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)
當我們談到貪腐 有幾種典型的人物會出現在我們腦海 例如前蘇聯狂人 薩帕爾穆拉特•尼亞佐夫(Saparmurat Niyazov) 就是其中之一 直到 2006 年過世前 他是土庫曼最有權力的領導人 土庫曼位於中亞,這個國家富含天然氣 他很愛發佈總統詔令 其中之一是把月份名稱改掉 甚至以他自己和他母親的名字取代 他花了數百萬元 建立了奇異的個人崇拜 而他引以為豪的是給自己塑了 一座四十呎高的鍍金雕像 這雕像傲氣地聳立在首都的中央廣場上 並隨著太陽而轉動 這傢伙有點異常 而現在要提到的算是老生常談 可以稱他為非洲的獨裁者、部長或是官員 特奧多羅•奧比昂 (Teodorín Obiang) 他的父親當了一輩子的赤道幾內亞總統 這個西非國家從 1990 年代起 出口了價值數十億元的原油 但卻存在著驚世駭俗的迫害人權的記錄 這國家裡絕大多數的人民 都活在極度悲慘的貧困之中 但國家的人均收入 卻和葡萄牙差不多 這位奧比昂二世 在加州馬利布給自己 買了棟三千萬美金的豪宅 我曾經站在那豪宅前門 可說觸目所及極盡豪奢 他買了價值一千八百萬歐元的藝術收藏 這些收藏以前是屬於 時尚設計師伊夫•聖羅蘭 (YSL) 還有各式各樣的高級跑車 有些要價一百萬美金一台 喔,當然他也有一架灣流噴射機 但你要知道 直到現在,他的官方月薪 還不到 7,000 美金 再來我們談到丹•埃泰特(Dan Etete) 他是奈及利亞前石油部長 隸屬於總統阿巴察 (Abacha) 他同樣被認定是洗黑錢的人物 我們已經花了很多的時間 針對十億美元進行追查 沒錯,是十億美元 這是在石油交易中他所牽涉的金額 而調查結果讓我們非常震驚 這我們晚點再來談 所以我們可以輕易的推論 貪腐在遙遠的那邊發生著 被一些貪婪的獨裁者 以及對國家沒有益處的個人所把持 於此,對我們個人而言,似乎是少有所知 且覺得沒什麼關聯 好像對我們的生活也沒什麼影響 但這些事情真的只會發生在別的地方嗎? 在我 22 歲時,我很幸運 我畢業後的第一份工作 就是調查非洲象牙的非法交易 那正是我和貪腐產生關聯的開始 1993 年,我和兩個朋友,也是同事 Simon Taylor 和 Patrick Alley 我們成立了一個名為"全球見證" (Global Witness) 的組織 我們的第一個行動就是調查非法伐木 在柬埔寨戰爭資金裡所扮演的角色 過了幾年, 1997 年 我在安哥拉秘密調查血鑽石的議題 也許你看過這部好萊塢電影 "血鑽石" (Blood Diamond) 李奧納多·狄卡皮歐 主演的 部分劇情是根據我們的調查而來 在盧安達,到處都是地雷的受害者 他們在街上掙扎著求生存 戰爭孤兒在街邊的陰溝裡生活 而人數極少的闊綽菁英 談論的盡是去巴西和葡萄牙的血拼之旅 那真是個有點瘋狂的地方 當我坐在相當悶熱的旅館房間時 覺得自己快撐不下去了 但不是因為血鑽石的緣故 是因為我對許多當地人進行演說 而他們談到了另一個不同的問題是: 在這種全球層級的大規模貪腐網絡中 與石油相關的數百萬美金可以消失 而像我們這麼小的組織 不過才幾個成員 卻想要試著逮到那些人 無異是個巨大的挑戰 而在這些年裡 從我們所有的行動和追查中 我不斷的看到,是什麼 讓貪腐得以在全球級的規模中發生 要知道這不僅僅是貪婪或是濫用權力 或用含混不清的 "無能治理" 可以解釋 我的意思是,沒錯,這些全都是原因 但貪腐能發生 是因為全球級主事者的行為 所以回到之前我提過的那些人 他們都是我們調查過的人 他們都不可能只靠自己就做出那些事情來 就以奧比昂二世來說 如果沒人幫忙,他不可能 擁有那些高級藝術品和豪宅 他和世界級的銀行打交道 他在巴黎一家銀行 為自己掌控的公司開設帳戶 其中一個帳戶就是用來買藝術品 而美國的銀行 則讓七千三百萬美金流入美國 這筆資金一部分去買了加州的豪宅 當然他也沒用自己的名義去做這些事 他利用一些空殼公司 其中一家空殼公司買不動產 而另一個也是在別人名下的空殼公司 則支付維持這個物業的龐大費用 再來看 丹•埃泰特 當他是石油部長的時候 把一處價值超過十億美金 的油區贈與一間公司 你可以猜猜是怎麼回事 他自己就是那公司的幕後老闆 現在要講到的是最近的交易 在奈及利亞政府大方的幫忙下 我對於現在要說出的話得要非常小心 和 Shell 和 義大利 Eni 的子公司合作 這是兩家最大的石油公司 所以事實上,這是否才是貪腐的動力 這問題不光發生在那些海外國家 例如:赤道幾內亞、奈及利亞或土庫曼 驅動的動力 來自國際銀行組織 來自這些匿名的空殼公司 也來自我們賦予這些大型的石油 天然氣和礦產開採行動隱匿的權利 而最重要的,是來自政客的失職 無能實現他們的花言巧語 做些真正有意義的事 且有系統的抓出這些爛帳 現在我們先談銀行問題 當我告訴你們銀行收黑錢時 我想你們不會覺得驚訝 但他們的獲利卻也造成破壞 以馬來西亞的砂勞越為例 現在這個區域只剩下 5% 的森林未經開發 只剩下 5% 而已 這是怎麼一回事? 