In this article, Gabriel Neely-Streit interviews Professor Jason Sharman, of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. His recent work has been instrumental in exposing widespread corruption among Papua New Guinea (PNG) government officials. Millions of dollars, Sharman has found, are being siphoned from PNG government accounts into private bank accounts and investments in Australia, many of which belong to government officials. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

Sharman and Sam Koim, Papua New Guinea’s Anti-Corruption task-force coordinator, continue to work to expose both these corrupt PNG officials and actions by Australian banks and government agencies that allow money laundering to continue. More broadly, Sharman is one of the world’s foremost scholars on shell companies and international money laundering, issues with increasingly important implications for global poverty and governance in virtually all states. Here, he discusses his research on PNG corruption, Australian money laundering and international shell companies, and his efforts to bring his findings to a public audience.

GNS -How did you first get started studying corruption and the shadow economy? What motivated you to focus on money laundering?

JS- I first developed an interest in tax havens because in studying international politics I was interested in how small, weak countries (most tax havens are small places) relate to big, powerful ones. Tax havens led to an interest in money laundering as the two are commonly associated in policy pronouncements and the media, though the partial evidence we have actually suggests that most laundering takes place in big, rich countries.

-How did you become aware of Papua New Guinea’s money laundering issues? How did you get involved with Sam Koim and Taskforce Sweep?

I was alerted to the problem of corruption proceeds from PNG being laundered in Australia by people who did the international assessment of PNG’s financial system. When I first did interviews with people in the Australian government they recommended I get in touch with Sam Koim, and so I flew him over to a workshop in Brisbane in October 2012, we have stayed in touch since.

-How much of PNG budget siphoning/ money laundering is being done by government officials?

The local police estimates that something like 40% of the total PNG budget is stolen by politicians and bureaucrats in the government.

-How do you go about gathering statistics on money laundering and other under-the-table financial practices? I know that to research corporate shell companies you had to actually create some yourself…

In a smaller project I bought some shell companies from Nevada, England the Seychelles as well as opening bank accounts in the US, Cyprus and Somalia. Later with my co-authors Mike Findley and Dan Nielson we impersonated a range of high- and low-risk individuals and made over 7,000 email solicitations to firms in 180 countries for exactly the sort of untraceable shell companies that are prohibited by international law. The results are available at http://www.globalshellgames.com.

-In which ways are Australian banks complicit in PNG money laundering? Are they doing due diligence to ensure that customers with PNG ties are banking legitimate money? What should they be doing?

The Australian banks have improved their procedures for screening out corruption funds from PNG, though there are still problems. The real problem is the Australian government, which continues to turn a blind eye to these flows of dirty money.

-Your work with PNG has gained a fair amount of media attention in Australia. How did you and your partner bring your findings to the media/ general public? Why did you feel it was important to do so?

Crime is a media-worthy story. When it comes to corruption, the Australian government has no interest in taking action unless they are embarrassed in the media first. After taking no action for years there was a public direction to the head of the Australian Federal Police to look into the problem less than 24 hours after the main TV program aired. Cause and effect.

-In what sorts of ways does presenting your findings to the media differ from presenting in an academic journal/at a conference?

Predictably, the media has no interest in method and theory, so all this had to go. The media does have an interest in hurting people and institutions, which can be turned to advantage, e.g. in pressuring the government.

– Did you have to take precautions against any sort of backlash by the PNG government, for example being sued by officials who were implicated? Did you feel threatened at any point during your research/presentation of your findings? What has the fallout been?

The Australian government has now cut off my access to some key officials, which is annoying, and tried to prevent people in the PNG government talking to me, unsuccessfully. Getting sued for libel/defamation is certainly a worry, I’ve taken precautions but the risk remains. People in PNG tackling this problem certainly face much bigger dangers, including assassination.

-What’s next for the PNG case? Has Koim made any prosecutions? Have Australian banks/government institutions stepped up their vigilance?

Koim has made good progress is getting a lot of publicity, political pressure, arrests and has also got a lot of money back, but the problem is huge. He is also in a great deal of danger personally.

