Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Hello folks, welcome to this last session of our very interesting series on international development and procurement issues in international development. We've been very privileged to have a great panel this week, as we worked through various issues. In the first day, we had an overview of issues. We also talked about developments in Ansitral, the UN Commission on International Trade Law, Model Procurement Law.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: And on the second day, we talked about contract administration issues in international development, and I thought that was a… that was a… Vinay did a terrific job, Vinay Sharma did a terrific job outlining issues there. And this on… and Jean-Jacques Verdeaux, who's with us today, discussed what's happening at the World Bank. That was a fascinating overview of important developments at the World Bank. And we're also joined then by Madan
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Laurentis, who talked about some key issues in terms of enhancing procurement at the World Bank. Now, on this third day, the third and last day, we're going to be talking about anti-corruption issues. We're going to start with Professor Sope Williams, whom I'm very proud to note is my newest colleague in our program at George Washington University Law School. She's been a colleague for
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: many, many years, and she is… she is much younger than I am, but she has done a wonderful job over the years, and she's been really a very important colleague for us.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: In terms of having an ongoing discussion about important issues in anti-corruption. We'll be talking… she'll be talking about some important developments, and Prabhat will also be talking about some important developments in anti-corruption in development.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: One of the important interchanges that Sope and I have had over the years is how we deal with anti-corruption and procurement from different normative places. If we, for example, if we rely very heavily on a mechanical theory, which we'll be talking about, like the principal-agent theory, does that adequately capture what the true anti-corruption imperatives are?
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: in a given culture or a given nation. And I've included… I've added to the materials on the program website, with the program, background material literature that Sope's done and others have done on these important issues, and I recommend those to you if you want to look at the program website. I'll be putting that citation up in just a second.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: As before, the videos, and the videos in the first two days are already up, the materials from the first two days are already up.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Public Procurementinternational.com. The videos are also going to be in the GW Law Government Procurement Law YouTube page, and the chat is also the chat from the first two days, which includes a lot of research resources, is available there on the Public Procurement International website, if you like. Today, we have speakers from many different areas and many different functions.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Should stress that any statements that they make today are in their personal capacity.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: We've had over 450 registrants, almost 500 now, from around the world, from many, many different countries.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: we… these are… these webinars are an important opportunity to pull together the international procurement community and to reaffirm what's really important, which is to use procurement as a means of achieving the best possible outcomes for the men, women, and children of the countries that are affected. So it's a real privilege for us to be able to do these webinars and bring everyone together.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: As I said, this is the third of three sessions, and we've, we have with us Shelby Williams and Prabhat Garg. I'm going to be introducing them individually as we go through, and I'm very grateful that they could join us today.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Benedetta Audio is also joining me as a co-moderator. Benedetta, would you like to say a few words?
Benedetta Audia: Sure, good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back for the final session on our series of our series on International Development Procurement.
Benedetta Audia: So, over the past two sessions, we've heard from colleagues at UNDP, the World Bank, and UNC Charl, and if there is one thread running through all of it, it is this. Procurement rules only matter if they hold under pressure.
Benedetta Audia: Today, we turn to the pressure that matters most, and that is corruption, and that is why this closing session matters. We spent
Benedetta Audia: two sessions on how the system is supposed to work. Today, we ask what happens when it does not, and what tools, legal, institutional, and technological actually, catch it in time.
Benedetta Audia: Thank you, Chris.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thank you, Benedetta. So, our first speaker today will be Shopee Williams. She's joining the faculty of George Washington University Law School in next month. We're just… we're delighted that we can have her. She's, she's…
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: She's just a luminary internationally, and it's a wonderful thing for our program. She's a professor of public Procurement law, Procurement law consultant, and also the deputy director of the African Procurement Law Unit at Stellenbach University.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: She's an expert in public procurement law and policy in Africa, procurement of the multilateral development banks, gender-responsive procurement, emergency contracting, sustainable public procurement, and anti-corruption law.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: She's developed anti-corruption courses for UNODC and the UN Virtual School, and served as an academic member of the World Bank's Procurement Technical Advisory Group. She's an editor of four international journals and a vice chair of the Anti-Corruption committee of the International Bar Association. She developed and teaches in the LLM and PG DIP program.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: in public Procurement Regulation and Policy at Stellenbosch University. She has an LLM with distinction from the London School of Economics.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: and a PhD in public Procurement and anti-corruption law from the University of Nottingham in England. Her research has been cited by the South African Constitutional Court, which is a very big deal. That's a very, very important court in shaping the future of South Africa.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Prabhat Garg is Optiflios, and he and Vinay have been cornerstones to developing this program. I'm very grateful to the two of them for helping make this seminar series possible. He's an international program management and public procurement expert with about 40 years of experience with multilateral development banks and bilateral development partner agencies, working across the globe in several countries.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Including in the former Soviet region. He worked at the World Bank from 1984 to 2000, where he designed and managed international programs, projects, and procurements
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: in various positions. In 2006, he joined the U.S. federal government working on international public procurement, where he worked in the senior executive service grade levels leading international public procurement practice group that developed policies and managed procurements funded by
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: a U.S. government's foreign aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC. Just for those who are from outside the United States, the Senior Executive Service that Prabhat worked in is the most prestigious. It's the elite of the civil service in the U.S. government, so it's a real mark of honor for
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: for Bahta and for other members of the Senior Executive Service.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Sope, and thank you again for joining us, Professor Williams.
Sope Williams: Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon to colleagues that are not in the US, or good evening, wherever you are. First, I have to say thank you, Chris, for inviting me. I'm obviously so glad to be joining you at GW, and I look forward to us, you know, having a great working relationship and having a lot of fun. So, what I want to talk about this morning is I want to talk about a few things that have happened over
Sope Williams: over the last, I'll say 18 months.
