Controversial whistleblower and fugitive from the USA Edward Snowden was apparently nominated but passed over for the 2017 Allard Prize for International Integrity.
This little gem of information appears in Corporate Crime Reporter’s new article The Allard Prize and The Case for Public Integrity. (Excellent article – worth your time.)
Editor Russell Mokhiber of the Washington, D.C.-based weekly magazine also pointed out that so far, the Allard Prize committee “has a bias in favor of anti-corruption fighters in the Third World.”
Although founder Peter A. Allard has often spoken publicly about the problem of corruption in North America and the developed world, the awards committee are now “ten for ten focusing on corruption outside Western corporate countries” according to Mokhiber – who is correct.
Edward Snowden: Whistleblower? Traitor? Both?
Snowden is a controversial figure who causes long discussions and heated arguments among my own family and friends – so I speculate that his nomination might not have been the source of tranquility and agreement at meetings of the Allard Prize Committee and Advisory Board.
Interestingly, the journalist who broke the Snowden story, Glenn Greenwald, is giving the keynote speech at this year’s Allard Prize awards ceremony in Vancouver, BC on September 28, 2017.
But Snowden isn’t the core of Mokhiber’s story – which is that North American and European corporate crime and corruption doesn’t seem to have the attention of the Allard Prize Committee and Advisory Board. Mokhiber interviewed Allard Prize Executive Director Nicole Barrett, who talked about how much more difficult it is to confront corruption in the more sophisticated frameworks and in more developed countries.
Barrett speaks the truth as evidenced by my own case where corrupt lawyers from some of Canada’s largest law firms provably lied to the courts to convict and imprison me for Contempt of Civil Court. Yet… not one Canadian judge allowed me to cross-examine the very lawyer-witnesses whose evidence the court relied upon to convict and sentence me in absentia – without representation in a secret hearing that I was unaware of.
Not one Canadian judge listened to my secretly-made voice recordings that prove the lawyers deliberately lied to the court.
In my case the courts allowed an unethical, cowardly and corrupt legal profession to undermine our Canadian justice system and the rule of law.
So yes, Allard Prize Executive Director Nicole Barrett has a point; fighting corruption is in many ways much more difficult in developed countries.
Donald Best
Barrie, Ontario
Canada
Disclosure: I was a guest at the 2015 Allard Prize award ceremony, and will be attending the 2017 award ceremony as one of several videographers creating short documentaries about the Allard Prize and this year’s finalists.
