The Opening Ceremony of the 16th International Anti-Corruption Conference.
The Honourable Senator Datuk Paul Low Seng Kuan, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Government of Malaysia
Tan Sri Dr. Abu Kassim bin Mohamed, Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission
Akere Muna, Chair of the IACC Council
Dato' Akhbar Satar, President of Transparency International Malaysia
José Ugaz, Chair of Transparency International
Re-watch the Opening Ceremony here.
In a country where killers are celebrated as heroes, the filmmakers challenge unrepentant death squad leader Anwar Congo and his friends to dramatise their role in genocide. But their idea of being in a movie is not to provide testimony for a documentary: they want to be stars in their favourite film genres—gangster, western, musical. They write the scripts. They play themselves. And they play their victims. This is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass-murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit.
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Producer: SIGNE BYRGE SØRENSEN
Year: 2012
Language(s): Indonesian with English subtitles
Duration: 159 minutes
This special Dateline investigation revealed senior lawyers detailing how to avoid detection when laundering money into Australia and beyond.
SBS Dateline revealed undercover footage showing lawyers from a leading law firm in Papua New Guinea revealing a trail of corruption and influence peddling involving politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers.
The film’s had significant impact in PNG and Australia.
Since airing, the PNG Prime Minister has called for an investigation into money laundering between the countries. The PNG Opposition leader Don Poyle has asked for a royal commission into international money laundering and sought co-operation from Australia, the US, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. Senior Australian Government Ministers including Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop, have spoken out condemning money laundering, promising to investigate.
This story was important because of the deep ties between Australia and PNG. Australia provides around half a billion in aid to our Pacific neighbour and yet rumours of corruption at the highest level in the country persist. SBS Dateline was also told the Federal Government and AFP are intentionally turning a blind eye to this illegal behaviour so as not to jeopardise the nations’ agreement to take asylum seekers on Manus island.
Reporter: Meggie Palmer
Producer: Meggie Palmer & Geoff Parish
Organisations involved: NGO Global Witness, SBS Dateline and Fairfax Media
Year: 2015
Language: English
Duration: 15 minutes 23 seconds
Twitter: @datelineSBS @MeggiePalmer
The session will look at the largely hidden, but integral part that banks and other service providers play in enabling corruption. It will examine how the flow of dirty money around the world simply could not happen without the role played by the bankers, lawyers, accountants and others facilitating it, and the devastating human cost they contribute to.
Drawing on shocking examples and seminal investigations around the world, it will explore the extent to which banks are failing to uphold the rules that require them to spot and report when corrupt officials are trying to launder money through them. It will examine if and how we should hold senior executives personally responsible for these failures. More broadly it will discuss what can be done to make sure the financial sector and others play a more robust role in preventing corruption and other forms of money laundering.
For more details on this crucial area in the fight against corruption, see the briefing:
https://www.globalwitness.org/reports/banks-and-dirty-money/
The oil, gas and mining sectors are prone to corruption, thanks largely to the high financial stakes and weak oversight. Of the 427 cases reviewed in the 2014 OECD Foreign Bribery Report, 19% came from the extractive sector; of the 176 cases prosecuted under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 23% were oil sector cases.
Delving into actual cases of extractive sector corruption can help generate smarter response strategies. However, relative to the scale of the problem, this kind of empirical analysis is in short supply, and is discouraged by several factors: the cases are technical and complex, they often do not end in straightforward verdicts, and they involve very powerful governments and companies.
This panel forms part of an effort to address this gap. NRGI will present early findings from its analysis of 30 oil and mining corruption cases to identify common trends, such as the activities of middlemen or “fixers” often present in corrupt deals, or how local content provisions can be manipulated to benefit well-connected individuals. Global Witness will offer evidence from its ample body of case research to show how secret corporate structures can enable corrupt practices. A representative of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) will provide an update on EITI activities in the Asia-Pacific region, and highlight specific kinds of EITI reporting (e.g. on state-owned company spending, license awards, etc.) that may reduce corruption risks.
Other speakers will delve into a single country’s experience. A civil society leader from Afghanistan will discuss how corruption has affected that country’s burgeoning mining sector, and the negative impacts it has brought. A senior official from the anti-corruption commission in Indonesia will draw lessons from several cases of oil and mining sector corruption, and discuss how they have been tackled to date.
Drawing on real-world cases, the speakers will tackle questions including:
The content of the discussions will help anti-corruption fighters (from ministries, ACAs, civil society and media) tailor their work to reflect the actual mechanics of oil, gas and mining sector corruption, and will identify gaps in our knowledge that need to be filled.