Sope Williams: In international anti-corruption law and enforcement.
Sope Williams: and the impact that that's having. When Benedetta was giving her remarks, she talked about the fact that, for this session, we're looking at what are the tools that we have
Sope Williams: our disposal when procurement doesn't go as planned, when corruption has, you know, is part of the process. And so I want to talk about the tools that we've had, and how those tools have been holding up over the last 18 months, and really what's happening in the global arena.
Sope Williams: So, I'm going to start talking about
Sope Williams: what happened in January 2025, which shocked the international development community, but possibly the international anti-corruption community didn't, recognize the impact that it would have.
Sope Williams: So, in January 2025, I think on the 24th of January, President Trump issued an executive order against, USAID. And so it was, a now total… near total freeze on… on all foreign aid.
Sope Williams: And by March, about 83% of USAID's programs had been canceled, involving thousands of contracts. And I think since July of last year, you know, USAID has more or less,
Sope Williams: cease to function. But what is important in the context of anti-corruption enforcement is that a lot of the foreign aid that went through USAID was to support anti-corruption programs. So USAID was funding a lot of NGOs that were doing research in a lot of developing countries.
Sope Williams: Developing tools, to address corruption in public sector and private sector.
Sope Williams: to also address things like, like human rights abuses, and things like that. So you had a lot of these NGOs funded by USAID,
Sope Williams: Working in different countries around the world, working even in authoritarian regimes to address
Sope Williams: corruption, address human rights abuses, provide legal services for victims of those regimes. So, the collapse of USAID was, you know, was very loud, very significant, but it had a deeper impact for anti-corruption enforcement. Because, of course, while we had visibility on the executive order.
Sope Williams: addressing enforcement of the FCPA, USAID's work in anti-corruption was a lot of soft power, right? It was work that… that didn't get the headlines, but it was work that was really important in terms of… of,
Sope Williams: of international anti-corruption law. So that was one piece of the puzzle when we can say, international anti-corruption law enforcement began to unravel. Of course, in February of the same year, we then had the executive order,
Sope Williams: in the US, again, from President Trump, directing the Attorney General to pause investigations and enforcement actions under the FCPA. Of course, if you know the history of the FCPA, it was the first domestic law that addressed,
Sope Williams: extraterritorial corruption and bribery, and was instrumental in things like the OECD anti-bribery conventions that we have now, and the fact that we now, you know, routinely criminalize foreign bribery. So the FCPA and the US's role in addressing foreign bribery has been…
Sope Williams: Of immense significance to the way the anti-corruption legal framework has shaped up.
Sope Williams: So, anyway, January, February 2025, we have this executive order, asking the Attorney General to pause, enforcement,
Sope Williams: And there was a phrase in the executive order saying that they should stop overexpansive and unpredictable FCA enforcement against American citizens and businesses.
Sope Williams: Saying that that was harming economic, American economic competitiveness and, and, and threatening national security. So, since that executive order,
Sope Williams: the FCPA has, you know, has more or less paused a lot of its enforcement. There was then guidelines issued in June 2025, which basically
Sope Williams: then said what the Attorney General could do under the FCPA, and saying that the FCPA should focus on eliminating cartels and transnational criminal organizations, safeguarding opportunities for U.S. companies.
Sope Williams: advancing U.S. national security interests and prioritizing, investigations of serious misconduct, as opposed to quote-unquote routine business practices.
Sope Williams: So the other thing that the guidelines did, apart from listing these four areas where we should have enforcement.
Sope Williams: The other thing that the guidelines did is that they required that the focus should be on individuals and not on… on corporations. So, of course, that,
Sope Williams: has an immense impact on FCPA enforcement. FCPA enforcement was really the main tool that
Sope Williams: the global international community relied on for addressing, you know, foreign bribery. If you had ever done research and looked at some of those enforcement actions, you would find that it wasn't just U.S. companies, it was companies across the globe.
Sope Williams: And many of the countries where there is a problem with, with, with,
Sope Williams: with systemic corruption, where their governments may not be taking action, we found that the SCPA or the US would, you know, would step in and enforce those laws against those countries and against those, companies. So…
Sope Williams: Because of what has happened with these executive orders, there's been a big,
Sope Williams: a shift. And there have been attempts for other
Sope Williams: countries to step in and fill the void. And so what has happened is that Europe and some European countries have tried to respond to this pause on, you know, foreign bribery actions as we knew it. And so in 2025, a number of countries from Europe, the UK, France, Switzerland.
Sope Williams: Announced that they would create a new task force to strengthen collaboration efforts to take
Sope Williams: to tackle international bribery and corruption, and the UK Serious Fraud Office also announced that they would join at the International Intercorruption Coordination center, and that they would seek to enforce the UK Bribery Act, which also has significant
Sope Williams: jurisdiction over foreign bribery, that they would seek to enforce that in cases where the U.S. was not going to do so. So we basically had a few European countries come together and say, okay, we can't allow this gap to continue, and we will try to step in. Of course, we have to take into account the fact that the U.S. had a
Sope Williams: difference… had a bigger scale in terms of resources to address foreign bribery, where, you know, European countries may not be willing to commit those same resources to doing that. So we, we have the UK, the,
Sope Williams: and the other countries intending to step into that gap, we have the UK Serious Frauds Office saying that they would try to prosecute companies where they have breached the UK Bribery Act, and we've had a few investigations under that. What is also interesting is that apart from the
Sope Williams: countries in Europe. We also have, within the U.S, states like California, reminding businesses that irrespective of what the executive order says, that it is still illegal under Californian law to, engage in foreign bribery. And so they have issued statements that violations of the FCPA, even if they're not going to be addressed by the Attorney General, that they might be actionable under California
Sope Williams: unfair competition law.
