At end May, the World Bank Group’s Sanctions Board, the Bank’s independent administrative tribunal for allegations of corruption and fraud in Bank projects, published its decisions on sanction cases for the first time. The sanctions placed on firms and individuals mean they became ineligible to participate in Bank-funded operations. Since 1999, 530 firms and individuals have been sanctioned.
The move has been welcomed by numerous advocacy groups as an improvement of transparency and accountability. “NGOs, businesses and governments can now better monitor patterns of fraud and corruption”, and “most importantly, the poor will benefit as this reporting further helps curb this behaviour and ensures that resources are not stolen from the developing world”, said Eric Le Compte, the executive director of NGO Jubilee USA. Since the decision was made, eight sanction cases have been published.