A hard-hitting documentary for cricket fans and non-fans alike. Journalists Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber set off on a journey to follow a hunch that the 140-year-old game of Test Cricket is under threat of extinction, only to stumble on something more sinister than they could ever have imagined. During their thrilling three-year journey they criss-cross the globe from London to Australia, from India to Dubai and back again, during which they meet players, the game’s administrators, fans and controversial cricket financiers, resulting in a film that is about much more than cricket. This is a film about passion, about money, about power and standing up for what you care about before it is too late.
Directors: Sam Collins, Jarrod Kimber, Johnny Blank
Producer: Sam Collins
Year: 2015
Language: English
Duration: 97 minutes
In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most bio-diverse places on Earth and home to the planet’s last remaining mountain gorillas. In this wild, but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers - including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a caretaker of orphan gorillas and a dedicated conservationist - protect this UNESCO world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources. When the newly formed M23 rebel group declares war, a new conflict threatens the lives and stability of everyone and everything they've worked so hard to protect, with the filmmakers and the film’s participants caught in the crossfire.
A powerful combination of investigative journalism and nature documentary, VIRUNGA is the incredible true story of a group of courageous people risking their lives to build a better future in a part of Africa the world’s forgotten, and a gripping exposé of the realities of life in the Congo.
Director/Producer: Orlando von EinsiedelIn January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was several years into the making of a film about abuses of national security in post-9/11 America when she started receiving encrypted emails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely unique in the history of cinema: a 100% real life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes.
Director: Laura Poitras
Producer: Dirk Wilutzky, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Laura Poitras
Year: 2014
Language: English
Duration: 114min
This special Dateline investigation revealed senior lawyers detailing how to avoid detection when laundering money into Australia and beyond.
SBS Dateline revealed undercover footage showing lawyers from a leading law firm in Papua New Guinea revealing a trail of corruption and influence peddling involving politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers.
The film’s had significant impact in PNG and Australia.
Since airing, the PNG Prime Minister has called for an investigation into money laundering between the countries. The PNG Opposition leader Don Poyle has asked for a royal commission into international money laundering and sought co-operation from Australia, the US, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. Senior Australian Government Ministers including Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop, have spoken out condemning money laundering, promising to investigate.
This story was important because of the deep ties between Australia and PNG. Australia provides around half a billion in aid to our Pacific neighbour and yet rumours of corruption at the highest level in the country persist. SBS Dateline was also told the Federal Government and AFP are intentionally turning a blind eye to this illegal behaviour so as not to jeopardise the nations’ agreement to take asylum seekers on Manus island.
Reporter: Meggie Palmer
Producer: Meggie Palmer & Geoff Parish
Organisations involved: NGO Global Witness, SBS Dateline and Fairfax Media
Year: 2015
Language: English
Duration: 15 minutes 23 seconds
Twitter: @datelineSBS @MeggiePalmer
No Fire Zone is a chilling, powerful Emmy-nominated feature documentary which tells the story of the final months of the 26-year long Sri Lankan civil war. Released in 2013, this cut has been updated for 2015.
The story is told by the people who lived through the war - and through some of the most dramatic and disturbing video evidence ever seen: direct evidence of war crimes, summary execution, torture and sexual violence, recorded by both the victims and perpetrators during the final 138 days of hell which form the central narrative of the film.
No Fire Zone is directed by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Callum Macrae, a Peabody and Colombia Dupont Broadcast Journalism Award winner and Greirson and BAFTA nominee.
No Fire Zone is something of an international phenomenon. The product of a three year investigation, it is credited with playing a key role in convincing the UN Human Rights Council in March 2014 to launch a major international war crimes investigation into these events. It is also a cinematic tour de force. It was described as "beautifully crafted and heart wrenching” by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, "utterly convincing" by the Globe and Mail in Toronto - and Empire noted: "It is vitally important that this feature reaches the widest possible audience”. One critic in Australia described it as “the most devastating film I have seen”.
It has been praised for its impact – despite an international campaign by the Sri Lankan government to ban and discredit it. British Prime Minister David Cameron said: ”No Fire Zone is one of the most chilling documentaries I’ve watched”. Musician and Artist M.I.A said No Fire Zone is “Not only the most important account of what happened to the Tamils, its actually become part of the fabric of their history.”
Director: Callum Macrae
Editor: Michael Nollet
Language: English
Year: 2013 updated in 2015
Duration: 94 Minutes