Time For Transparency

Across the globe, revenues from oil, gas and mining that should be funding sustainable economic development have been misappropriated and mismanaged.

This Global Witness report considers five major examples of this problem: Kazakhstan, Congo Brazzaville, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nauru.

In these countries, governments do not provide even basic information about their revenues from natural resources. Nor do oil, mining and gas companies publish any information about payments made to governments. Huge amounts of money are therefore not subject to any oversight.

Investigations also reveal that some companies have played a willing role in facilitating off-the-books payments, misappropriation of state assets, and other nefarious activities.

Ordinary citizens, who often own a country’s resources under its constitution, are thus left without the information to call their governments to account over the management of their revenues. The end result is a litany of corruption, social decay, increased poverty, reinforcement of authoritarian government and political unrest, which can ultimately lead to state failure and the spread of instability across regions.