Nancy Boswell steps down after 17 years as chief of one of the most prominent TI chapters
LONDON (TrustLaw) - The head of the U.S. chapter of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) has resigned after 17 years at the helm, the organisation’s international secretariat said on Tuesday.
Deborah Unger, spokeswoman for the Berlin-based organisation, confirmed a report on subscription website Just Anti-Corruption that Boswell was stepping down but declined to comment on the reason for her resignation.
“We don’t comment on the management of the chapters,” Unger said. “We have 90 of them and if we commented on every single one when they resigned or hired people, that would be too much so we leave that to the chapters themselves to deal with.”
TI-USA also declined to comment and Boswell was unavailable for comment.
Just Anti-Corruption said Boswell’s departure from one of the most prominent national chapters of TI follows criticism of TI-USA’s fundraising, grant management and Boswell’s own management style.
The website said Berlin had expressed concern that TI-USA was not focusing enough on domestic issues despite a perception that corruption and governance problems were on the rise in the United States.
It also said TI-USA had been slow to comply with a request from the Berlin secretariat to make public how much money it received from corporate donors. Some of those donors had been the subject of international bribery investigations.
TI’s Unger confirmed that the secretariat had put pressure on TI-USA to be more transparent about its funding. The chapter began publishing specific details of corporate donations on its website in December.
Boswell joined TI-USA as a volunteer in 1994, the year Transparency International was founded.
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