The COVID-19 crisis has significantly affected the role and expectations of defence and security forces, and shifted the trajectory of key global defence and security trends while simultaneously contributing to the emergence of new trends within the defence and security sector. Transparency International’s Defence and Security programme has worked to identify these trends as they […]
Corruption is widely recognized as one the major stumbling blocks in US government efforts to improve the capacity of foreign defense forces to address shared international security threats over the past 15 years. This report assesses the current state of US arms export controls to identify and curb corruption in US arms sales. It first […]
Defence industry players, elected officials, the defence bureaucracy, and governments in the Middle East are intertwined and serve one another’s interest, often at the expense of US foreign policy outcomes. These mutually-beneficial relationships have contributed to a vicious cycle of conflict and human rights abuses across the Middle East and North Africa, including increased exports […]
Ukraine’s defence sector scored a ‘D’ in the 2015 edition of Transparency International’s Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index (GI); signifying low transparency and a ‘high’ risk of corruption. Defence procurement scored even lower and was highlighted as the most opaque and corruption-prone area in the defence sector. To help improve this, NAKO has studied the phenomenon […]
The global defence sector is both enormous and highly vulnerable to corruption. Over the last decade, both exporting governments and industry players have taken important steps to prevent corruption, but despite the many advances in law and compliance, corruption in the international arms trade persists. More needs to be done to tackle this issue and […]
This evaluation is based on a review of 8 indicators in Transparency International’s (TI) unique dataset, the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index, analysing procurement control mechanisms, policies and procedures from 20 European government defence ministries collected during 2014 and 2015. The paper identifies positive and negative practices across countries, as well as the overarching trends analysed […]
Agents have played a key role in defence procurement for decades and many cases of procurement corruption have involved agents. They are widely recognised as one of the highest risk factors for corruption across the sector but, despite recent changes to the regulatory environment, the risks are as difficult to manage as ever.
The Defence Companies Anti-Corruption Index 2015 measures the transparency and quality of ethics and anti-corruption programmes of 163 defence companies from 47 countries.
How can governments protect themselves from corruption in the contracting process, without becoming overburdened by long and detailed legal processes? This report offers a new option: suspension and debarment systems. Suspension and debarment systems protect governments from engaging doing business with contractors who pose a business risk by preventing them from participating in government contracts […]
Full and open competition is one tool for governments to help ensure best value for money. Yet previous studies highlight that the defence sector is poor in this respect. This report explores trends in the award of non-competitive or single-source contracts in defence.
Single-source, or non-competitive, defence procurement is a widespread phenomenon that is prevalent both in devel- oping countries and in advanced arms exporting countries. The usual competitive bidding process – which assists in both value-for-money evaluation and in lowering corruption risk – is used much less often than expected in defence procurement. Whilst there can be […]
Corruption within defence procurement can have a detrimental impact on security, operational effectiveness, and public trust. Despite defence procurement being a key area of focus in anti-corruption measures in many countries, there remains a serious lack of transparency. In this article for Getting the Deal Through – Public Procurement 2014, Tehmina Abbas summarises Transparency International’s […]