Multilateral Banks

Now come the second thoughts on globalization, as never before have world markets been so integrated. The current financial crisis could mark the start of an effort to overhaul the global financial system conceived at the 1944 summit in Bretton Woods, N.H., which set the rules of international commerce for industrial countries. Read More

The European Union's secretive decision-making processes were condemned on Thursday in a legal judgment that should lead to more light being shed on how thousands of regulations affecting businesses are hatched. Read More

The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world's second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside experts. Read More

As the Congolese government begins a review of mining contracts, a mining kingpin is deported on unrelated corruption charges, and the World Bank faces accusations of failure to provide oversight of contract deals. Read More

Gordon Brown has signalled he wants to see poor countries develop through trade rather than aid. Read More

An Oxford economist has a new and potentially powerful idea: setting up an voluntary international charter to guide transparency efforts in resource-rich developing countries, in order to stave of corruption. Read More

Conservationists in Uganda are fighting a last-ditch battle to stop the destruction of a forest reserve by a sugar corporation friendly with the government. Read More

German police clashed with hundreds of protesters in the port of Rostock on Saturday following a much larger peaceful demonstration against the Group of 8 summit meeting next week in a nearby Baltic resort. Read More

A leading opponent of a Chinese-financed dam in Sudan accused Beijing on Friday of fueling widespread human rights abuses, as Khartoum moved to relocate 70,000 villagers to make way for the project. Read More

The World Bank has withheld the findings of an inquiry into alleged mismanagement of bank funds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising fresh questions about the anti-corruption strategy of Paul Wolfowitz, the bank's president. Read More