The Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information has discovered that while Lord Stern was deputy chairman of the Global Green Growth Institute, a major contract was awarded to the Grantham Institute at LSE, which is of course also headed by Lord Stern too.
Apparently alarm bells were sounded by Danish civil servants at the time but you rather get the impression that their concerns were overridden. This seems to have captured the interest of experts in corruption:
"There is a convergence of personal interests and networks in this case, which is very problematic", said professor Christian Bjørnskov from Aarhus University, an expert on development economics who has studied corruption in the development world.
His assessment is supported by Indira Carr, a law professor at Surrey University and an expert on corruption.
"To an outside observer, there certainly seems to be a conflict of interest. Whether that actually influenced the decision to award the grant to this particular institute, is still a matter to be clarified. It would be appropriate for the donor countries to ask the GGGI to explain the process in details," she said.