The Transparency International (TI) global movement began over 25 years ago. Through advocacy, campaigning and research, our movement has exposed countless systems and networks that enable global corruption to thrive. Transparency International has been unrelenting in demanding greater transparency and integrity in all areas of public life and private business.
From the mid-1990s TI was represented in NZ by a national contact person at the University of Canterbury, Dr. Peter Perry. The New Zealand chapter was formally established in 1999, under the chairmanship of Senior Accountant Michael Morris, and supported by volunteer executive officers.
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The initial focus of Transparency International New Zealand’s chapter was to have the New Zealand Government ratify the OECD anti-bribery convention. Opposition to the convention from NZ’s largest exporter, Fonterra, resulted in the Crimes Act amendment being watered down at the Select Committee stage through the removal of extra-territorial effect. Lobbying by TINZ saw the original drafting restored.
TINZ has subsequently coordinated regular assessments of the government’s record in implementing the Convention.
Until the early nineties, many companies regularly wrote off bribes as business expenses in their tax filings, and many international agencies were resigned to the fact that corruption would sap funding from many development projects around the world. There was no global convention aimed at curbing corruption, and no way to measure corruption or its impact at the global scale.
Transparency International was established in 1993 with a Secretariat in Berlin, positioned to change attitudes towards corruption, bribery and organised crime within governments and businesses.
The New Zealand chapter was formed a few years later in 1999. and it became an incorporated society and charity in 2001.
Global successes include the creation of international anti-corruption conventions (such as UNCAC); the reporting of corruption through Legal Advice Centres around the world, the agreement of companies to stop corrupt practices as a result of being involved in programmes that TI runs, improvement in electoral fairness as a result of TI campaigns in specific countries, and improvement in national laws, regulations and policy as a result of TI reports, analysis and programmes.
