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Some 25 years ago my husband’s childhood friend offered him a lucrative job overseas. The job came with a great salary, a huge house, the best schools and all kinds of other perks that would have quite simply transformed our lives. He turned it down saying that his conscience wouldn’t allow it - the job and the lifestyle were built on living with everyday corruption. `he said quite simply ` I can’t live like that.’ Corruption is of course a global challenge, but it can mean different things in different societies. There are so many conceptual frameworks, and ways of measuring it but the standard definition seems to be that it’s `the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.’ Corruption can include bribery, unlawful gifts and donations, extortion, nepotism, buying influence, but at its heart, it thrives on a level of secrecy, a lack of integrity and a betrayal of public trust in office or government. Last week, an independent inquiry set up to review the death of Daniel Morgan, the private investigator killed by an axe to the head in 1987, accused Scotland Yard of decades of cover-up, corruption and incompetence accusing the Met Police of "a form of institutional corruption." An individual’s abuse of power, dishonesty and lack of accountability can infect entire institutions. It can become so embedded in our political and social cultures that we are in danger of ignoring its true cost which is the rapid erosion of social trust, interdependency and a commitment to justice for all. And yet despite the failings of individuals, we’re entitled to expect that institutions, including religious authorities, will live up to the highest ideals and do their duty for the common good. In a recent piece in the Atlantic David Brooks writes, `When people in a church lose faith or trust in God, the church collapses. When people in a society lose faith or trust in their institutions and in each other, the nation collapses.’ Trust and truth telling must always go hand in hand. While the Qur’an speaks of trust in God as one of the greatest acts of worship, the very heart of faith, it also speaks of societal trust as the bedrock of a moral society – that those in whom you have confided, have entrusted yourself and your wealth, they have a responsibility to be honest, truthful, to neither hide nor cover up. Openness and accountability are essential qualities for a good and decent society where people can work and live without fear for their lives and their jobs, a society in which no one feels an outsider because everyone understands that the truth matters.