Patricia Moreira


Patricia Moreira was the managing director of the international secretariat of Transparency International, an organization that campaigns against corruption, between October 2017 and February 2020.

Early life and education

Moreira is Spanish-Brazilian. She has a BA in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MBA from INSEAD, France, and conducted PhD research in Social Entrepreneurship at ICADE University in Madrid.

Career

Moreira worked as a management consultant for Juárez & Associates and Arthur D. Little for ten years, and then for the Spanish aid organisation Ayuda en Acción, rising to the director general. She was CEO of Ayuda en Acción from 2009.
In October 2017, she succeeded Cobus de Swardt as head of Transparency International.
Moreira is a board member of the United Nations Global Compact and a Council representative on the International Land Coalition. In 2018 she spoke at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, arguing that "corruption hits most the poor who suffer the consequences of corrupt regimes." In 2019, she admonished Western banks for facilitating corruption in Gambia.
In 2019 she argued that citizen's rights and democratic institutions were threatened by the trend for more authoritarian and populist regimes across the world which should be resisted by greater checks and balances.

Controversies

In August 2019, The Guardian reported on how current and former staff members of Transparency International had said that under Moreira it had promoted a culture of "bullying" and "failed in its duty of care" and used "gagging orders" in termination agreements. Moreira denied these allegations. Two investigations followed, conducted by law firm Taylor Wessing and Transparency International’s Ethics Panel. The investigators could not identify systematic bullying, discriminatory behavior or a criminally-relevant harassment under TI rules and/or German law. However, some individual incidents were identified in which the values/principles of transparency and accountability were not ensured entirely, and one case that might qualify as harassment at the workplace.
In June 2020, the Guardian reported that Moreira had made a complaint of bullying against the Board of Transparency International and that she had then been dismissed by Transparency International in February 2020. She was reportedly planning to sue Transparency International for unfair dismissal.