。 他们都是我们调查过的 而且他们不可能单独靠自己就能做出那些事的。 以小奥比昂(Obiang junior)为例。 没有协助的话,他是无法获得那些高端艺术品和豪宅的。 他与全球的银行有来往。 在巴黎的一家银行拥有由他控制的公司的帐户, 他就是用其中一个账号来购买艺术品的, 他和美国的银行也有来往, 令他把7300 万美金汇到了美国, 他用其中一些钱购买了加州豪宅。 而且他并不是用自己的名字行事的。 他用空壳公司。 他用一个空壳公司购买豪宅, 另一个在其他人名下, 用来支付豪宅生活所需的巨额账单。 再有丹·埃泰特(Dan Etete)。 当他是石油部长的时候, 他将一块现在价值超过10 亿美金油田授予了一个公司 是的,你猜怎么着, 他是那公司的幕后老板。 现在,这公司 在尼日利亚政府的协助下 现在我得小心地在这里说 — — 它与壳牌石油公司和意大利埃尼石油公司的 子公司进行了交易, 这是那里最大的两家石油公司。 因此事实是,这个腐败的引擎, 它远远不止只在这些国家存在 像赤道几内亚共和国,尼日利亚,或者土库曼斯坦。 这个引擎被驱动着, 这包括,我们的国际银行系统, 那些匿名的空壳公司, 和我们所给予的那些 大型石油、 天然气和采矿经营的隐秘的权利, 而且最重要的,还有我们的政客 他们无法兑现那些花言巧语, 也拿不出真正有意义的和系统性的行动来应对腐败。 现在让我们先看看银行。 我要告诉你们银行会收脏钱 我想你们不会觉得惊讶。 但他们也用其他具有破坏性的方式优先处理他们的利润。 例如,在马来西亚沙捞越。 现在这个区域, 只有5 %的森林是完好无损。5%啊。 怎么会这样呢? 因为一个精英和其主事者们 多年来, 一直支持伐木工业的规模化发展 来赚取数百万的美元。 所以我们派出卧底调查员 秘密地录下了与管理层成员的会议过程, 这段录影让有些人非常生气, 你可以在 youtube 上看到。 但它证明了我们长期以来的怀疑, 因为这段录影证实了这个州长, 尽管他后来加以否认, 通过他对土地和森林的许可证的控制 为自己和家人牟利。 汇丰银行(HSBC),好吧,我们知道汇丰银行 给该地区最大的几家伐木公司提供资金 对于这些公司在沙捞越和其他地方的破坏行为 汇丰银行脱不了干系。 汇丰违反了它自己的可持续发展政策, 但它赚了大约 1 亿 3000 万美金。 在我们曝光这件事不久, 就在我们今年早些时候曝光不久, 汇丰对外宣布关于这件事他们要重新审议公司政策。 这是进步吗?也许是, 但我们会对此案件 保持密切关注。 然后我们看看匿名空壳公司的问题。 我想,我们都听说他们, 我们都知道一些人和一些公司 利用空壳公司来试图逃避 对社会应尽的责任, 也就是税。 但是,通常不为人知的是 如何利用空壳公司窃取庞大的金钱 大笔大笔的金钱被洗白之后 从贫穷的国家转出。 在我们调查过的几乎每一个腐败案件中, 都有空壳公司的参与, 而且,有时我们无法找出 谁真正参与了交易。 最近世界银行有项研究 在200 例腐败案件中, 70%以上的案件 使用了匿名的空壳公司, 涉案金额总计达560 亿美元。 现在,许多这样的公司是在美国 或在英国, 在海外领土和英国皇家属地, 所以这并不仅仅是一个境外的问题, 这也发生在我们境内。 你看,空壳公司,他们是这些秘密交易的核心 这些交易可能使富裕精英们受益 但普通公民并未受益。 我们最近调查了一个引人注目的案件 是刚果民主共和国的政府 如何将一系列的宝贵的国有矿业资产 卖给了英属维尔京群岛的空壳公司。 