Washington, DC - For much of the Americas, corruption remains an essential rule of law challenge and perennial source of citizen discontent, hampering development, undermining public trust in government, and even, in the most egregious cases, costing lives. High-profile grand corruption scandals in recent years prompted heightened citizen demands for transparency and accountability. In at least some cases, judicial and political systems began to respond to these demands, and in several countries citizens elected presidents on the promise that they would root out graft. Still, key questions remain. Why have some countries prosecuted corruption more effectively than others? What are the vulnerabilities that made grand corruption schemes like Odebrecht possible? And what can governments do to prevent the next scandal?

Against this backdrop, the Inter-American Dialogue’s Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) convened in 2019 a series of high-level discussions to analyze the hemisphere's efforts to deepen transparency and combat corruption. The Symposia Series on “Anticorruption, Transparency and Integrity in the Americas” brought together preeminent regional experts and policymakers to assess recent progress, analyze lessons learned, and identify pending challenges in the areas of criminal prosecution, political finance, and political reform.

A new report from the IDB and the Dialogue distills essential conclusions and recommendations from the Symposia Series, offering unique insights and fresh takeaways from the corruption cases and controversies that dominated headlines in recent years. 

The full videos, summaries and written speaker presentations from the Symposia Series are available online here.