Jeremy Pope

Who was Jeremy Pope?

Jeremy Pope, ONZM was a New Zealand activist and writer. He co-founded Transparency International in 1993 and later Tiri in 2003. Tiri is a Maori word which means lifting the taboos for the protection of society.

At Transparency International, Pope co-created Corruption Perceptions Index which identified best and worst practices related to corruption and ranked countries accordingly. He wrote the organization's "manual" on preventing corruption entitled Confronting Corruption: The Elements of a National Integrity System, which was translated into more than 20 different languages.

A barrister in New Zealand and England, Pope worked for 17 years as legal counsel and director of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Legal Division. He was secretary to the Commonwealth Observer Group that oversaw Zimbabwe's independence elections in 1980 and was a member of the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons that visited South Africa in 1986 and triggered the release of Nelson Mandela.

Pope wrote guide books about New Zealand in the early 1970s and 1980s with his wife, Diana. During the 1970s he was active with the "Save Manapouri" environmental movement in New Zealand.