The IMF, Public Finance, Corruption, and Civil Society

This event is in partnership with the Partnership for Transparency’s Anti-Corruption Forum.

The International Monetary Fund’s newly adopted anti-corruption framework has profound implications for emerging markets globally and signals a clear commitment by the institution to make corruption a key priority. In April 2019, the IMF published the Fiscal Monitor: Curbing Corruption, a major report under the direction of Vitor Gaspar, that comprehensively analyzes critical issues of corruption in government fiscal affairs – from procurement to the management of state-owned-enterprises.

On October 2, CIPE will host a panel discussion on public finance, corruption and civil society led by Vitor Gaspar, Director of Fiscal Affairs at the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Gaspar will be joined on the panel by Professor Brian Levy of John Hopkins University and Ekaterina Lysova, Program Officer for Europe & Eurasia at the Center for International Private Enterprise.

The Center for International Enterprise’s (CIPE) Anti-Corruption and Governance Center and the Partnership for Transparency Fund will be co-hosts for the event. Lunch will be provided.

Panelists:

Event Introduction:

• Frank Brown, Director of the Anti-Corruption & Governance Center at CIPE

Panelists:

• Frank Vogl, Moderator, Co-Founder of the Partnership for Transparency Fund
• Vitor Gaspar, Director of Fiscal Affairs at the International Monetary Fund
• Brian Levy, Academic Director at the Mandela School at the University of Cape Town and Professor at SAIS at Johns Hopkins University
• Ekaterina Lysova, Program Officer for Europe & Eurasia at CIPE

Bios:

• Frank Vogl is the co-founder of two leading international non-governmental organizations fighting corruption — Transparency International and the Partnership for Transparency Fund. He teaches at Georgetown University, writes regular “blog” articles on corruption for theGlobalist.com and lectures extensively. He is also a specialist in international economics and finance with more than 50 years of experience in these fields – first as an international journalist, then as a senior World Bank official and, from 1990 to 2017, as the president and CEO of a consulting firm, Vogl Communications Inc.
• Vitor Gaspar, a Portuguese national, has been Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund since 2014. Prior to joining the IMF, he was a Special Adviser at Banco de Portugal. He served as Minister of State and Finance of Portugal during 2011–13. He also held a number of positions in European institutions. Notably, he was director general of research at the European Central Bank from 1998–2004. Mr. Gaspar holds a Ph.D. and a post-doctoral agregado in Economics from Universidade Nova de Lisboa; he graduated from Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
• Brian Levy joined the SAIS John Hopkins faculty in 2012, following a 23-year career at the World Bank, where he was at the forefront of sustained efforts to integrate governance concerns into the theory and practice of economic development. Between 2007 and 2010 he was head of the secretariat responsible for the design and implementation of the World Bank Group’s governance and anti-corruption strategy. He worked in the Bank’s Africa Vice Presidency from 1991 to 2003, where his role included leadership of a major effort to transform and scale-up the organization’s engagement on governance reform. He has worked in over a dozen countries, spanning four continents. He has published numerous books and articles on the institutional underpinnings of regulation, on capacity development in Africa, on industrial policy, and on the political economy of development strategy. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1983.
• Ekaterina Lysova is a Program Officer for Europe & Eurasia at the Center for International Private Enterprise. She has over 15 years of experience working on issues of media freedom, civil society development, and anti-corruption in the former Soviet Union. She worked as a media lawyer for an IREX project supporting independent media in Russia, served as a Eurasia media law consultant for Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, and conducted her two-year project on Russia’s media and security sector reforms at the University of Cologne as a German Chancellor Scholar.