Sope Williams: And so we've… we've had, so we've had that. We've had other countries like France also issue statements on… on what they would do in terms of addressing foreign bribery, and Switzerland also,
Sope Williams: passed new measures on money laundering and all that. So there has been a global response. So the gap that we envisaged
Sope Williams: is there, but it's not, you know, to the extent that we thought. Because, yes, as I said, the FCPA did have an outsized role in addressing foreign bribery. But what has been, I think, particularly problematic is, in terms of the implications for
Sope Williams: You know, Countries that were relying on
Sope Williams: USAID funding to address, corruption measures, so we've had,
Sope Williams: nations where they've had fragile democracies and where they have conflicts, which is always a risk for corruption. There's been, you know, those programs have obviously been undermined.
Sope Williams: There have been new discussions between some African countries and the U.S. government that some of the aid for health policy interventions that was funneled through USAID would now be funneled to those countries as budget support. Of course, that causes, you know, raises new risks and new modalities for dealing with that, so we don't really know whether that's going to be better or worse in terms of
Sope Williams: Of risks of anti-corruption.
Sope Williams: And then, of course, as I mentioned earlier, there is going to be,
Sope Williams: There is going to be limitations in what
Sope Williams: the enforcement of foreign bribery laws look like, because while the FCPA had a lot of tools and had been doing this for, you know.
Sope Williams: dozens of years, and have been quite successful at it. The countries in Western Europe that are trying to address this issue now don't have as much experience and don't have the same budget. So that's a challenge. I think what is,
Sope Williams: What…
Sope Williams: hasn't changed at all, and I think we need to take cognizance of that, is the fact that the laws haven't changed. And in terms, especially of FCPA enforcement, we have had, for the last
Sope Williams: I don't know, 30… I don't know, 40 years, a lot of prioritization of some aspects and deprioritization of others. So, this is not…
Sope Williams: totally new. It is more drastic than we've had in the past, but it's not totally new. And as administrations, you know, determine what their focus is going to be, we will always have, you know, different aspects of the FCPA being,
Sope Williams: prioritized and others being deprioritized. But the FCPA remains a valid law. It's not repealed. It can only be repealed by an act of Congress, and of course.
Sope Williams: There are other laws in the U.S. that remain, that are still being enforced, like, you know.
Sope Williams: And of course, as I mentioned already, the UK Bribery Act also has really extensive extraterritorial, jurisdiction. So, there has been a reorientation of international anti-corruption enforcement.
Sope Williams: So the US has… has shifted from being, you know, this global or universal enforcer to being more selective and prioritizing what it believes our… its needs are at this… this… this…
Sope Williams: particular time, USAID has, as one of the most significant funders of anti-corruption, and governance and capacity building, programs in many developing countries, has stopped, so that has severe consequences, and I think that, for me, is actually a bigger problem.
Sope Williams: Because, of course, enforcement is addressing something when there's already been an issue, but the soft, capacity building and governance issues were designed to prevent and mitigate corruption from happening.
Sope Williams: And then, of course, we've seen that Europe is trying to fill the enforcement vacuum, by creating the task force and all that. Of course, it's… there's… there's,
Sope Williams: we haven't had enough time to see how… how successful that is going to be, but it is, I think, a positive development that the global community realizes that I think it was never in anyone's best interest to only have one country taking,
Sope Williams: you know, the main role in addressing an issue that affects everyone, and an issue that is, you know, a networked problem, an issue that is a global problem, an issue that is a cross-border problem. So, in a way, I think
Sope Williams: other countries realizing that they have to, you know, take responsibility for this issue, and they have to put their, you know, their money where their mouth is. I think that is a positive development that has come, out of this. So yes, I will stop by saying it has been challenging, it is, you know, difficult, and… but…
Sope Williams: Maybe it's time that the rest of the world grew up.
Sope Williams: Thank you, I'll stop there.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thank you very much, Sope. So, one of the interesting things about being a professor is that we get to be in sort of a trusted space with actors around the world, and you'd, for example, you presented to IFBEC, the International Anti-Corruption Association for large…
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: companies working in the space. So, talking to people who are doing corporate compliance around the world, we asked them.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Now that the FCPA is being enforced, not at all, but really just being enforced in an incredibly small way regarding organized crime.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: is the… is… now that that's gone, is that changing your compliance posture at all, your compliance structure? And the answer from the folks working in very sophisticated
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: corporate compliance system is, no, actually not at all, because there are all these other laws around the world that have extraterritorial effect. For instance, the Bribery Act in the UK.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: So, what the U.S. has done, which you, as you explained, what the U.S. has essentially done by withdrawing this FCPA enforcement is it's changed the tone from the top. There's still a legal structure that keeps
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: multinationals, for example, from engaging in bribery, but the strong voice from the top is gone. The United States' strong voice has been muted during the Trump administration. So, here's a question I have for you.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Can others take that… the place of that voice? Could, for example, President Macron in France, or President Ramaphosa in South Africa, could they take the place of the American voice and reinforce the importance of anti-corruption in international procurement?
Sope Williams: Yeah, thanks for that, Chris. I think…
Sope Williams: I think no one country can take the voice. I think it was a mistake, but, I mean, it was just, you know, it's a historical legacy that the US was at the forefront of addressing foreign bribery. So, I think it was a mistake that the US was the main voice, and that should never have been the case.
Sope Williams: And I mean, you know from your studies that corruption is a network's problem, corruption is a global problem, so we shouldn't really be looking for one voice.
