Since 2014, after the Maidan, Ukraine has been pushed, by international donors, as well as moving forward as a country, due to the goals of Maidan, to move on from the corrupt governments of the past. On February 20, the GRECO, Fourth Round Evaluation  was released and it was a continuing reassuring move forward.

During the past two weeks, there has been growing horror as the Trump administration makes changes to its approach to corruption. We’ve noted that there has been a significant movement to lessen the impact of the FCPA and anti-kleptocracy approaches.

Asset declarations are essentially a hide and seek or a cache-cache game with governmental officials and government (better known as the people).  An article about Ghana’s asset declaration system is a reminder of how important this concept is to all of us.

Today we will see if the American rule of law can stand up to America’s new Department of Justice. The issue in a nutshell is tied to a case that has of yet has not been tried – the corruption case of the New York City mayor Eric Adams.

On February 14, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Fifth Evaluation GRECO Report was published. As we noted last week, GRECO also published Bulgaria’s evaluation report (See BAJIMC Bulgaria review). Similar to the Bulgaria situation there is both good and bad. If it is similar, why are we looking at it today?

This week  an urgent fact-finding delegation to assess whether Hungary is upholding it’s rule of law structure  has been dispatched from the European Parliament. This is important as Hungary has been pushing the edges of its EU membership.

Up to now the US has been able to clearly say that we do not embrace or have kleptocrats. During my career, having addressed kleptocracy worldwide, working with governments as they attempt to prevent such actors and ensure that the laws regarding conflicts of interest and transparency are there, I have been shocked how quickly we have our own kleptocrats.

Every year, since 1995, the Corruption Perception Index, by Transparency International, has been developed and shared worldwide. The anti-corruption community, mainly governments, donors and implementers of donor projects, wait for it with great interest.  This year is no different and it is grimmer than it’s been over the past few years.

On February 5, we learned that the new US Attorney General made significant changes to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) FCPA approach as well as to their anti-kleptocratic measures.

On February 7 the Council of Europe released the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) first report assessing Bulgaria’s compliance with its recommendations to prevent corruption and promote integrity in central government and law enforcement agencies, addressed to Bulgaria in 2022.