Disclosure of Scandinavian telecom companies’ corruption in Uzbekistan: The role of investigative journalists

Abstract

Transparency International’s yearly Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Scandinavia as one of the least corrupt regions in the world. However, during the past decades, large Scandinavian corporations in the telecommunications, oil and defence industries have – in their struggle for business contracts in other countries – been involved in several large-scale bribery scandals. There has also been a growing range of corruption cases in the Swedish and Norwegian public sectors. In many of these cases, investigative journalists have played a crucial role in the disclosure of corruption, sometimes cooperating across media organisations and countries, demonstrating the importance of journalism as a public good for democracy. In this article, we explore, discuss and analyse the work of and methods used by investigative journalists in revealing large-scale corruption related to the expansion of Nordic telecom companies in Uzbekistan.

Keywords

Corruption investigative journalism media and democracy revelations of bribery scandals

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