Corruption Archive

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about corruption in various countries around the world. On Jan. 16, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales reshuffled his Cabinet, replacing his ministers of the economy, the environment and social development. Morales, who is halfway through his four-year term, has been plagued by his own corruption scandals after running on a campaign to clean up Guatemala, where graft is rampant. He has an approval rating of just 19 percent, according to a recent poll. In an email interview, Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Arizona, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about corruption in various countries around the world. On Jan. 8, a major corruption trial began in Vietnam that could result in the first-ever conviction of a former member of the powerful Politburo of the Communist Party, Dinh La Thang. The trial is part of a wider crackdown on corruption that has swept up nearly two dozen former officials at Vietnam’s state energy company, PetroVietnam, among other state-owned enterprises. In an email interview, Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia, discusses […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—It was one of the biggest corporate corruption scandals in history, and its web of connections still hasn’t been fully untangled across Latin America. Having paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in political bribes in order to secure lucrative contracts at home and abroad, the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht continues to upend politics, lately in Ecuador and Peru. But things are picking up in Colombia, too. In August, Colombia’s Supreme Court called on President Juan Manuel Santos and several former ministers to testify about Odebrecht bribes to the Colombian government that the attorney general’s office says exceed $27 […]