-How important is stopping these corrupt financial outflows to PNG’s stability? How serious are PNG’s financial and humanitarian issues?

Having 40% of your budget stolen is a serious problem, PNG seems to be a classic case of the resource curse, with great wealth but also very large sections of the population living in poverty. Elsewhere this type of problem has led to serial political instability and even state collapse.

-What advice do you have for academics who want to take a more active role in fighting corruption?

Don’t expect any help from local or foreign governments, though individual officials are often incredibly helpful, and NGOs and the media are also crucial.

In this latest Impact Interview, Elaine Kellman speaks with Robtel Neajai Pailey, a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Ph.D. Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, who is battling corruption in Liberia. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

While still a doctoral student, Robtel Neajai Pailey has emerged as a globally influential voice on poverty, corruption and related issues. In a career that already spans work as a practitioner, journalist, government staff member and academic, she has published articles or comment pieces in The New York Times, Africa Today, The Guardian and many other outlets. She has also covered news out of Africa as an assistant editor of the Washington Informer Newspaper, worked in capacity building for the Foundation for International Dignity (a refugee rights organisation), taught and developed curriculum at the Robben Island Musem in Cape Town, South Africa and the Buduburam Refugee Camp School in Ghana, and has collaborated with or consulted for a range of NGOs and philanthropic agencies.

It was while working as a government aide in Liberia that Pailey became aware of allegations that Liberia’s government-administered scholarships were being sold to the highest bidder and / or given to relatives of government officials. Outraged, she formulated a transparent system of awarding scholarships to the best applicants, which has now been fully implemented by the Liberian government.

In addition, Pailey has devised and written a children’s book, Gbagba which was published by www.onemoorebook.com in 2013. Exploring issues of integrity, accountability and corruption, Gbagba (loosely translated in the Bassa language as ‘trickery’) follows a few days in the life of Liberian twins, Sundaymah and Sundaygar, who leave their hometown of Buchanan to visit their aunt in Monrovia, facing tough decisions and challenges along the way.

Last year, Pailey’s research on Liberia and her work to tackle corruption was formally recognised, as she was selected as one of the most influential foreign policy leaders under the age of 33 by global affairs magazine Diplomatic Courier and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. Pailey was recognized in this list as a “shaper”: that is, someone who changes the public discourse on an aspect of foreign policy or raises awareness of a critical issue.

Here, Pailey discusses with ASAP the challenges and rewards of her impact work in Liberia, as well as her future plans, and offers advice to others who may be seeking to make an impact through their research.

Details on ASAP’s Impact: Global Poverty project are available at: link: http://academicsstand.org/projects/impact-global-poverty/

If you would like to nominate an impact-oriented academic for an Impact Stories profile, please contact Luis Cabrera at a.l.cabrera@bham.ac.uk

ASAP: What made you decide to write a book like Gbagba, addressing corruption and aimed at children?

RNP: I got really frustrated with all the rhetoric about fighting corruption in Liberia, and wanted to start a national conversation with children. After teaching in two of Liberia’s universities and working in policy spaces in national government, I realised that integrity must be strengthened at the earliest stages in a child’s life in order to mitigate the practice of corruption in the next generation. So, I wrote Gbagba, creating a narrative that Liberian kids could see themselves reflected in, thereby increasing their love of reading. It’s virtually impossible to expect that an 18-year-old approaching adulthood is all of a sudden going to develop scruples, especially when his/her society does not value honesty. Eight to 10-year-old children are the perfect targets because it is at this stage that they begin to form an ethical core. In writing Gbagba, I imagined myself a proverbial anti-corruption pied piper, without the instrument of doom.

ASAP: What were the major challenges in getting Gbagba published?