Sope Williams: we should be looking for all voices, because if we are serious about addressing it, then it can't be left to one country where things can change, right? You know, politics…
Sope Williams: can go in one direction or the other. So I think the fact that the UK has come out strongly, I think France has also come out a little bit strong. Switzerland has come out strong. So I think having more countries, more voices being… condemning foreign bribery and taking action
Sope Williams: Against it is possibly what we would need, because then it means that we're…
Sope Williams: relying on a multiplicity of resources and abilities to address corruption, as opposed to one voice. Because if the other countries had…
Sope Williams: had capacitated themselves to address foreign bribery rather than relying on the FCPA, then if there was a shredding of the FCPA, it wouldn't have had the impact that it did have. So I would argue for many voices, and they are coming out,
Sope Williams: And I think we need to have more countries actually saying, well, if this happens in our jurisdiction and our law is,
Sope Williams: And it happens within the jurisdiction of our law, then we will enforce the law.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: So, last question will bother you, Sope. So, one of the… one of the questions we ask in the U.S. system is, when you… when you have a… you have a bunch of different policemen.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: trying to… trying to keep people honest. The question is, should the cops cooperate, or is it… is it better for anti-corruption if the… if the policemen don't cooperate? And I have to say, in the federal procurement system in the U.S, there… the cops are…
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: just phenomenally, comically uncooperative. We have the Keystone Cops. The various enforcement agencies oftentimes just don't cooperate with each other. Sometimes they do, but a lot of times they don't, which actually creates more terror in the heart of contractors, because they don't know how the various policemen will come at them, so to speak, and they also… it's very difficult to corrupt or persuade all the policemen at the same time.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: If the policemen aren't cooperating.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Do you think that anti-corruption actually may work better, Sope, now that we have a multiplicity of enforcement agencies around the world?
Sope Williams: Yes, no, definitely. I think it will work better, and I think, as I said already, that it's better all around if we have everyone
Sope Williams: working towards the same goals when it comes to anti-corruption law and anti-corruption enforcement. And especially when it comes to foreign bribery, right? You're… I mean, by… by default, you're already dealing with cases that involve
Sope Williams: at least two countries. So you do need to have cooperation from the countries that are involved, and because of the nature of global finance, the nature of money laundering, you usually end up with having investigations that span many jurisdictions. So I think the more countries that we can have that are dedicated to addressing foreign bribery, the more countries that we can have pooling their resources to address this.
Sope Williams: I think we would have better outcomes all around.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thanks very much, Sophie. So I'm gonna, in the interest of time, I'm gonna turn it over to Prabhat. Prabhat, are you with us?
Prabhat Garg: Yeah, hi, good morning, Chris.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thank you, Shauna.
Prabhat Garg: And good morning, everybody, for joining us in this interesting seminar.
Prabhat Garg: And thank you, Professor Yukins and colleagues and GW Law for giving us opportunity for pulling all of us together. As a thank you for many of our colleagues on this seminar. I know
Prabhat Garg: Many of them in different time zones are giving up your leisure time. Maybe in some countries you're giving your sleeping time to listen to us. We hope we are making it worth your while.
Prabhat Garg: In this topic, fraud and corruption, as you heard from Professor Yukins and Professor Williams.
Prabhat Garg: It encompasses everything. Contract management, legal framework, evaluation panels, and developing specifications, as we all know in the field.
Prabhat Garg: So, I would rather not talk about the theory or the legal framework. There are more competent people to talk about that. I'm a practitioner, as Chris introduced me as for the last 40 years, first with the World Bank, then with Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Prabhat Garg: So, I would like to draw from…
Prabhat Garg: real-life examples, and Chris, thanks for putting this slide up.
Prabhat Garg: Myself and Vinay Sharma, Mr. Vinay Sharma from former World Bank and African Development Bank Head of Procurement, we have written a book, which is coming out shortly.
Prabhat Garg: This book is full of real-life experiences.
Prabhat Garg: Of the entire international development, not only fraud and corruption, so it will be available soon.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: during next 15-20 minutes, I would…
Prabhat Garg: I'd like to share my practitioner's perspective on fraud and corruption.
Prabhat Garg: I… and I would like to get away from bringing cops into picture to catch us.
Prabhat Garg: We should design… aim to design the systems where systems work themselves without getting cops and courts involved in the corruption and the procurement side, at least.
Prabhat Garg: So, I will share real-life examples.
Prabhat Garg: I will also talk about causes and mitigants of the fraud and corruption, and I would like to leave you with some thoughts on the future of integrity and the fraud and corruption.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: Oh, sorry, the previous slide.
Prabhat Garg: So, I would like to draw on Albert Einstein's famous quote, as long… we say, so long as they are men, there will be wars.
Prabhat Garg: I would like to adopt that to say so long as there are men, there will be corruption. And man means all genders here.
Prabhat Garg: So corruption is something not that we can eliminate completely, so that'll be an unrealistic goal to eliminate corruption, because that's a human nature.
Prabhat Garg: In my talk, I will share some examples where we can say corruption is not limited to certain countries, or certain positions, or certain institutions. It is limited to human nature.
Prabhat Garg: FNC risk, as you'll see, you all know.
Prabhat Garg: will never be zero. We need to see how to manage those risks.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: I would like to, though, start with something that there is a… we, as practitioners, we face a perception problem.
Prabhat Garg: If it is government procurement, There must be some corruption, that's…
Prabhat Garg: We all assume that. In many countries, it has become the fact of life.
Prabhat Garg: People don't even question that if there's a government procurement, there's… why is there corruption?
Prabhat Garg: So…
Prabhat Garg: As I said, corruption will be there, and corruption happens in all sides. There are buyers, there are bidders, there are funding agencies.
Prabhat Garg: Everybody…
Prabhat Garg: And I don't say that lightly, I've experienced a lot of it myself in my 40 years, but everybody is responsible for having high integrity, everybody responsible for watching against corruption.
Prabhat Garg: And still, there are some… some things happen.
