Law & Justice
Corruption Archive
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TACKLING CORRUPTION, TRANSFORMING LIVES: ACCELERATING
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC.
United Nations Development
Programme. Web posted June 14, 2008.
Full
Text [pdf format, 246 pages]
Corruption is increasingly being challenged as unacceptable across Asia and the Pacific. The report shows why eliminating corruption that plagues people’s daily lives must become a priority. The police, social services, and environment are areas countries should consider focusing on. The report shows that it is time to seize the moment, to combine pressure from above, in government and the private sector, with the voice of the people from below. Successes are emerging, along with growing international commitment.
[Note: contains copyrighted material]
AA08116
Carrington,
Paul LAW AND TRANSNATIONAL CORRUPTION: THE NEED FOR LINCOLN'S LAW
ABROAD (Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 70, no. 4, Autumn 2007, pp.
109-138)
Full text available from your nearest American Library
The author, a professor of law at Duke University, believes that the endemic corruption of weak governments in poor nations is a major impediment to the development of world trade. The World Bank reports that bribes totaling a trillion dollars were paid in 2002 while the larger share of that amount was undoubtedly paid by firms that extract and export natural resources for sale in the developed world. Bribery is endemic in many oil-producing developing nations, in which oil revenues have been appropriated by a small group of government officials. Now these same institutions have been invited to enact legislation or to ratify a treaty establishing the means for effective private enforcement of international laws forbidding corrupt practices. Such legislation is rooted in recognition of the frailties of government, and the limits of what can be asked of government lawyers in a fragmented social order. When developing nations are forced to rely on their public prosecutors to impose criminal punishment, corrupt practices can flourish. This reality is now widely acknowledged, but the responses of developed nations have not been adequate to address it.
INFRASTRUCTURE GOVERNANCE AND CORRUPTION: WHERE NEXT? Charles Kenny. Policy Research Working Paper, Sustainable Development Network, Finance, Economics and Urban Division, World Bank. Web posted August 27, 2007.
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“This paper looks at what has been learned about the role of governance in infrastructure, provides some recent examples of reform efforts and project approaches, and suggests an agenda for greater engagement—primarily at the sector level—to improve governance and reduce the development impact of corruption.” The paper discusses market structure, regulation, state-owned enterprise reform, planning and budgeting, and project design.
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Okogbule, Nlerum. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION AND THE DYNAMICS OF MONEY LAUNDERING IN NIGERIA
(Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 49-63)
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Okogbule, a law professor in Nigeria, examines the intersection between official corruption and money laundering in Nigeria. Several recently-enacted laws, designed to combat financial crimes and corruption, contain far-reaching innovations, such as a provision for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate allegations of corruption against the president, vice president, governors, and deputy governors. However, Okogbule notes, the effectiveness of these laws is limited by weak mechanisms for enforcement and monitoring. The author identifies several challenges, including inadequate procedural and evidential laws for prosecution of offenders; inadequate salaries for public servants to maintain a reasonable livelihood, and social acceptance of corrupt practices. His recommendations include strict monitoring of financial transactions by regulatory and financial institutions, with real consequences for non-compliance; instituting reforms designed to re-orient Nigerians to sway the citizenry away from involvement in these crimes; and a genuine commitment to the restructuring of social and economic structure of Nigerian society to minimize the temptation to commit official corruption and other financial crimes.
UTILITIES REFORMS AND CORRUPTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.
Antonio Estache, Ana Goicoechea and Lourdes Trujillo. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. World Bank. December 6, 2006.
Full Text [pdf format, 30 pages]
“This paper shows empirically that “privatization” in the energy, telecommunications, and water sectors, and the introduction of independent regulators in those sectors, have not always had the expected effects on access, affordability, or quality of services. It also shows that corruption leads to adjustments in the quantity, quality, and price of services consistent with the profit-maximizing behavior that one would expect from monopolies in the sector. Finally, our results suggest that privatization and the introduction of independent regulators have, at best, only partial effects on the consequences of corruption for access, affordability, and quality of utilities services.”
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Budima, Gjeneza CAN CORRUPTION AND ECONOMIC CRIME BE CONTROLLED IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, AND IF SO, IS THE COST WORTH IT?
(Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 13, no. 4, 2006, pp. 408-419)
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Budima, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pristina, says the definitions of economic crime and corruption vary across societies, and developing countries are more prone to these activities than the developed world. Regardless, she notes, they rank amongst the most costly of all criminal activities, and have dire consequences. Corruption is a crime without borders, not a localized crime, she notes. So, efforts to control crimes of corruption need to come from multiple fronts. Effective domestic control requires state mechanisms, along with the support of society and the media, she explains. Internationally, Budima continues, successful control requires absolute cooperation between governments to enforce anti-corruption regulations. Global action in fighting economic crimes is vital to developing countries, she writes, because development needs a business environment with fair and manageable risk.
2006 CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX. [PRESS KIT]
Transparency International (TI). November 6, 2006.
Plain index [html format, 5 printed pages]
The 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index is a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the world, the greatest scope of any CPI to date. It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption. The Index underscores the link between poverty and corruption. Almost three-fourths of the countries in the CPI score below five (including all low-income countries and all but two African states), indicating that most countries in the world face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption. Seventy-one countries - nearly half of the total number of countries studied - score below three, indicating that corruption is perceived as rampant. Haiti has the lowest score at 1.8; just above, each with a score of 1.9, are Guinea, Iraq and Myanmar. Finland, Iceland and New Zealand share the top score of 9.6.
