On March 26 and 27, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is hosting its annual Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum in Paris, France. The event is a gathering of leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector to discuss the global fight against corruption.
Once again, whistleblowing, including the protections countries must enact, will be a major topic of the forum.
On March 25, National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is presenting an official side event entitled “Empowering Whistleblowers: Strengthening Protections in the Fight Against Corruption.”
The panel will examine recent changes in global anti-corruption enforcement, such as President Trump’s pause on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations, which have created a crisis in international anti-corruption efforts. The panel will discuss how international whistleblower protections, including those of OECD member countries, must be strengthened in order to effectively prosecute international bribery and money laundering.
The event is free to the public and will be streamed online Tuesday, March 25, at 6:30 AM EST/11:30 AM CET.
Speakers include-
- Stephen Kohn, partner in the whistleblower law firm of Kohn, Kohn, and Colapinto and the Chairman of the Board of the National Whistleblower Center.
- Eliza Lockhart, Attorney and Research Fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
- María de los Ángeles Estrada, Lawyer, Leading Transparency, Anti-Corruption, and Digitalization Initiative in Mexico
- Christopher Wylie, Whistleblower, exposing massive privacy violations by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
- Eric Hylton, Former Deputy of the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division and Head of International Operations.
- Emin Huseynov, Human Rights Defender, journalist, and whistleblower-advocate.
This year’s OECD forum has taken on added significance in wake of the shifting global leadership around anti-corruption enforcement. In February, the Trump administration issued an Executive Order (EO) pausing the enforcement of the FCPA. On March 20, the U.K., France, and Switzerland announced a new International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce to enforce transnational anti-bribery laws, a historic breakthrough according to advocates.
Ahead of the OECD forum, panelist Stephen Kohn authored a paper published in SSRN which details how liberal democracies must fill in the void left by the United States’ retreat in anti-corruption enforcement. Kohn details how by building upon the model of the United States’ FCPA, which has strong whistleblower protections and incentives under the SEC Whistleblower Program, foreign countries can band together to expand anti-corruption efforts.