Prabhat Garg: I must say that majority of us, including many of our colleagues here, Work honestly.
Prabhat Garg: Whether they are lawyers, or they are engineers, or they are procurement professionals, they are contract managers, government officers, donor officers, bidders, majority are honest and working upfront.
Prabhat Garg: Procurement and fraud and corruption are most systemic problems. So when the system creates an… gives an opportunity Then.
Prabhat Garg: Bad actors will take advantage of those opportunities.
Prabhat Garg: So we should think about designing the systems where the opportunities are reduced.
Prabhat Garg: And I also want to differentiate that,
Prabhat Garg: Domestic Procurement versus international public procurement, where our book is focused on.
Prabhat Garg: Yes, corruption does exist in international public procurement as well, which refers… in my terminology, I'm referring to the donor-funded programs, multilateral development banks.
Prabhat Garg: Or bilateral agencies.
Prabhat Garg: It does exist in IPPs.
Prabhat Garg: It is serious, it is… damages development, And it destroys public trust.
Prabhat Garg: However, I would like to say, based on my experience, that under IPP,
Prabhat Garg: The corruption is not as bad as its critics, harshest critics would like to say, but it is not as good as practitioners like me would like to believe in. So it's not as clean, but not as bad either.
Prabhat Garg: You all must have seen Some advocacy groups claiming 30-50% of the money is lost to corruptions.
Prabhat Garg: It is high, but it is in… under IPP, it is not that high.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: So, in our book, we demonstrate through real-life experiences Real-life examples.
Prabhat Garg: That corruption exists on all sides.
Prabhat Garg: So, again, it is not limited to certain groups. Like, sometimes when we are talking about corruption, we talk about
Prabhat Garg: Colored bidders.
Prabhat Garg: Or corrupt government officials.
Prabhat Garg: We cannot really classify corruption limited to a certain group.
Prabhat Garg: A strong oversight always helps.
Prabhat Garg: Audit, inspection, as Professor Williams was talking about, independent integrity offices, whistleblower lines, bid challenge systems. All of those help in…
Prabhat Garg: And forcing the requirements?
Prabhat Garg: All of that help in scaring people off, bringing the cops in.
Prabhat Garg: But as procurement professional, my intention is to enforce this or develop the systems where we don't need all that.
Prabhat Garg: We don't… we shouldn't be looking at how many audits we did.
Prabhat Garg: We should be looking at how many successful development outcomes we had.
Prabhat Garg: But we have to recognize, as I said earlier, so long as they are manned, there will be corruption.
Prabhat Garg: Our objective is to improve integrity.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: So, real-life examples from the book. Again, there is nothing unique about it. I'm sure you have all seen these.
Prabhat Garg: And worse than this, I'm sure, people who are in the procurement field, or contract administration field, or the legal field.
Prabhat Garg: These are our day-to-day lives. We see these things.
Prabhat Garg: However, I'm just putting them here to set the context.
Prabhat Garg: And these are, again, real-life cases, which actually happened, whether that's working on the donor agency sites, World Bank, MCC, I have myself seen these things.
Prabhat Garg: Vehicle procurement in Central Africa. Specification required snow tires for their cars.
Prabhat Garg: Really, the country never has seen snow in last 300 years of their existence.
Prabhat Garg: So there's no snow, obviously, they were trying to direct to somebody.
Prabhat Garg: Individual consultant to be hired.
Prabhat Garg: requirement… Exactly matches number of years, qualifications, past experience for somebody who was just retiring from their job.
Prabhat Garg: So instead of following a sole source requirement and justification.
Prabhat Garg: the buyers or the developers of a specification decided to just have an open competition with the tailored specification. That's a fraud and corruption.
Prabhat Garg: Software Procurement in East Asia.
Prabhat Garg: Sole source and direct contract.
Prabhat Garg: One software which everybody knows, in this case it was an Alton Antivirus program.
Prabhat Garg: Requirement comes with… $30,000 sole source procurement to a specific dealer, with the dealer's letter quoting the price.
Prabhat Garg: and claiming they are the only authorized dealers of Norton in the country, and signed off by the senior government official to say government has been buying this software at this price.
Prabhat Garg: A very simple question raised, and this was, in my case, by the donor agency.
Prabhat Garg: Go on the Google, write a question, are there authorized dealers of this software in this country?
Prabhat Garg: 68 authorized dealers showed up just in the city capital.
Prabhat Garg: Clearly, it was stopped, and when the competition, again, competition, one of the big deterrent to fraud and corruption, competition was enforced. The software was bought for less than $1,000.
Prabhat Garg: So these are the funding agencies that are able to detect and block these cases.
Prabhat Garg: But here it is to show that how things happen.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: So, can I ask you a quick question, Prabhat about this? So, a colleague, Lee Bradley, was the… she was the head of the Office of… the Ethics Office in the Defense Department, the Standards of Conduct, and she also just really expanded a volume they put together of
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Stupid ethical lapses. Dishonest things people have done across the Defense Department.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: for over the years. And she did that not only to make fun of these people, to mock the people who had done things that were wrong, but also to… for the readers, for the audience, to refocus them on what their mission was. Their mission is to serve the Defense Department well.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: To advance U.S. national security. And so it wasn't just a mocking game, it was a… it was forcing the professionals to refocus on what their true mission is. Should, in your view, should…
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Our colleagues internationally, should they be collecting stories like these, so that they can use them as a talking point, a lesson for procurement officials in their own country to focus on what their true mission is?
Prabhat Garg: Absolutely, I think that's a very good suggestion.
Prabhat Garg: As, as we collect the stories, whether they are convicted stories, or whether they are…
Prabhat Garg: Anticipated stories, or were there suspected stories?
