The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been awarded the 2025 Cressey Award by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) for her lifetime contribution to the detection and deterrence of fraud.
The award was presented to Mrs Okonjo Iweala on Tuesday at the global fraud conference taking place in Nashville, in the US.
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Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, who served as finance minister under two Nigerian presidents, delivered the keynote address on Fighting Fraud and Corruption, including the Role of Trade Rules and the WTO at the conference.
“The ACFE is honored to recognise Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the recipient of the 2025 Cressey Award, a prestigious honor recognising lifetime achievement in the detection and deterrence of fraud,” the organisation said in a statement.
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Established in 1989, the Cressey Award is named after Dr Donald Cressey, one of the United States’ foremost fraud experts and a co-founder of the ACFE. The award is presented yearly to individuals who dedicate their careers to combating fraud and promoting integrity.
ACFE added, “Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s legacy is one of bold reform, global leadership and a relentless pursuit of integrity.
“An economist and international development expert with more than 40 years of experience, she previously served twice as Nigeria’s Finance Minister, where she oversaw reforms to fight corruption and was instrumental in the Paris Club’s $30 billion debt write-off for Nigeria.”
She is the first woman and the first African to hold the role of Director-General of the WTO.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala said she is very “honoured to receive the prestigious Cressey Award for Lifetime Achievement in Fighting Fraud and Corruption.”
“This is an incredible honour and I thank @theACFE for recognising the strength and courage it takes to do this work. With President of @theACFE John D. Gill, CEO – John Warren, and members of the Nigerian Chapters of the Association! Many thanks to Andi McNeal and Leslie Simpson for great organisation.”
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Mrs Okonjo-Iweala held senior roles at the World Bank for 25 years, including Managing Director of Operations. She served as a senior advisor at Lazard Ltd. and has been on the boards of Standard Chartered Bank and Twitter Inc. Additionally, she was the African Union and World Health Organisation’s (WHO) COVID-19 Special Envoy in 2020.
Her service included positions as chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (2016–2020), the African Union’s African Risk Capacity Group (2014–2020), and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate with Lord Nicholas Stern (2014–2020). She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. She co-chaired the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing for Pandemic Preparedness and was one of the founders of the COVAX Facility. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum and is co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is also a recipient of numerous honours and accolades from around the world. Among many accomplishments, she was twice named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”, and Forbes has named her one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the World” eight times, most recently in 2024. In 2020, she was named Forbes African of the Year. In 2023, she received The Kiel Institute’s Global Economy Prize and the second Lord Byron Prize.
She was listed among 73 “brilliant” business influencers in the world by Condé Nast International and received the Alumnae Recognition Award from the American Association of University Women in 2022. In 2021, she was named by the Financial Times as one of the “25 Most Influential Women in the World”. She was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, ranked by Fortune as one of the “50 Greatest World Leaders” in 2015, and featured in Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in 2011 and 2012.