RNP: I was very fortunate in that I didn’t have hurdles publishing Gbagba. My publisher, Wayetu Moore, of One Moore Book (OMB), approached me in early 2012 about a Liberia Signature Series that she was publishing in 2013 featuring Liberian veteran writers Stephanie Horton and Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Wayetu asked if I could be the third Signature Series author, and I jumped at the opportunity because I had already conjured up Gbagba in my head. Wayetu, a young Liberian social entrepreneur and writer based in New York, was enthusiastic about the concept of the book from the very beginning. She founded OMB in 2011 with her four siblings because they wanted to revolutionise the children’s book industry by producing stories for children from underrepresented cultures. Wayetu was the perfect ally in giving life to Gbagba. So, too, was Chase Walker, my illustrator, who had been drawing subversive cartoons for months in Frontpage Africa Newspaper, a local daily in Liberia. A self-taught graphic designer and artist, Chase provided such depth to my twin protagonists, Sundaymah and Sundaygar, that their personalities jumped off each page of the book!

ASAP: What has the response to Gbagba been like in Liberia?

RNP: Gbagba has received nothing but goodwill in Liberia. I’ve done readings of Gbagba followed by discussions with children in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, and was struck by how astute they are. They understand issues of integrity better than we adults do, and are able to articulate themselves with such bright-eyed innocence. Before conducting a workshop and preview reading of Gbagba at a local elementary school in Monrovia, one girl told me, “Corruption is breaking the Ten Commandments and hurting people.” This young child understood so fundamentally the intrinsic value of accountability. This is why I wrote Gbagba, to give young children the verbal tools to question the confusing ethical codes of the adults around them. Beyond the children of Liberia, adults have also responded in kind. Most parents I come across want copies of the book in their homes, and teachers want to use it in their classrooms. In 2013, the Liberian Ministry of Education placed Gbagba on its list of supplemental texts for 3^rd to 5^th graders, although I am aiming to get the book in the formal curriculum for these grades. The UNESCO office in Liberia also devised a values education curriculum proposing Gbagba as a core text, and this proposal is under consideration. And most recently, the Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) approved a grant to donate 1,500 copies of Gbagba to schools across the country. With this grant, we’ll be commissioning Luckay Buckay, one of Liberia’s premier Hip-co artists, to write and produce a Gbagba song that will be released sometime this year.

ASAP: What might you say to others who may want to pursue broadly similar projects in countries like Liberia?

RNP: Do your research. Countries like Liberia are not tabula rasa; they are incredibly complex with often competing realities. Understanding the local context is absolutely crucial in making positive inroads. Speak to a diverse range of stakeholders. Ask what the needs are, and try to figure out if your potential intervention is required or even desired. Too often, we conjure up grand plans that sound fantastic, but have no relevance for the contexts in which we want to work. It’s better to join forces with already existing local initiatives than to reinvent the wheel for personal aggrandizement.

ASAP: How did you become involved in Liberia’s International Scholarships Scheme?

RNP: My involvement was based on a conversation that I initiated with Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2009. At the time, I worked as a mid-level aide in her office. I had been collecting news clippings from a recurring exposé in one of Liberia’s local dailies, In Profile Daily, alleging that Liberia’s bilateral, international scholarships were being sold to the highest bidder as well as given to the relatives of government officials. I approached the President concerned about the implications of this exposé, given that Liberia had major gaps in capacity in crucial areas that international scholarships could help fill, such as engineering, agriculture, and medicine. President Sirleaf noted my concern and asked me to do a formal investigation and come up with a list of recommendations, which I did. After discovering that the allegations in the exposé were true, I recommended that the government of Liberia appoint an ad-hoc scholarships committee to overhaul and reform the entire bilateral scholarships scheme, making it merit-based, transparent, and gender-balanced. The President appointed me chair of the committee, and within months we devised a bilateral scholarships policy and began vetting scholarships in a transparent manner. The first batch of scholarships under our supervision was awarded to some of the brightest young people I’ve ever met in Liberia.

ASAP: What made you decide to try to reform it?

RNP: I’ve been on merit-based academic scholarships in the US and UK since I was 15. My working class parents always stressed the value of hard work and scholastic achievement. They gifted me with an insatiable love of knowledge and ambition to succeed. If not for the scholarships I received from high school through my current Ph.D., I would not be where I am today. I thought it was incredibly important for the best and brightest in Liberia to have the same opportunities I had, so that they could meaningfully contribute to the country’s post-war reconstruction process upon completion of their studies.

