ABSTRACT
There is an increased awareness today in the development community (in both donor and recipient countries) that aid is in danger of not reaching the poor due to corruption. With development assistance steadily rising over the last 50 years, it was estimated that in 2010, leading donor countries gave $126bn in development aid to lower-income countries (OECD n.d.c.). The potential for corruption with figures as high as this is immense. For example, in several of the top-ten aid recipient countries, such as Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam, corruption is believed to be widespread (TI 2007: 3).
