One of the areas of corruption risk we are often asked about is commercial businesses that are owned by the military. This is a surprisingly common phenomenon and is open to a wide range of potential abuses.

As there is extremely limited information on such businesses, we have taken a first step to provide an overview of information that is in the public domain on this topic, through this initial review by Kevin Goh and Julia Muravska.

They have focused on a few very different countries with extensive military-owned businesses—China, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia—and looked at national efforts of reform.

In addition, they have looked at one of the major areas of abuse—exploitation of natural resource assets by the military—in oil, mineral, forestry, agriculture, fisheries and land.