Build cultures of integrity: Anti-corruption expert shares what's needed most

Delia Ferreira Rubio, Former Chair,Transparency International So if you know who is paying for the campaign, you can understand why a president or a governor decided this and not the other way.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's toughest challenges. Today we talk to Delia Ferreira Rubio, of Transparency International and Ahead of International Anti-Corruption Day. She will tell us what's needed to fight abuses of power and come out on top.

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I'm Linda Lacina with the World Economic Forum. And this is Meet the Leader.

Delia Ferreira Rubio What we see is that this space for civil society is continuously being attacked. It is a sign of our effectiveness.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Corruption isn't just the stuff of suspenseful movies. It is a force that fuels crime and risk power and resources from the world's most vulnerable.

For 30 years, global civil society organisation Transparency International has fought just that: crimes, misdealings, abuses of power -- all through a range of creative tools, including a special Corruption Perceptions index that ranks the cleanest and the most corrupt nations in the world.

Transparency International is currently the leading anti-corruption organisation in the world and has chapters in more than 100 countries.

I had the chance to chat with the organisation's former chair (2017-2023), Delia Ferreira Rubio at the Annual Meeting in Davos last January. She shared what any leader must understand about building organisations based on integrity.

She also shared how her group is making change happen, including a special school that helps youth learn how to detect and better root out corruption.

She'll tell us all about that and what she's focussed on now. The first to get us started with an explanation how corruption undermines democracies.

Delia Ferreira Rubio We think that we have to stress the defence of democratic values and the protection of civic space. What we are seeing around the world is that democracy is in decline under the attack of authoritarian regimes, kleptocrats. And corruption has to do with that. So we have to fight corruption to defend democratic values.

And in order to fight corruption, we need democracy to be strong because we count on the freedoms that we need -- the access to information. In order to fight effectively against corruption, you need accountability mechanisms to be in place. So it's a cycle that works.

A strong democracy, better anti-corruption work, more integrity, better democracy. And the other way, of course, too because when we have authoritarian regimes, we have more corruption with more corruption, we have more authoritarianism in the world. So it's a kind of spiral that we are seeing.

So we decided we will focus on defending democratic values and protecting civic space. And that's not only for Transparency International, and we have just been with Professor Schwab with the civil society community, who is invited to the WEF. So it's not only governments and business. And it is important for people to know that civil society is here [Annual Meeting 2023] and the WEF has always cherisedh that participation, and we are very grateful for that.

What we see is that this space for civil society is continuously being attacked. And I always say that it is a sign of our effectiveness. If civil society was not important and was not effective at all, no governments would try to stop us. They are trying to stop us to curtail our liberty or freedom to act precisely because we are getting closer to the people and we are being more effective demanding transparency, respect of human rights, accountability, the proper use of new technologies with a human-centred approach on protecting the basic human rights and not just thinking that technology is a magic solution for everything, not taking care of the risks.

So we are effective raising those points in the agenda. And that's why governments are worried about us and try to suspend our work or to create limitations and restrictions. And we have to protect that space for the sake of humanity, I would say, for all kinds of civil society, serious organisations.

And also interfering with anti-corruption is political integrity. We think that money in politics is a very complicated and dangerous relationship that evolves in conflicts of interests, undue interest, lack of accountability or the corruption of enforcement authorities. So we need to emphasise the need for integrity in the political arena in general, not just the electoral campaigns, which are a very important topic in terms of elections -- integrity and also political finance, for instance.

Who is behind the campaigns? Because that's not only interesting during the campaign in order to know who is financing, but also it is important to see who is behind because that would determine public policy's decisions. So if you know who is paying the campaign, you can understand why a president or a governor decided this and not the other way. And many times this lack of political integrity is reflected in the kind of -- we are paying for favours and the citizens have the right to know. So that's why we are working also on political integrity.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader You were talking about how anti-corruption measures can preserve democracy. And there was an example on your blog that talked about Ukraine. And I wonder if you might be able to kind of give us a real life example of sort of like how this walks and talks and what the cause and effect is.

