Talking to Peter Eigen in the bar of a hotel in
Uzbekistan during the European Bank for Reconstruction &
Development annual meeting, Euromoney is reminded strongly of
the hero of John le Carré's novel The Constant
Gardener.
The novel is about a young diplomat in Kenya who turns a blind
eye to official corruption in the name of good diplomacy, while his
more radical and idealistic wife performs heroic work in the
Nairobi slums. Her murder by a multinational pharmaceutical company
prompts the diplomat to stop sitting on the fence and start
actively campaigning against corruption
himself.
Corruption: a banned word
Peter Eigen, the German chairman of global NGO Transparency
International, started his 10-year fight against corruption in
Nairobi, where he worked as head of sub-Saharan Africa for the
World Bank. While working at the Bank, he felt keenly the necessity
of "having to straddle different points" - trying to help the poor,
while also mobilizing...