就因為一個所謂菁英和主事者們 多年來 藉由支援企業規模的大量伐木 賺進了數百萬美元 所以我們派出一個秘密調查員 錄下管理階層的的會議過程 這段影片讓某些人非常生氣 你可以在 YouTube 上找到這影片 但這證實了我們長久以來的懷疑 因為影片中顯示出這個州長 儘管他後來否認了 他利用掌控土地和森林許可證的職權 讓他自己和家族獲利 同時還有匯豐銀行 (HSBC) 就我們所知,匯豐資助 當地幾家最大的伐木公司 對於這些發生在砂勞越 和其他地方的破壞行為 他們也要負一部分責任 匯豐在這過程中違反了他們永續經營的方針 但從中賺了大約一億三千萬美金 當我們揭露這個事實之後不久 在今年稍早前揭露之後不久 匯豐宣布要以公司政策標準重審相關事宜 這算是進步嗎? 也許是 但我們還是會持續的關注 這個議題 再來是匿名空殼公司的問題 我想我們都聽過這樣的公司 也知道有些人、有些公司 經常利用空殼公司 來規避他們對社會應盡的責任 也就是納稅 但我們通常不知道的 空殼公司可以用來竊取數字龐大的金錢 把大筆大筆的金錢 從貧困的國家中洗白轉出 在每個我們追查的貪腐事件中 都出現了空殼公司 有時真的無法查出 到底有哪些人牽涉其中 最近世界銀行有份研究中指出 檢視 200 件貪腐案件後 發現其中有 70% 的案例 就是使用匿名的空殼公司 牽涉的金額幾乎高達五百六十億美金 現在有許多空殼公司設在美國 或者是英國 在境外領土或是英國皇家屬地 所以這不是與我們無關的境外問題 這已經發生在我們境內 要知道,這些空殼公司是秘密交易的核心 也許少數富有的菁英份子 可以從中得到好處 但一般平民是無從獲益的 最近我們調查了一個引人注目的案件 調查目標是剛果政府 如何把一系列極有價值的公家礦區賣出 賣給一間在英屬維京群島註冊的空殼公司 於是我們找了剛果的線人 搜查了所有公司文件和其他資訊 試著拼湊出這個交易的真實面貌 而後我們警覺到 這些空殼公司將資產快速地轉賣給 設立於倫敦的大型國際採礦公司 賺進了高額的利潤 科菲•安南(Kofi Annan) 領導的非洲發展小組 (Africa Progress Panel) 已經估算出剛果在這些交易中的損失 已經高於十三億美金 這金額 幾乎是剛果整年度健康和教育預算總合的兩倍 而剛果人民有可能拿回他們的錢嗎? 這問題的答案 和誰真正牽涉其中、以及事件的真相 都可能永不見天日 如果我們不針對這些註冊在英屬維京群島 或其他地方的空殼公司採取行動的話 至於那些石油、天然氣和礦產公司呢? 好吧,這是有點老生常談 在這些產業發生貪腐並不意外 到處都有貪腐,為什麼要特別關注這些產業? 這是因為其中牽涉的利益太大 2011 年,在非洲、亞洲和拉丁美洲 天然資源的輸出和援助資金的比例相差甚鉅 大約是 19:1 這意味許多的學校、大學 醫院和企業創業的營運 都無法實現,也可能永遠沒有機會實現 因為相關經費已經被竊取 現在回來談石油和採礦公司 回到 丹•埃泰特 和他十億美金的交易 現在請原諒我將要照著小抄唸 因為這是非常即時的現場演說 我們的律師查閱過一些相關條文 所以他們希望我不要有任何口誤 現在,表面上這些交易看來都很單純 Shell 和 Eni 的子公司 付錢向奈及利亞政府買那個區塊 奈及利亞政府把收到的每一分錢 完全一樣的數字,都轉出去 轉給一個指定給空殼公司的帳號 空殼公司背後的老闆是 Etete 這個被定罪的洗錢犯還真是賺翻了 但現在的問題是 經過這幾個月的探查詢訪 以及研究數百頁法庭文件後 我們找到了證據 發現 Shell 和 Eni 知道 這些金錢會被轉到空殼公司 而且坦白說,很難相信他們不知道 到底是跟什麼樣的人達成這筆交易 而現在不應該花這些功夫 去追查這些錢跑到哪去 我認為 這些都是國家的資產 本來應該用來讓人民受益 但在一些國家裡 公民和記者如果想要揭露這些事 通常不是遭到恐嚇就是遭到逮捕 甚至要以生命為賭注去揭發 而最終,有些人深信 貪腐是無可避免 他們認為這就是做生意的方式 太複雜也太難去改變 所以怎麼辦呢? 我們就只能接受 但身為一個活動者和調查員 我有著不同的觀點 因為我曾見證過 當一個理念凝聚了氣勢之後發生的事 以石油和開礦的產業區塊為例 現在正開始進行 全球性透明化的法規 這種法規可以抓出一些弊端 在 1999 年 "全球見證" 要求石油公司支付交易透明的費用時 有些人嘲笑我們 認為這是一個極為天真的小念頭 但之後 世界各地數以百計的公民團體加入 一起聲援交易透明化 如今這已經變成規範與法律了 現在全世界有三分之二的 石油和礦產公司受到交易透明法的規範 三分之二 改變正在產生 這是個進展 但距離我們的目標還很遠 因為這真的不是遠在他方的貪腐 不是嗎? 在全球化的世界裡 貪腐是全球化的商業行為 也需要以全球角度去解決 需要我們全體的支援和推動 這是我們身為全球公民的責任 謝謝你們 (掌聲)