Many anti-corruption conversations at BriberyMatters focus either on corporate compliance or the quality of countries’ public sector institutions. Less examined are the social determinants, individual behaviors and economic incentives behind corruption. What motivates an official to demand, or a citizen or firm to pay, a bribe? To answer those questions, could we treat anti-corruption like a social science experiment, testing a hypothesis against empirical evidence?

On April 12, 2026, Hungarian voters ended sixteen years of Fidesz party rule in a landslide. Péter Magyar's Tisza party swept in with the largest mandate any party has received in Hungary's democratic history, and while economic stagnation and inflation drove much of the vote, corruption fatigue ran through it. Polling in the lead-up to the election consistently pointed to public frustration with graft as one of the forces pulling support away from Viktor Orbán...

Previously for BriberyMatters, I covered the first financial sanctions issued against a firm by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA), in conversation with Valentina Lana, who teaches law at Sciences Po and is an in-house private sector ethics and compliance attorney. The same July week that decision was announced, the AFA also issued its 2025 Activity Report (in French), offering a broader look at its work...

BriberyMatters has regularly covered increasing risks of corruption in the United States, tied both to recent regulatory and enforcement changes, and to President Trump’s extensive business interests. One issue took the headlines on August 11, when the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) made permanent the rule ending beneficial ownership reporting for all domestic entities and US persons under the Corporate Transparency Act...

In the nearly 10 years since its creation, the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA) had never issued a financial penalty pursuant to its authority under Article 17 of the Transparency, Anti-Corruption and Economic Modernisation Act, known as Sapin II. That changed this July with a €350,000 fine against an unnamed company, and a €60,000 personal fine against its legal representative.

Since January 2025, the federal government has seemingly stepped back from a range of good governance, transparency, and anti-corruption measures, from the February 2025 executive order pausing FCPA enforcement, to the March 2025 rule by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) exempting nearly all US companies from Corporate Transparency Act beneficial-ownership reporting, to the shifting enforcement priorities of the Foreign Agents Registratio