Prabhat Garg: They always help in improving the
Prabhat Garg: If only perception or the reality, both.
Prabhat Garg: And of course, when you put them in what I call Wall of Shame, then, obviously.
Prabhat Garg: Scare some other people from not doing the same thing.
Prabhat Garg: Moving on with some real-life examples, bidders, fraud, and corruption, I'm sure everybody has seen everything possible.
Prabhat Garg: Inflated, fabricated past performance, exaggerated previous assignment rules, falsified CVs and degrees.
Prabhat Garg: Ghost experts who never existed in real life.
Prabhat Garg: Counterfeit bid securities, attempts to bribe the government official evaluation panel, everybody has seen all these things.
Prabhat Garg: So, bidders, as we like to say, corruption schemes are as numerous as the bidders themselves.
Prabhat Garg: Again, as I said earlier, if there's an opportunity, some backed actors will try to take the opportunity.
Prabhat Garg: So… We should try to control the opportunity.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Just a quick question on this Prabhat. So, a lot… so the European Union is moving very aggressively now to encourage cross-border exchange of information, data, between member states, and we're going to see that through open contracting initiatives, we're going to see that internationally, more and more of an exchange.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: And one of the questions is, where's the first emphasis? Is the first emphasis going to be on contractor qualification and issues of corruption? Will that be the first data that governments share with each other effectively? Do you see… is that a… is that a fair guess, Prabhat, that, in fact, that will be the first area of
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Transnational, inter-country cooperation, questions of qualification and corruption?
Prabhat Garg: That does sound like one of very good starting points.
Prabhat Garg: I would also add that past contractor performance in their countries would become very important also.
Prabhat Garg: So if…
Prabhat Garg: That will scare bad guys that if you miss perform in one country or do corruption in one country, everybody will hear about it.
Prabhat Garg: So if your performance is poor in one place, you not only lose Brussels, you also lose France and other EU members.
Prabhat Garg: So, go back one slide. Oh, yes. Real-life example, donor agency staff.
Prabhat Garg: I say again, don't say that lightly, but it does happen.
Prabhat Garg: Again, when there's an opportunity, somebody will try to take advantage of that.
Prabhat Garg: In one case in Africa Agriculture Project, a whistle… through a whistleblower, it was identified donor agency project manager.
Prabhat Garg: Has… was collaborating with the government officers and the contractors to siphon money
Prabhat Garg: To his relatives in different countries.
Prabhat Garg: And it came out from a whistleblower, and it was so blatant that they were…
Prabhat Garg: Not only cash transfer, they were done through electronic means, so there are full track records of where… who gave the money and where it went.
Prabhat Garg: Of course, there were strong actions taken.
Prabhat Garg: The other one, Middle East Water Well Project in the remote areas, number of… couple of donor agencies got in… got involved.
Prabhat Garg: Funding the digging of water wells in remote areas for drinking, as well as for use of animals.
Prabhat Garg: And another international agency was hired on the payment basis to supervise the implementation.
Prabhat Garg: For one and a half years.
Prabhat Garg: Reports kept coming, wells were completed, sites were visited.
Prabhat Garg: Contractor had completed, whereas contractor invoices are there.
Prabhat Garg: And the site visit reports are there, and donors are dispersing the money.
Prabhat Garg: A whistleblower report to a local newspaper unraveled everything.
Prabhat Garg: Literally everything was false.
Prabhat Garg: Every contractor invoice, every site report, Everything was fabricated.
Prabhat Garg: For one and a half years, even… not even a single well was dug there.
Prabhat Garg: It will… obviously, every… Nobody visited the sites where the supervision is very important.
Prabhat Garg: And… Many people were involved in throughout the chain here.
Prabhat Garg: So, these examples… illustrate two important points. One is…
Prabhat Garg: All these site visits are very important.
Prabhat Garg: And second is… this… In finding a fraud and corruption does not require deep investigations.
Prabhat Garg: If you ask a one simple question, that software example.
Prabhat Garg: Do one site visit. Do one stakeholder interview.
Prabhat Garg: It can easily start unraveling there.
Prabhat Garg: So, very simple day-to-day action, which all of us take in our daily life, can help stop fraud and corruption.
Prabhat Garg: But I, again, the central message of my… these examples is that corruption is rarely a failure of one individual or one agency. It is usually a failure of a system. It's a systemic problem which allows safeguards to break down.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: In summary, or using these examples and other things I've seen, it is…
Prabhat Garg: Again, doing our day-to-day job is where we can do… stop a lot of corruption. Procurement officers insisting on proper documentation.
Prabhat Garg: Decision makers, whether procurement officers or their managers, reading the evaluation reports, not just signing them.
Prabhat Garg: Donor government staff conducting site visits. Normal… just go and visit the site and see if there's a well really built or not. Don't just rely on the paper reports.
Prabhat Garg: Evaluators are doing their job honestly declaring their conflict of interest.
Prabhat Garg: Auditors looking at, detailed reports.
Prabhat Garg: bidding community, private sector, really following on their oath of integrity, which is most of the time they sign. Very, very simple steps.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: About talking about the prevention and these simple steps, I want to draw your attention to one very simple preventive measure done by one of the funding agencies where I work.
Prabhat Garg: In this agency, We put all the teams together, we said.
Prabhat Garg: Program managers, program designers, procurement people, contract managers, government guys, sit down together, and we are tasking you to steal money from this project.
Prabhat Garg: Look from the beginning till end of the pipeline, and tell us how will you steal money.
Prabhat Garg: Initially, of course, very difficult conversation, and meetings were awkward, but very soon, people started understanding that
Prabhat Garg: And where the risks are, And they started developing measures how to stop that risk.
