Understanding politics across borders and divides
Published: August 22, 2026 On August 20, a court in Shenzhen sentenced Hui Ka Yan, founder of China Evergrande Group and once Asia’s richest man, to life in prison for fraud, bribery, and related financial crimes tied to the collapse of his property empire. Evergrande Group and its real estate arm were fined a combined … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Three countries share a continent, a trade agreement and a set of anti-corruption treaty obligations, and they score 75, 64 and 27 on the same index. Transparency International put Canada at 75, the United States at 64 and Mexico at 27 on the 2025 corruption index, with the American score … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Latin America produced the largest corruption investigation in the democratic world and then spent a decade arguing about whether it was legitimate. Operation Lava Jato in Brazil convicted hundreds of people including executives and politicians across party lines, and its findings triggered prosecutions in a dozen countries through the Odebrecht … Read more
Published: July 22, 2026 Overview The single most important thing to happen in Guatemalan politics this year is a change of personnel: in May, attorney general Consuelo Porras finally left office, and President Bernardo Arevalo installed a successor. For two and a half years Porras was the immovable center of the fight over whether … Read more
Published: July 21, 2026 Overview Ghana’s macroeconomic turnaround since 2024 is the most dramatic in West Africa. Inflation that peaked above 54 percent in December 2022 fell to 3.2 percent by March 2026, growth reached about 6 percent in 2025, and the cedi appreciated more than 40 percent against the dollar in 2025 to become … Read more
Published: July 19, 2026 Overview Spain in 2026 is governed by a prime minister who refuses to fall and a coalition too fragile to do much beyond survive. Pedro Sanchez, the Socialist leader who has held power since 2018, presides over a minority government battered by a cascade of corruption scandals reaching close to his … Read more
Published: July 19, 2026 Overview South Africa is two years into an experiment that would have been unthinkable for most of its democratic history: the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela that governed alone for three decades, now shares power with its old rival the Democratic Alliance in a Government of National Unity. … Read more
Overview Corruption is worsening on the main global measure, and the enforcement built to fight it is under strain. Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index put the global average at 42 out of 100, its lowest in more than a decade, with 122 of 182 countries scoring below 50. The number of countries scoring above … Read more
Published: July 19, 2026 The official who ran Indonesia’s most powerful anti-corruption unit is now the target of a corruption case. Febrie Adriansyah, the deputy attorney general for special crimes, resigned on July 11 after police raided his properties and seized a haul of gold and cash that ranks among the largest in the country’s … Read more
Published: July 18, 2026 Overview Brazil is eleven weeks from a presidential election that will decide whether Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins a fourth term, and a second one in a row, or whether a badly divided right can unite behind a single challenger before October 4. President Lula, of the Workers’ Party (PT), … Read more