27/08/2026
Transparency International’s 2025 Annual Report
Corruption is not only about envelopes of cash changing hands. Increasingly, it is about who has the power to shape laws, influence political decisions and avoid accountability. That is why we need more than rules on paper. We need people and organisations with the capacity to challenge abuses of power, bring cases forward, expose wrongdoing and push institutions to change. Transparency International’s 2025 Annual Report offers some compelling evidence that this work can make a difference.
Evidence that change is possible
In 2025, its Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres supported 14,000 people across 53 countries, providing free and confidential advice to people who experienced or witnessed corruption. The movement also contributed to more than 60 changes in policy, law and institutional practice, made 62 corruption-related legal submissions, and published 67 research studies and publications.
Turning advocacy into accountability
Some of the biggest wins were the result of years of patient advocacy. Transparency International contributed to the first conviction of a European politician involved in the Azerbaijani Laundromat scheme. In July 2025, former German Bundestag member Eduard Lintner was convicted by the Higher Regional Court of Munich on corruption charges. In the EU, years of campaigning also helped pave the way for a landmark victory against golden passports. In April 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Malta’s citizenship-by-investment scheme was incompatible with the nature of EU citizenship, closing the bloc’s last remaining golden-passport scheme. At global level, Transparency International’s standards on political finance helped inform UNCAC Resolution 11/7, adopted in December 2025. The resolution established new global standards aimed at making political financing more transparent and making it harder for money to buy political influence. It was ultimately co-sponsored by more than 60 governments and adopted by the 192 countries participating in the process.
Expertise meets action
There is an important lesson here for all of us working to strengthen democracy and the public interest: change rarely happens through a single intervention. It happens when research meets advocacy; when legal expertise meets community action; when civil society can scrutinise those in power and, crucially, when people have the tools and protection to speak up. That is why The Good Lobby believes so strongly in connecting expertise with public-interest organisations and movements. The fight against corruption is ultimately a fight over who gets to shape the rules that govern our societies, and whether those rules serveprivate interests or the public good. The challenges are enormous. But the evidence from 2025 gives us reason for evidence-based optimism.
Read the full Annual Report