UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Agencies Plan Global Attack on Corruption

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 31 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations, along with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is getting ready to unleash a global attack on bribery and corruption.

All three institutions, along with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Inter American Development Bank, will participate in an anti-corruption conference in Peru next week. The conference will argue that corruption hinders economic development.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn, one of the main speakers, says that “in country after country, it is the people who are demanding action…Let’s not mince words. We need to deal with the cancer of corruption.”

The Lima conference, to be held Sept. 7-11, also has attracted delegates from the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and several non-governmental organisation (NGOs), including Transparency International which publishes an annual list of countries deemed corrupt.

UNDP already has urged international organisations to cut-off assistance to projects tainted by bribery and dishonest practices. “They need to be sceptical of supporting projects that make it easy for public officials to hide private gains,” UNDP said in its report on “Corruption and Good Governance” released last month.

“As corruption was usually endemic at all levels of societies and represented a cancer afflicting the prospects of successful development, UNDP would try to attack the problem both directly and indirectly,” says UNDP Administrator Gus Speth.

The 138-page UNDP study pointed out that even Western aid donors are now seeking to avoid corruption in projects funded by them. “If they cannot, projects should not be approved or should be cancelled if they have already begun,” the study says.

IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus says that his officials will press for anti-corruption reforms in countries seeking loans, “although such changes would not be made an explicit loan requirement.”

The 1997 “corruption perception index” published by the Berlin-based Transparency International last month identified Nigeria, Bolivia, Colombia, Russia, Pakistan, Mexico, Indonesia, India, Venezuela and Vietnam as the world’s 10 most corrupt nations.

But Malayasia’s outspoken Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed says corruption is not a birthright only of developing nations. “If we want to do our own study, there is corruption in Italy, there is corruption in Germany and there’s corruption in France…”, he says.

Antonio di Pietro, a former Italian judge and prosecutor, says it is wrong for industrial countries to assume that corruption existed only in the Third World. “Corruption is like a coin,” he notes, “It has two sides: one side is the corruptor and the other the corrupted.”

Giving money as bribery to a civil servant in an African country by an entreprenuer from an industrial country was the moral and ethical responsibility of liberal democracies, he argues. “How is it that advanced countries never prosecuted such people, but actually used them?,” he asks.

He said it is well known that offshore banking systems deal with funds which were not properly accounted for. He wondered why liberal democracies did not do anything to stop such money laundering.

In its study on corruption, UNDP points out that industrial countries have recently been involved in several procurement scandals. In Germany, bribes were paid to win contracts worth 2.5 billion deutsche marks to build a terminal at the Frankfurt airport. According to the German Public Prosecutor, corruption led to an increase in prices of about 20 to 30 percent.

In the French Department of Seine-Maritime, 14 people were charged with corruption in connection with contracts for computers. Civil servants distorted normal procedures for awarding contracts leading to an estimated loss of 50 million francs, according to the French Department of the Interior.

In Belgium, senior officials in the Socialist Party are believed to have accepted 1.9 million dollars in bribes in connection with a defence contract, according to the UNDP study.

The report also points out that corruption in contracting occurs in every country, even those at the high end of the “honesty index”, such as Singapore and New Zealand.

The study says that Singapore, Hong Kong and Botswana have all successfully fought corruption. In 1994 Botswana established the Directorate of Corruption and Economic Crime modeled after a similar organisation in Hong Kong and staffed by former members of the Hong Kong agency and by local people.

“Although hampered by a slow court system, it boasts a high conviction rate and has collected fines in excess of its operating costs. It is becoming an example of good practice in the region,” the report notes.