Delia Ferreira Rubio Ukraine is a very dear example for us because we have a chapter there. It was created around the Revolution of Dignity 2014, very important for democracy. When [Victor Yanukovych] was ousted and a group of people created our chapter there. And they are still working on anti-corruption today in a very complicated at-war situation. If you follow them, they are, for instance, today in this week, they are monitoring how the asset declaration of members of parliaments are being monitored and disclosed. And they are fighting a war in that country. But our team is still working on anti-corruption and transparency.

They help to create this democratic atmosphere and institutional infrastructure. I would say after the revolution, for instance, they were part of the team that created a digital tool that has been receiving awards all around the world, which is ProZorro e-procurement tool, which means that all public procurement is done in a digitalised absolute transparently to the whole society, and that guarantees that resources are properly yours and that the competition is in a level playing field and no undue influence is done there in the procurement.

Which is a very important part of our work around the world, because you imagine the enormous public resources that are used to hire everything the state needs supposedly to respond to social needs and sometimes to fill the pockets of some corrupt guys. So that's an important point of our work. And they created this kind of tools.

They also work in the creation of the anti-corruption bodies in the country. There were no anti-corruption court or no anti-corruption agencies. And the chapter that created these organisations together with the institutional powers that now that they are in place, they monitor what these anti-corruption bodies are doing in the country to guarantee that they are properly enforcing the rules and and doing the work they have to. And this has been really key in the strengthening of the democratic institutions in Ukraine.

And this success, I would say not only for our chapter, but for this whole Ukrainian citizenship. Some experts say that it was one of the reasons for the aggression, war against Ukraine because having a strong democracy in the region was not very well received in terms of the Russian government, which is characterised by autocratic regime and kleptocratic regimes also. So, some experts in foreign relations says, look, the strengthening of the democracy in Ukraine was one of the problems that created this war.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Transparency International has a special school, the School for Integrity, for future leaders. Can you tell me about this training, how it got started and why?

Delia Ferreira Rubio Well, it's not one school. It was created in Lithuania by our chapter around 12 years ago. And then it started reproducing in other chapters for the time being there are more than 60 chapters, which mean countries have this kind of schools for integrity with different kinds of programs and for different kinds of audiences, some working with youth in particular, others working for professionals or public officials.

And the idea is to train them in how to prevent corruption, how to use the tools in order to detect corruption, how to work to generate awareness in the population, and also to empower citizens to actively participate in the fight against corruption. And we have schools from Fiji to Jordan, from Colombia to Turkey. So we have a lot of different examples of these kind of programs.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader What sorts of things do they learn in these trainings.

Delia Ferreira Rubio In order to fight corruption, you need to know the institutional tools that are available or that you have to work for them to be created in the country.

But apart from that, you have to understand the conditions that facilitate corruption, because corruption is a cycle. I call it the SHE cycle -- not nothing to do with gender -- but Steal Hide and Enjoy the profits of corruption. And you have to tackle exactly these points. You have to prevent the stealing of public money. You have to guarantee that no one is there to facilitate that you hide the profits of corruption. And that has to do with the gatekeepers that work as enablers of corruption. And also, you have to guarantee that there will be consequences. So it's not that you will enjoy the money or the assets that you have stolen. There will be consequences for corruption. So in order to tackle this cycle, you can use different approaches. And that's what we teach in this kind of programs.

Of course, when you have youth programs, the use of new technologies, social media and all that is more important because particularly the audience is used to these kind of tools to communicate and generate awareness. But you change from country to country. And also the particular situation of the country or the particular interests that the country had or the problems that the country has.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader What sort of challenges does this prepare them for? What would might they face that they're like, okay, now I know what to do. I've got a framework.

Delia Ferreira Rubio It depends on where these people work in the social sphere. If you are a public official and you go to this kind of training, we expect them to be much more aware and alert in front of some kind of instances of corruption or to be ready to stop and reflect before engaging with some people or some companies or some actions, let's say. So it depends on your position.

