Without further ado, I'd like to invite our first speaker to the stage.
Sam Leon works at Global Witness, an organization
that uses investigative journalism to combat corruption around the world.
So, thanks very much everyone for being here today.
My name is Sam, I work for an organization called Global Witness.
We tackle corruption and conflict related to the oil, gas and mining industries.
So, a lot of my day job involves crunching numbers,
primarily crunching numbers around illicit financial flows.
So, these are revenues that should be going into public infrastructure,
hospitals or education systems, in fact, too often find they way into the pockets of elites.
Now what emerges from my spreadsheets when I'm looking at them is a global pattern.
These revenue flows that come from corruptly allocated natural resources,
the stuff that goes into our mobile phones and computers, makes its way around the globe.
These revenues flow through secretive companies incorporated
in places like the British Virgin Islands,
in Delaware, and in Panama, and they flow around the globe,
and eventually they collect in maybe luxury assets, in mansions in London,
or in yachts in Florida, or in the bank accounts of supposedly legitimate companies
in places like the UK.
And anyone who followed the Panama Papers and it was a year of
since the anniversary of the first stories were published on that front on Monday,
will know that this looks like a giant spider's web.
A huge web of companies that spread around the globe in order to be able
to facilitate the movement of illicit financial funds.
And I like to think of this as the plumbing of corruption.
It's a necessary condition of it happening,
and it's the way in which this money is able to move frictionlessly across the globe.
And to take an example of this, something that Global Witness has investigated for some time,
one of West Africa's largest oil blocks called APL245
was corruptly allocated to the formal oil minister,
and then subsequently flipped onto two multinational giants Shell, and Enni.
And it was done so through a British Virgin Islands company that was anonymously owned,
so there was no public record of the person who actually was behind it.
And this deal cost the Nigerian people $1.1 billion.
So, that's 135% of the 2016 Nigerian healthcare budget.
This money could have gone in building schools or hospital, but it didn't,
it went to enrich already very rich companies and corrupt politicians.
Now, I'm often asked, how did I get into this?
The job of a data scientist was almost unheard in an NGO five years ago, it's still pretty rare today.
I'm really lucky and glad I'm doing the work that I am.
But I studied Philosophy at university, so it's a really odd trajectory for a data geek.
But I think there's a common thread there.
And I was thinking this week about what got me into studying philosophy,
what makes me do what I do now.
And I remembered an analogy of an introductory philosophical text I read
when I was thinking about what I was going to do at university.
And that was that we are born on the tip of a hair.
From that vantage point we can survey the world and the systems that enable us to be here,
and it kind of feeds our curiosity and questioning, and curiosity about the world.
As we go through our lives, we tend to slide down that hair,
accept things as necessary and inevitable,
and we get bogged down in the weeds, and our curiosity is dulled.
I think we need to sort of find that kind of child-like philosopher
and climb back up the hair if we're to tackle a problem like global corruption.
It requires real systems thinking,
and why I think that is because when I talk to my friends and colleagues,
well, my British friends in particular, about what I do,
I say I work in corruption, they say, oh, that's something that happens over there.
That's something that happens somewhere else. That happens in Afghanistan, it happens in Somalia,
it happens in places that each year, when Transparency International puts out its corruption index,
language at the bottom, with no sense of our own, you know, the UK or the US's own complicity in this.
So I think we need to address the systems thinking.
Now what happens if we don't do this?
Well, I don't think we stand a chance to actually confront global corruption.
It will continue to cost us.
Estimating the cost of corruption is difficult, some people have tried to do it.
The World Bank has come up with some estimates that are probably as good as what we've got
$50 billion in illicit financial flows leaves Africa each year.
One trillion dollars paid in bribes,
and it all moves through this plumbing of corruption of anonymous companies.
Think about that. Every gross sort of cleptocratic act depends on potentially an army of liars,
an army of lawyers, sorry, freudian slip there, an army of lawyers,
company service agents in places like Panama,
and nominees.
Nominees, pretend directors are the key ingredient, often, of these companies,
so people who should not be requiring these assets can protect their identity.
So, in a really important sense, people in the global north, the economies of the UK and the US,
lawyers in places like the city of London,
are some of the key architects of the plumbing of corruption, and they directly profit from it.
Now, it's not just about the statistics, it's about the human stories, of course,
and I remember when I first started Global Witness,
people started talking to me about the story of Nina.
Nina spends most of her waking day trying to find drugs on the black market
for a hemophiliac 8-year-old child.
She's from the Ukraine and the Ukraininan healthcare system has been so badly devastated
by corruption that they can no longer afford to get the drugs to keep her daughter alive.
So, I implore us all, if we're really to confront the question of global corruption,
let's climb back up that hair, channel that inner curious child philosopher
and ask the big questions about tackling corruption at home and abroad. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam. I think it's really great to be challenged by organizations
like Global Witness to really think about systems at large.
And I think at least at the Skoll Foundation,
that's also something we really try to think about and wrap our minds around.
But at the same time, we know that systems are quite complex,
and each one of us here plays a role in the systems that we're hoping to make an impact on.
So when we're so bogged down in our day to day work, trying to address, you know,
our little piece of the solution, what kind of advice would you give to people to step back
and see, you know, kind of ask those child-like questions that you were mentioning?
Well, I suppose, yeah, it's scrutinizing, you know, if you
if you read an article about some particular act of corruption in another country,
start thinking about what systems have enabled that to happen,
what are the drivers, what are the incentives?
What was required to convert that dirty money into money that could be spent on the things
that the person who committed it in the first place wanted to be able to acquire?
And of course, you could also sign up to the Global Witness mailing list,
and enjoy our campaign against anonymous company ownership, which is the key part of our work,
which is forcing corporate transparency on companies,
so that this kind of plumbing of corruption can be dismantled.
Another thing that kind of came up there, and it was actually much more of an emotional reaction for me,
is that I think we realize that corruption is one of those topics that, like,
it kind of pisses people off, right?
Like, you hate hearing about someone stealing money from situations where, you know,
it's taking directly from the poor who really need it the most.
So at the same time, I'm also a data guy, like you are, I love the spreadsheet imagery data that you gave us.
As so, as a data guy at Global Witness, how do you personally go between, like,
what is your life like, in terms of balancing that emotional, you know, that drive that says, you know,
this really gets me upset, and maybe makes you go down one path,
but then also trying to stay objective and be evidence oriented?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I actually work, I sit within the communications teams,
so half my life actually is spent thinking about how can we tell stories with this data?
Because I do think that there is a danger when you're thinking about systemic change
or you're working on a fairly complex issue, that you do get too bogged down in the details, you know,
unable to kind of deliver it with impact.
I think I really value the input of my colleagues who work in different fields
who are more sort of on the campaigning front, public facing front, floating ideas with them.
But I do think you have to be disciplined as a data person,
and I think that applies to any business or any organization.
People will come to you and say, "Hey, this is my hunch,
and this would work really well if this sort of hypothesis I have is true,"
and you do always have to say, sometimes, this doesn't hold up,
this doesn't hold any water, this doesn't hold any weight.
And we have done that on a number of occasions, but that's what
you know, keeps us doing good investigations that are respected.
Awesome. Well, thank you Sam. We love hearing your perspective on everything. Great, thank you again.