When I arrived at the World Bank over three years ago, I was told there was a word I could not utter. And if you used it you had to do it very quietly and out of earshot. Michel Camdessus and I decided that we would redefine corruption, not as a political issue but as an economic and social issue which we did at our joint Annual Meetings in 1996. And since that time, we have had vigorous debate, great focus, to a point that at the Annual Meetings in 1997, the central item on the agenda of the Development Committee was corruption. Corruption is a cancer.
Corruption is the greatest eroding factor in a society .
Corruption is the largest impediment to investment. And it is not just a theoretical concept. It is a concept that really becomes clear when children have to pay three times the price that they should for lunches. It is a problem that becomes clear when people die because they are given bad drugs because the good drugs have been sold. It is a problem when farmers are robbed of their livelihood.