In some schools of these countries I have been teaching, I met with people that work in the private sector as managers or things like that. So in that sense, what they learn is that corruption is we say like a tango, you need to to dance. And in corruption you need to it's a relationship. What I learned is that these private sector attendees were very much interested in creating the integrity culture in their organisations, which is really central in the private sector. It's not enough to work towards compliance.

Compliance was very important -- 20 years ago, 15 years. That was their war of the moment. But what I think is that we have to go from compliance to integrity. And that means that you have to create a culture of integrity. And it's not just the tone at the top or the ethics code. You need to work really in that and to make the whole system in the company to work towards integrity.

For instance, there are some companies that have all their books in place, so you have the code for these, the code for that. But then the incentive system of the company -- so who will get an extra money at the end of the year -- has nothing to do with behaving like the code say. This kind of thing has to be arranged in a company. If you really have an integrity culture, so everybody working for transparency and respecting human rights and the climate and all that and the social responsibility of the company.

But I think the companies have not only social responsibility, but really civic responsibility. Today, in our world that goes hand in hand with these stakeholders approach that this forum is working very hard on and participation of everybody in the fate of the whole society, not just making business for the business sake, but business as part of society.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader There's a number of crises that are happening simultaneously, as we know from the Global Risk Report. You've got geopolitical conflict, the energy crisis, the climate crisis. You know, what is the role of leaders during such a time of crisis?

Delia Ferreira Rubio The report says very clearly that we have intertwined crises. We have to see them holistically. If we want to solve them. And corruption is at the core of all the failures that we have faced as society, the small ones and the big ones, the war, the conflict, of course, the attacks on human rights. But for instance, if you think about the failures in the Bangladesh textile factories. Or the Beirut blast some years ago. Or the train crash in Argentina some years ago.

The common factor there is that there was corruption, there was someone signing certificates of "this is in good state" in exchange of some money not controlling what should be controlled. And then the things happen.

And the other factor is that what was the stake was human lives, because many people died in this kind of situations. So corruption is so serious that it can not only hurt the possibility of a future or equality. or Inclusiveness in society. Corruption kills. So you have really to be aware of these risks and to work as a leader against corruption, not just for the sake of access to information or things like that, because you have to defend human rights and the possibility for people to develop, to have a future, to live in a clean atmosphere. And if we talk about climate change, of course, corruption is at the core of climate finance nowadays. So if we really want to achieve the SDGs of the agenda 2030, we have to work all together in SDG 16, which is the anti-corruption one, the rule of law. That's essential. If we don't stop corruption, we will not be able to achieve the other gender equality, clean water, etc.. Inclusive societies. How are we going to do that if we don't tackle corruption first?

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader With all of these different crises, what is the number one thing that leaders should be thinking to help them prioritise? You know, what should they be asking themselves? Or, you know, what's their what's their their thing?

Delia Ferreira Rubio What's the purpose of your position as president of a country, as minister, as civil society leaders, as the CEO of the company? What's the purpose you are serving?And I think there are two things that I can share. Collective action. But in order to be effective in collective action, we need dialogue between the different parts of society and different leaders. But we need to rebuild trust.

That's essential. That's the very essential that we need in order to have cooperation in this kind of world with intertwined crises and very politicised in some countries, fragmentation and polarisation. We are divided as citizens and as persons, we are concentrated in balance. Social media has lots to do with that and the fact is that we are seeing -- and we are seeing the reports -- used to be lack of trust only in political leaders and political parties. But nowadays lack of trust is affecting every single sector in society. If we don't rebuild trust, it will be very difficult to be effective in collective action. And we need collective action because the crises are intertwined, so we cannot fight alone.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader That was Delia Ferreira Rubio.

Thanks so much to her and thanks so much to you for listening. A transcript of this episode and my colleague's episodes of Radio, Davos and the Book Club podcast are available at Wef.ch/Podcasts. This episode of Meet the Leader was presented and produced by me with Jere Johansson and Taz Keller handling edits and Gareth Nolan driving studio production.

That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina with the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.