ASAP: What were the major challenges you faced in your reform effort and how did you address those?

RNP: The first major challenge was gaining public confidence in the new scheme. The scholarships process had been hijacked by those with money and power for so long that the average Liberian had lost faith in it, thinking it was a foregone conclusion that you could pay your way through the system or use your political affiliations to secure awards. To address these negative public perceptions, I conducted a series of radio interviews with scholarships recipients who had gone through our new and improved system, to give people first-hand accounts of the many reforms we had made. The second major challenge was maintaining our high standards and ensuring the process was merit-based despite attempted interference from private citizens and government officials. To address this, my committee and I made it clear to anyone trying to intrude that our final decisions were final, and that only those who had passed our very rigid guidelines would be invited for interviews and written exams.

ASAP: Your reforms have now been adopted by the Liberian government. What are the biggest implementation challenges that you can see remaining?

RNP: The major challenges are maintaining the selection criteria and standards we set, and ensuring that those who return from studies are placed in government agencies where they can meaningfully contribute to Liberia’s development.

ASAP: Based on what you have learned in your research for the book and related work, what do you think are the key challenges facing Liberia, now and in the future?

RNP: Liberia’s historical and contemporary challenges are two-fold. First, we lack systems of true merit, where people are promoted or appointed (whether in school settings or in job settings) based on what they know not who they know. This leads to disincentives for personal achievement and low levels of productivity. It also fuels patronage and corruption. Our second major challenge is reconciling what I call an ‘external agenda for Liberia’—based on the whims of donors, multi-national corporations, and the UN—with a clearly defined ‘internal agenda for Liberia’—based on the aspirations of Liberians themselves. Too often, the external agenda supersedes the internal agenda, thereby fomenting domestic angst.

ASAP: You have been named one of the most influential foreign policy leaders under the age of 33. What do you think that kind of visibility might be for your impact work?

RNP: The award has definitely provided me with increased visibility and legitimacy to fulfill my life’s work, transforming Liberia for the better.

ASAP: How do you balance your impact and commentator work with your doctoral studies?

RNP: My doctoral thesis addresses the ways in which citizenship in Liberia has been reconfigured across time and space, and what implications this has for post-conflict reconstruction. My impact and commentator work are extensions of my doctoral studies and vice versa, so I don’t consider them mutually exclusive.

ASAP: How has your work outside academia figured in your research?

RNP: I was born in Liberia, but grew up in the U.S. because of the 14-year conflict in my country. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had a metaphysical connection to Liberia, and have been obsessed with trying to figure out what it means to be Liberian across varying landscapes. Most of my life’s work inside and outside academia has focused on creating pockets of transformation for those who may not be able to speak truth to power, particularly in Liberia.

ASAP: What are your own aims and ambitions for the future, both in your research work and your impact work?

RNP: I plan to delve into a full-time writing and teaching career after completing my Ph.D., with a series of Gbagba books serving as my first major foray into book publishing. In addition to children’s books, I intend to write academic articles and books, beginning with the publication of a book version of my Ph.D. thesis. I also plan to freelance for magazines and newspapers on a range of contemporary development issues facing sub-Saharan Africa. And finally, I intend to teach qualitative research methodologies as well as English composition and literature in Liberia.

ASAP: What advice would you give to a university looking to encourage academics to make an impact at an early stage of their careers?

RNP: Universities should adopt SOAS’ ethos of encouraging academics to be fully engaged with the world around them, rather than just pontificating about it in the ivory tower. This can be done by placing an emphasis on evidence-based research that has policy relevance and ultimately affects practice.

In this latest article, Rachel Payne profiles early-stage efforts by Binghamton University’s Nicole Hassoun to put public pressure on pharmaceutical firms to do more for people living in poverty. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

Nicole Hassoun, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Binghamton, is leading an ASAP-supported initiative to harness the power of socially conscious consumers to motivate pharmaceutical companies to meet the health needs of people in poverty. She has recently created an index that ranks drug companies according to their positive impact on global health. By informing consumers of which companies are making a difference and which are not, she hopes to stimulate demand for products linked to global health impact.

