Leonard McCarthy has been in the business of risk management, litigation, anti-corruption and integrity due diligence for more than twenty years.

Following the Volcker Panel Report of 2007, then World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick appointed McCarthy as Integrity Vice President of the Group in May 2008. As a member of the senior management, he reported to the Bank’s President and accounted to its Audit Committee.

The Integrity Vice-Presidency (INT) anchored the World Bank’s mission of directing economic development and eradicating poverty, by ensuring that funds are used for their intended purpose.

INT’s mandate was to investigate, litigate and prevent fraud and corruption in Bank-supported investment and lending activities, including its International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as to address evidence of significant fraud or corruption involving World Bank Group staff in offices around the world. 

McCarthy had brought about important operational and organizational changes in INT that have increased the World Bank’s capacity to mitigate the cost of fraud and corruption in 1800 large projects in 172 client countries. With McCarthy’s leadership, INT had finalized more than 1500 investigations, sanctions, forensic audits, compliance assessments and advisory engagements in infrastructure finance, the energy and natural resource sectors, as well as consulting engineering and manufacturing, amongst others. 

In 2009, McCarthy paved the way for the World Bank’s first negotiated settlement, enabling the institution to deal more expediently with companies that admit wrongdoing. Under McCarthy’s management, the World Bank launched the International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA), and also brokered a landmark cross-debarment agreement with other Multilateral Development Banks, resulting in the cross-debarment of 600 entities to date.

McCarthy’s strategic vision for INT led to the establishment of critical new functions to serve the World Bank Group, including a Forensic Accounting section, a Preventive Services unit, and an Integrity Compliance office. The Forensic Accounting unit performed vital audits of the Bank’s main development projects, thereby mitigating integrity risk. The Preventive Services unit was designed to integrate insights gained from investigations as precautions into World Bank operations. The Integrity Compliance office monitored sanctioned entities, so companies could clean up their operating environment, and contributed to restoring them to good standing.

As Vice President for Integrity, McCarthy served on the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) management panel and played a crucial role in steering the Bank’s Governance and Anti-corruption (GAC) Agenda.

He had transformed the Bank’s Integrity Vice-Presidency into a flagship global function, based on its impact on governments and the private sector, and through working arrangements and agreements with the U.S Justice Department, the U.K Serious Fraud Office, the European Anti-Fraud Office, the United Nations Agencies, other Multilateral Development Banks, and Interpol.

In his prior professional life, McCarthy was appointed by former President Nelson Mandela as a Director of Public Prosecutions in 1998, after which he succeeded as Director for the Office of Serious Economic Offences in June 2000. He then became Head of South Africa’s Directorate of Special Operations (DSO) in 2003, overseeing crime analysis, investigation, prosecution, asset forfeiture and civil litigation. During his tenure, the DSO secured convictions in major pursuits involving corporate wrongdoing, grand corruption, organized crime, and urban terrorism; and interdicted record amounts of proceeds of crime, financial assets, drugs and other contraband.

McCarthy chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Anti-Corruption & Transparency and participated in the launch of the Volcker Alliance, based in New York. He was admitted as an advocate in 1992, and he holds the BA, B-Juris and LLB degrees.

He is the founder and president of LF MCCARTHY ASSOCIATES, Inc. (LFM), an international integrity risk management company based in Washington, D.C. as of July 2017. LFM specializes in advising corporations, public institutions and international organizations about how to prevent, mitigate and resolve integrity risks. He has extensive strategic contacts and worldwide credibility as an objective sounding board. McCarthy’s expertise lies in negotiations, a firm grasp of global dynamics, and the ability to navigate the intersection between law, business, politics and ethics.