The shutdown supposedly has given the exchanges time to strengthen their powers of oversight and to impose much higher standards of transparency on the companies themselves.

It defended the use of the shadow directorship, describing it as 'standard accounting practice', and said that it had 'extremely high standards of transparency'.

Particularly because charities generally operate to much higher standards of transparency and accountability than our 'for-profit' peers.

As such, they are limited by the capital resources allocated to them by their parent companies and are subject to high standards of transparency.

However, until 1994, most elections were not considered to have met international standards of transparency and cleanliness.