Hassoun’s Global Health Impact index ranks pharmaceutical companies by estimating the collective health impact of their malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS drugs and comparing it with that of other companies. In Hassoun’s model, a drug’s health impact is equal to need * access * efficacy—that is, the global amount of death and disability resulting from the disease the drug treats (need), the proportion of people who receive the drug out of those who need it (access), and the estimated effectiveness of the drug (efficacy).

The index is constructed so that companies have an incentive to invest in the development of medicines for neglected diseases and ensure that there is widespread access to and proper use of their products. Those companies with the best ranking would be entitled to display a Global Health Impact label, which would appear on all of their products—“everything from vitamins to cold medicine,” in Hassoun’s words. Like the Fair Trade label, the Global Health Impact label is intended to draw consumers towards more socially responsible companies.

Globally, one third of all deaths—18 million a year—are linked to poverty. People living in poverty often lack access to medicines both because they cannot afford them and because pharmaceutical companies lack adequate financial incentives to develop treatments for diseases that primarily affect poor people. Hassoun hopes that the Global Health Impact label will create a serious financial incentive for companies to make their products available to people in poverty and to invest in the development of new treatments for neglected diseases. She writes that if products with the Global Health Impact label capture just one percent of the market for generic and over-the-counter medicines, then there will be a $360 million incentive for companies to achieve Global Health Impact certification.

There are a number of other proposals for how to improve access to medicine for poor people, including grants to pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for neglected diseases, funding to deliver medicines to poor people at reduced prizes, and Thomas Pogge’s Health Impact Fund. The proposal that comes closest to Hassoun’s is the Access to Medicines Index, an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the governments of the UK and Netherlands, which ranks pharmaceutical companies on the basis of their efforts to improve access to medicines. This index takes into account a variety of activities carried out by pharmaceutical companies, including research and development, lobbying, patents and licensing, pricing, donations, public policy and market influence, and capacity building for product distribution.

Hassoun says that she is encouraged by the success of the Access to Medicines Index and adds that her own model has distinctive benefits. She argues that by focusing on the actual impact of pharmaceutical companies’ key innovations on the global burden of disease, using the best data available, her index gives a rigorous assessment of the extent to which companies’ drugs are improving the health of poor people.

Possible next steps for Hassoun’s project include a sensitivity analysis of the index and a pilot of the Global Health Impact label in grocery stores. In the pilot, Hassoun would measure the effect of the label on sales.

Hassoun put forward the idea of the Global Health Impact index in her 2012 paper, “Global Health Impact: A Basis for Labeling and Licensing Campaigns?”, which appeared in the journal Developing World Bioethics. In an article for the Council on Foreign Relations, Hassoun described the Global Health Impact project as presenting a middle path between condemnation of globalization on account of new global rules and institutions that, like the TRIPS Agreement, perpetuate poverty, and uncritical acceptance of globalized trade. Hassoun writes: “there are many coercive international institutions, like the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization, that should be doing much more to help people avoid severe poverty, which requires changing many international policies. But there is also a role for individual consumers and companies to play in improving people’s lives.”

Hassoun says that she was motivated to take on the project of ranking pharmaceutical companies because believes philosophers are in a position to contribute to the debate on measuring health impact, by virtue of their training in logic and critical analysis. When she first came up with the idea for the index, she imagined that someone else would carry out the project and presented the proposal to graduate students studying health policy, hoping that one of them would take it on. However, she says she quickly discovered that these students tended to have their own ideas for improving health access and that if she was to see the project executed in the way she wanted, then she would have to do it herself.

Asked about the challenges of carrying out an impact-focused project as an academic, she said that she had been surprised by how much work it has taken to realize her plan for the index. Nevertheless, she says she hopes more students and young academics will attempt to put the ideas they write about into practice. Asked to give a piece of advice for people at the beginning of their academic careers, she suggested asking a lot of questions. Unless you make a point of learning from people working in the field that interests you, she warned, it’s easy to wind up far from the work that you had hoped to do.