U.N. clears way to fight global corruption

By George Chakko

VIENNA, AUG. 19. An Inter-Governmental U.N. experts group has cleared the way to negotiate an effective instrument to fight global corruption.

The basic terms of the agreement on the ``U.N. Convention against Corruption'' are seen as an effective move to halt flight of illicit cash across continents, influencing key decisions, demoralising political life, demolishing democratic values and stealing national wealth.

India's distinguished envoy, Mr. T. P. Sreenivasan, who was elected to the chair at this U.N. meet in Vienna, considered it a ground-breaking step towards global peace. Although the conference ended without a press briefing, post-meet interviews and documents indicate that after adoption by the General Assembly, the ad hoc committee set up by the U.N. will have a convention ready by 2003 for all nations to ratify it. Scepticism, however, prevails in view of reluctance on the part of certain developed nations. This raises the question whether identification of the corrupt and repatriation of money stashed away in Western banks can become real.

India, bogged down by numerous cases of political and corporate corruption, is expected to play a key role in drawing up the convention.

Corruption was a phenomenon that existed from the very beginning of organised human society, noted the U.N. Under- Secretary General and Chief of the U.N. Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Dr. Pino Arlaachi, in his opening statement. In spite of three multilateral instruments already established (the International Code of Conduct for Public Officials and the U.N. Declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions adopted by the General Assembly in 1996 and the OECD's Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions of Nov. 21, 1997), global corruption has grown. A new dimension is the infiltration of mafia money into the political and socio-economic fabric of many nations. One sad result of this is that substantial amounts of wealth has been taken away from poor countries.

The Argentinean delegate complained that $ 200 millions had been illegally transferred from his country to foreign shores, and all attempts to freeze those assets had met with failure. The Nigerian delegate reported that over the past 20 years, $ 55 to $ 100 billions had been looted from his country by corrupt officials, locking them up in financial institutions in 20 different places. All attempts to repatriate the money encountered non-cooperation from Governments and banks.

Mr. Arlaachi said globally, awareness about corruption had spread. Political consensus, development policies and public opinion had converged on the demand that the law must apply to everyone.

The 95-member experts group identified funds proceeding from corruption as the priority issue. Accordingly, it recommended that a) International cooperation should be strengthened to fight illicit fund transfers and their laundering, especially those from corruption and their return. b) Measures should be put in place to ensure that employees in banks and financial institutions are committed to prevention of illicit transfer of corrupt money by recording transactions in a transparent manner and facilitate return of such funds. c) Corrupt money should be defined as proceeds of crime and an act of corruption may be established as a predicate offence in relation to money- laundering, and d) The destination countries for fund return and proper procedures connected therewith should be determined.

The draft resolution that was unanimously passed by the experts group for the General Assembly's approval, included a broad spectrum of items. It requested that the convention formulate an ad hoc committee to take a comprehensive, multi- disciplinary approach to contain the malaise of corruption.

The two-year period given for the final convention will be a time of tough bargaining, many admit, as legal systems differ from country to country. Many delegations did express that a flexible approach should cover active and passive corruption in the public sector and the private sector and should cover both national and foreign civil servants, including international officials.

Prevention will be the key feature of the new convention and that could mean integrity, transparency and good governance, effective and impartial civil service, transparent public procurement rules, independent supervisory bodies, development of codes of conduct, effective systems of financing political parties, regulation of financial systems, free and transparent media, an independent judiciary and the implementation of the rule of law.

India's problem is that while the country has had sufficient experience and success in combating corruption and has a good legal system, international cooperation has been lacking, especially with regard to investigations of corrupt money stashed away abroad. It is an open secret that banks in tax havens and those in Switzerland are reluctant to disclose details of funds with them.

The bribery game has taken a U-turn now. Whereas hitherto, multinationals have been accused of bribing officials to win contracts, now MNCs refuse to invest in a country that is corrupt. Nevertheless, an anti-corruption culture is not that easy to develop especially in countries with poor resources. Mr. Peter Langseth, manager of the U.N. Global Programme against Corruption, said recently that one lesson learned in combating corruption was that it takes integrity to fight corruption and it takes a long time to build integrity.

India's best contribution to the experts group was in the person of Mr. Sreenivasan whose good-humoured and professional performance as chairman was adjudged by a top official as ``excellent and outstanding''.

(Caption: OPERATION CLEAN-UP: Peru, one of the countries mired in corruption, hopes for a purge as the new President, Mr. Alejandro Toledo, takes over the reins. In this July 27 file photo, a worker is seen cleaning the walls of the Government Palace in the capital Lima the day Mr. Toledo took over.)

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