Prabhat Garg: All those findings were converted into risk registers, and those risk registers assigned responsibilities to all of those individuals, project managers, engineers, supervisors, procurement people, how to deal with those risks?
Prabhat Garg: And keep them updating as the risks evolve.
Prabhat Garg: Very simple, but very effective preventive measure.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Benedetta Audia: Prabhatan, I just wanted to maybe compliment on what you were saying on the importance on… of, risk mitigating measures.
Benedetta Audia: Especially when it comes to disbursements, just making sure that really no funds are paid in advance, if possible, and that payments are only made once milestones have been reached. And there is documentation that shows that.
Benedetta Audia: It is, I've been involved in the design of many of these programs.
Benedetta Audia: Very often, these are seen as administrative burdens, but I can't emphasize how important these structures are to make sure that
Benedetta Audia: funds are not misappropriated.
Benedetta Audia: And… and at least there are measures, that can be taken, in case this happens.
Prabhat Garg: Thank you, thank you. Very, very important point.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: So, if today somebody asks me what is one important thing which will help in avoiding procurement, fraud, and corruption during the procurement process?
Prabhat Garg: I would say it is not a fear of audit, I would say it's not a fear of being arrested.
Prabhat Garg: It's a competition. The more we increase the competition, the less incentives will be there, the less opportunities will be there on the bidder's side to influence the decision, on the buyer's side to gain favors.
Prabhat Garg: Then both sides will… because you don't know when you have very wide competition who is going to compete.
Prabhat Garg: So, it will take discretion away from the decision makers.
Prabhat Garg: And then procurement people, of course, have to stay on top of that, so competition is one of the strongest anti-corruption tools.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: AI, obviously, will help us in due time when it develops, we'll talk about it a little later.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Prabhat Garg: So…
Prabhat Garg: There are… sorry, can we go back two slides? I… I missed that part. So, there are three integrity challenges coming up with the… in the current world.
Prabhat Garg: It is… No, the slide which we talked about climate finance, please.
Prabhat Garg: So… In the…
Prabhat Garg: The climate finance, where a lot of funding is going right now. The term used is greenwashing, where a lot of fake claims are there. We need to watch out for things.
Prabhat Garg: About the climate finance.
Prabhat Garg: Then there, of course, a lot of digital systems are coming up in procurement.
Prabhat Garg: Very important.
Prabhat Garg: They produce very good safeguards.
Prabhat Garg: They improve the efficiency of the procurement system, but of course, they improve the vulnerability.
Prabhat Garg: So, as we know, digital systems can be hacked, distal systems can be manipulated as well.
Prabhat Garg: So, as procurement professionals, we have to watch out for those things. And third is artificial intelligence.
Prabhat Garg: So, on artificial intelligence, Of course.
Prabhat Garg: Let's, go back to, Chris, to artificial intelligence slide.
Prabhat Garg: AI in procurement has become the buzzword of the day, as we know.
Prabhat Garg: Past trend analysis, past pricing analysis, engaging with the market, as Matteo said on the first day is very important. AI helps in that also.
Prabhat Garg: As well as, it generative AI can give you the future, also.
Prabhat Garg: But there are limitations right now for AI in procurement. AI is fully dependent on the data that is fed into the LLMs, the large models.
Prabhat Garg: And data, especially in MDV procurement right now, is a little too fragmented, and also the questionable quality in some cases.
Prabhat Garg: So, therefore, the data quality has to improve for AI to be really reliable.
Prabhat Garg: Then the second thing in the AIC procurement is that they can never, never replace humans.
Prabhat Garg: But human development needs to take place, which right now is not happening in most organ… or many organizations.
Prabhat Garg: Humans have to understand how the outcome of our AI model has been generated, which is right now not understood that well.
Prabhat Garg: When we are doing procurement, we have to be ready for challenges from the losing bidders. Can the AI outcome really help us develop a bid challenge system which can be defended in a code? We are not there yet. Hopefully, we'll reach there one day.
Prabhat Garg: So AI in Procurement will help the procurement professionals improve their efficiency, give them past trends, but they will never be replacing the humans.
Prabhat Garg: AIs cannot do your site interviews. AI cannot do stakeholder analysis.
Prabhat Garg: AI does not do site visits.
Prabhat Garg: Humans will have to do that.
Prabhat Garg: So therefore, AI and procurement will be strengthening the procurement system, it will not be replacing the human systems.
Prabhat Garg: Next slide, please.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: If I could just throw a quick thing in here. So, a big problem in corruption is the information asymmetry between the government and its contractors, and AI can start to fix that, so…
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Last week, a funny story is that I was looking at a… I was lecturing about a certain procurement, and I looked at the specifications, and I said, oh, these specifications are awfully… awfully tight. They… I… I can't believe… I said, let's just put these specifications through AI.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: And within 10 seconds, it turned out the specifications identified a specific product in the world. One product! I thought, oh my gosh, this is a new way to use AI to deal with the problem we've been dealing with, you know, for millennia in procurement. How do you tell if, in fact, the specifications are wired?
Prabhat Garg: Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Prabhat Garg: So, in the interest of time, I know I have run out of my time. We can jump to the future of Procurement slide.
Prabhat Garg: how do we know that our anti-corruption strategies are working? Traditionally, as Professor Williams and Professor Yukins were talking.
Prabhat Garg: About investigations, about sanctions, how many companies have been debugged worldwide?
Prabhat Garg: Yes, there are important statistical measures.
Prabhat Garg: But as procurement professionals.
Prabhat Garg: For us, the Mesa should be different. Our indicator should be different. Our indicator should be how many more firms are participating. Are we increasing competitiveness?
Prabhat Garg: How many first-time bidders are getting encouraged to participate in government bidding, and not shying away because all government procurement is corrupt?