我们与刚果的线人谈话, 搜罗公司文件和其他信息, 尝试拼凑出这笔交易的真实模样。 我们都震惊地发现,这些空壳公司 快速地将许多资产转卖给了 在伦敦上市的大型国际矿业公司 以此赚取丰厚利润。 现在,由科菲 · 安南(Kofi Annan)领导的非洲进步小组(Africa Progress Panel), 已经计算出刚果可能因这些交易损失了 超过13 亿美金。 这几乎是 该国每年的健康和教育预算总和的两倍。 那么刚果的人民,他们能把自己的钱拿回来吗? 这个问题的答案, 谁真正参与了,以及到底发生了什么, 除非我们能采取些行动,否则这一切可能都将被封存在 英属维尔京群岛注册的神秘公司那里 和其他什么地方。 那么,石油、 天然气和采矿公司又是怎样的? 好吧,也许这有点老生常谈。 在这些产业发生贪腐一点都不奇怪。 到处都有贪腐,那么为什么要关注这些产业? 因为这里涉及很多利益。 2011 年,在非洲、 亚洲和拉丁美洲 天然资源的出口与援助资金的比例相差极为悬殊 几乎是19:1。 这严重损害了很多学校,大学, 医院和创业公司的利益, 他们根本得不到实际的资金支持而且也永远得不到 因为那些支援的经费已经被轻而易举地盗走了。 现在让我们回到石油和矿业公司, 让我们重新谈谈丹·埃泰特和那10 亿美金的交易。 现在请原谅我,我要照着纸条念, 因为这是一个现场的演说,我们的律师 查阅过相关的法律条文 所以他们希望我不要有任何口误。 现在,表面上,这笔交易看来很简单。 壳牌和埃尼集团的子公司 付钱给尼日利亚政府购买了那块油田。 尼日利亚政府将收到的钱 以完全一样的金额,以美元的方式转给了 一个空壳公司的一个专用帐户 这公司背后的老板是埃泰特。 对这个被定罪的洗钱犯来说这笔交易可真不赖啊。 但现在的问题是 经过数月的挖掘 和对数百页法庭文件的阅读 我们发现了证据, 事实上,壳牌公司和埃尼集团早就知道这些资金 将被转到那个空壳公司, 坦白说,很难相信他们不知道 他们是真得在和谁做交易。 而现在,不应该花费种种的努力 去找出这些交易的金钱去哪儿了。 我的意思是,这些都是国有资产。 他们本应该用于造福 这个国家的人民。 但在一些国家、 公民和记者 那些想曝光这些事情的人们 却被骚扰和逮捕 还有一些人甚至在冒生命危险去揭露真相。 最后,有一些人他们相信 腐败是不可避免的。 他们认为这就是做生意的一种方式。 太复杂也太难改变了。 所以,后果是什么?我们只能接受它。 但作为一个活动者和调查员, 我有不同的看法, 因为我见过当一个想法汇聚了力量之后 会发生什么。 举例来说,在石油和采矿行业, 现在正开始实行 一个真正的全球的透明标准, 它可以解决这些问题。 在1999 年,当“全球见证”致电石油公司让他们 在交易付款实行透明化时, 好吧,有些人嘲笑我们 认为这是个极其天真的小点子。 但是,来自世界各地的 数以百计的公民社团集合起来 争取交易透明化, 现在它已经变成规范和法律了。 全球的石油和矿业公司的 三分之二的交易 现在都在接受交易透明化法规的规范。三分之二啊。 所以,改变正在发生。 这就是进步。 但我们还远远没有达到目标。 因为它贪腐不是 只在那儿的某个地方发生,不是吗? 在全球化的世界中, 贪腐是一个真正的全球化的生意, 它需要全球性的解决方案, 需要作为全球公民的我们,我们所有人 去支持和推动,就在这里。 谢谢。 (掌声)