About this book:

*Following the Money: Corruption, Transparency and Anti-Corruption Reforms in Europe* is a comprehensive manual designed for practitioners to move beyond theoretical anti-corruption concepts and toward the implementation of measurable, data-driven reforms. The book emphasizes that corruption in Europe often hides within opaque ownership structures and complex procurement systems, suggesting that the most effective way to combat wrongdoing is to "follow the money" through integrated digital oversight. It provides a strategic framework built on three pillars: meaningful transparency (such as beneficial ownership registers), functional integrity systems (including whistleblower protections), and accountability mechanisms that utilize forensic analytics to detect fraud and collusion.

The text provides a detailed roadmap for diagnosing and mitigating risks across high-stakes sectors, including public procurement, healthcare, infrastructure, and state-owned enterprises. By leveraging the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) and cross-referencing asset declarations with company registries, the book demonstrates how practitioners can identify "red flags" like bid-rigging or conflicts of interest. It argues that the digital age offers unprecedented opportunities for oversight through civic-tech tools, dashboards, and crowdsourcing, which democratize the auditing process by allowing journalists and civil society to participate in monitoring public expenditure.

Beyond technical solutions, the manual addresses the complex institutional and human challenges of reform. It explores the nuances of international obligations under UNCAC, GRECO, and EU law, while highlighting the "implementation gap" that exists when strong laws are not backed by political will or administrative capacity. The final chapters focus on change management, stressing that for reforms to "stick," they must be institutionalized through continuous training, professionalized civil service, and robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks. Ultimately, the book asserts that anti-corruption is a continuous cycle of diagnosis and iteration aimed at making corruption costlier and more difficult to hide.