Prabhat Garg: Are we shortening the procurement cycle by using digital platforms or by using AI? Are we getting better quality bids, more market engagement? Are we able to understand the market? Does the market understand us?
Prabhat Garg: And are we having successful con- contract implementation? Are we really making sure that wells are dug on the ground?
Prabhat Garg: Technology cannot do it, we'll have to do it.
Prabhat Garg: Can we have the, really, all these things as a procurement system, which include legal framework, which includes evaluation panels, contract management system?
Prabhat Garg: Can we have a system at some point, hopefully not at least in my lifetime.
Prabhat Garg: Where public will stop worrying about corruption in public procurement.
Prabhat Garg: But they will start
Prabhat Garg: Being surprised when they see a news of corruption in the newspaper, because they are not used to seeing corruption in public procurement.
Prabhat Garg: That is what… that is the day we should be striving for.
Prabhat Garg: And one day our systems can be there, they are not there right now.
Prabhat Garg: A final reflection, allow me to conclude where I begin.
Prabhat Garg: So long as they are men, there will be corruption.
Prabhat Garg: So, achieving zero corruption is an unrealistic goal.
Prabhat Garg: Our objective should be to strengthen the systems where opportunities for corruption are reduced.
Prabhat Garg: And incentives are taken away where the people, bidders, buyers, and donors, they all strive toward the same goal.
Prabhat Garg: To increase… and the goals are increasing transparency, strengthen institution, encourage genuine competition, improve accountability, and ultimately to make integrity as a norm of public procurement.
Prabhat Garg: So, closing… in my closing remarks, I want to leave you with… with one thought, a few thoughts.
Prabhat Garg: Integrity is not created by investigations. It's created by thousands of honest people like you and me who are working in the field.
Prabhat Garg: Making day-to-day decisions honestly and working in detail.
Prabhat Garg: Future of anti-corruption is not merely fighting corruption. It should be to increase the integrity in the systems that we catch the bad guys before it happens. Catching them after it happens is already too late.
Prabhat Garg: Good procurement systems should not depend on good people.
Prabhat Garg: People are not good. As we know, this is a human nature.
Prabhat Garg: Good systems should depend on
Prabhat Garg: Assuming people are human, and human nature will remain human nature. But how can we reduce opportunity for misconduct, and make integrity as the first choice for the humans who operate in this field?
Prabhat Garg: Thank you very much.
Prabhat Garg: Thank you, Professor Yukins.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thank you, Prabhat. I really appreciate it.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: As noted before, the slides will be posted, and the slides include Prabhat's email address, if you want to contact him about a discount on his forthcoming book. So, just want to close by talking about the major procurement reform efforts that we've been reviewing this week, the UNSA trial efforts, the EU efforts.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: the U.S. efforts, what's going on in South Africa. And in South Africa, for example, the new South African regulations that are under review right now call for, explicitly call for a risk management system to be built into large construction projects.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: what you're seeing, once you take a step back, once you look at all these various procurement reform efforts going on internationally, it's really a step beyond what the OECD report, which is… which is, there's an image of here, and is also on the Public Procurement International page. The OECD report from June of 2023
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Talked about public procurement as a risk management effort.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: And when you see public procurement in those terms, that it's not a matter of yes-no rules, but it's a matter of a highly professionalized risk management, then you begin to see the integration between anti-corruption rules and good procurement rules.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Good Procurement rules are about risk management, anti-corruption is about risk management, and all the pieces start to fit together, and that's a… that's a very important insight that these various reform system… reform efforts running in parallel, offer us.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: I just want to close. We had… I've been reflecting over the last few days why we… a colleague asked, why did you do this series, Chris? Why did you do this series on international development?
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: given all the cutbacks that have been in international aid, especially in the U.S, but in the last couple days, we saw them, for example, in the UK as well. Why did you… why did you do this? And I joked, I said, I like to play baseball in the rain. Playing baseball in the rain is uniquely difficult, but it improves your skills.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: And that was kind of a silly answer. I think what we learned over the last few days is that
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Even with the massive cuts in international development that have come, what you've seen from the professionals that have been presenting over the last few days, what you've seen from our audience members that have been participating through the chat, what we see every day in the classroom from our students and from our colleagues internationally.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Is a tremendous commitment to international development.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Everybody who's involved in this field understands that what's at stake is men, women, and children in individual countries, and we have to hold the community together and build capacity in that community to continue to serve those people. So the funding, the cut in funding is not irrelevant.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: But it's not at the core. The core here is the commitment that all these professionals hold and hold very dearly. So with that, I want to sign off and thank all the panelists. They're wonderful. Any last words, Benedetta?
Benedetta Audia: Yes, actually, thank you, thank you, Chris. I just wanted to add to what you were saying about the importance of international development despite the current funding challenges.
Benedetta Audia: There are still thousands of opportunities out there. I think it's important to highlight this, despite the cuts, and also,
Benedetta Audia: Many of the funding cuts affect the staff costs, but there's still thousands of projects that are being implemented all over the world. And again, I just wanted to, as I always do, put things in perspective. Let's just remember the impact that international development has
Benedetta Audia: on people's lives, and the fact that these rules are not abstract, they are extremely important, because when a project is well implemented, it can really save lives. And so, it is a responsibility on all of us professors, practitioners.
Benedetta Audia: Students, those who are interested in the field, to make sure that the system is appropriate for the objectives it is intended to reach.
Benedetta Audia: So I really hope that this, series, helped, everyone, just remember why this is such a very important field of law, and how, you know,
Benedetta Audia: how impactful it is. So thanks again.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Very wisely said, Ms. Audia. Thank you.
Benedetta Audia: Beautiful.
Christopher Yukins / GW Law: Thank you all. Have a good day. Take care.
Sope Williams: Bye, everyone, thank you!