Eva Joly is the enterprising and stubborn-minded Oslo-born girl who went from being a student in Paris to becoming one of France’s most relentless enemies of corruption. “The bulldozer from the North” plunged into the spotlight in 1995, when the law expert began investigating corruption in the formerly state-owned French oil company Elf-Aquitaine.
Expert
Within a short period of time, Joly uncovered a tangled web of lies, whitewashing, corruption and bribes surrounding the seemingly respectable oil company.
Now, Joly is famous and hailed worldwide as one of the most important and knowledgeable experts on corruption. Her enemies are powerful, but her fans are as well.
In Washington, Joly met with a group of Russian entrepreneurs. In her lecture, Joly explained why there is so little corruption in Norway.
“There are many historical reasons for Norway’s transparency and lack of corruption,” she said.
“The democratic tradition in Norway is very old – as far as I know the first assembly of free men in Norway happened over a thousand years ago.”
Statoil crisis
She went on to describe how the relatively small differences in income combined with a high level of transparency contributed to the low level of corruption.
“In Norway, your income is made public. For the past few years they have even been posted on the Internet. It is extremely difficult in Norway to have unexplained wealth,” she said.
Joly added that public officials were given relatively good salaries, diminishing the temptation to accept bribes.
“Our bureaucrats are considered competent and efficient,” she said.
She did not, however, deny that corruption exists in Norway.
Last year, the Norwegian oil giant Statoil came into the spotlight when it was discovered that payments had been made to the son of a former Iranian Head of State at the same time Statoil was applying for licenses to operate in Iran. The scandal resulted in the dismissal of several company heads, among them the CEO and the Chairman of the Board.
“Although the Statoil scandal shows that Norway does experience some corruption,” Joly said, “it also shows that society does not tolerate it when they see it.”
Read more about Eva Joly in this Washington Post article.