BRIBE Payers Index (BPI) 2006.
Transparency International (TI). October 4, 2006.
Full report [pdf format, 16 pages]
The Bribe Payers Index (BPI) rates the propensity of companies from 30 leading exporting countries to bribe government and business officials abroad in order to secure better business arrangements. Companies from the wealthiest countries generally rank in the top half of the Index, but they still routinely pay bribes, particularly when doing business in developing economies. Companies from emerging export powers (India, China and Russia) rank among the worst. In the case of China and other emerging export powers, efforts to strengthen domestic anti-corruption activities have failed to extend to its foreign operations.
For each of the 30 countries ranked, the Index notes whether it is a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and/or to the OECD Convention on Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
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McCormick, John T.; Paterson, Nancy THE THREAT POSED BY TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL CORRUPTION TO GLOBAL COMMERCIAL AND DEVELOPMENT BANKING (Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 13, no. 2, 2006, pp. 183-194)
Full text available from your nearest American Library
McCormick and Paterson, of the Federal Reserve System's Special Investigation Section, discuss the threat that transnational political corruption poses to both the world's development banking and commercial banking sectors. Through case studies, they demonstrate how corrupt officials, using various fraudulent and corrupt schemes, steal funds from development banks and then launder the illicit proceeds into legitimate commercial banking systems around the world. These activities increase development and commercial banks' financial risks and put their reputations at stake. The most important factor in reducing this political corruption is political will and commitment, the authors assert. And, they note, development and commercial banks can only expect the risks from corruption to increase as more signatory nations to various anti-corruption treaties and conventions criminalize the bribery of foreign public officials.
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Levine, Ruth IN WORLD BANK CORRUPTION FIGHT, INDEPENDENT EVALUATION IS KEY (CGD Notes, April 2006, 2 pp.)
Download [pdf format, 2 pages]
Levine, Director of Programs at the Center for Global Development, says World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz has set out his plans for fighting corruption in the developing world. She says his anti-corruption crusade is both positive and ambitious. However, she asks, how will we know whether the anti-corruption programs actually work? Evaluation should be emphasized from the start, she asserts; development agencies have consistently failed to measure the impact of their aid programs. Levine states that donor and recipient countries should request and fund careful, credible and independent third-party evaluation of World Bank and other agencies' programs. Only through evaluation, she explains, can we document a program's impact on transparency and development.
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Heineman, Ben W.; Heimann, Fritz THE LONG WAR AGAINST CORRUPTION (Foreign Affairs, vol. 85, no. 3, May/June 2006, pp. 75-86)
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Since the mid-1990s, corruption has become an important issue on the global agenda. Its key agents -- developed and developing countries, international organizations, and multinational corporations -- must do more to prevent and to punish misbehavior systematically, say the authors. Bribery and corruption, they explain, distorts markets and competition, breeds cynicism among citizens, undermines the rule of law, damages government legitimacy, and corrodes the integrity of the private sector. Some international organizations have adopted conventions that require their members to enact laws that prohibit bribery and corruption. However, during the past decade, many public- and private-sector organizations have paid minimal lip service to the idea that fighting corruption is in their own best interest and for the global good. To counter this, several international treaties have been adopted to fill gaps in existing national anticorruption laws, including an OECD convention that applies to industrialized countries; three regional conventions covering Europe, the Americas, and Africa; and the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC).
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Rich, Bruce BANK HEIST (The Environmental Forum, vol. 22, no. 5, September/October 2005, pp. 28-35)
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Rich, director of International Program at Environmental Defense, says corruption -- both in international development lending and embedded in the international economy itself -- threatens hopes for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. According to Congressional testimony, crooked contractors and bureaucracies in borrowing nations have stolen over $100 billion from the World Bank over the past five decades; and, ongoing theft from lending from multilateral development banks may total 20-30 percent, he reports. It's not just corrupt Third World elites, either, he says -- western international banks facilitate corrupt and illegal financial capital flight from poor nations at and estimated $500-$600 billion a year. The current anti-corruption efforts may punish a token few, he asserts, but they don't even begin to resolve this interdependent culture of corruption in the international economy.
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Svensson, Jakob. EIGHT QUESTIONS ABOUT CORRUPTION (Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 19, no. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 19-42)
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According to the author, the most devastating forms of corruption include the diversion and outright theft of funds for public programs and the damage caused by firms and by individuals that pay bribes to avoid health and safety regulations intended to benefit the public. Corruption is also widespread in public procurement and service delivery programs. The author discusses what he considers to be the most frequently asked questions about public corruption. What is it and what countries are the most corrupt? What are the common characteristics of such countries and what is the magnitude of the corruption? Will higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption or will this come about through competition? Finally, why have there been so few successful attempts recently to fight corruption? The answers are often not clear-cut and there are still many issues about corruption that we know little about. Also, most anticorruption programs rely on legal and financial institutions (judiciary, police, auditors) to enforce and strengthen accountability in the public sector but in many poor countries, the legal and financial institutions are often corrupt themselves.
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Sun, Yan. CORRUPTION, GROWTH, AND REFORM: THE CHINESE ENIGMA (Current History, vol. 104, no. 683, September 2005, pp. 257-263)
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The author notes that corruption affects most post-socialist societies, including China; however, China has maintained annual growth rates of 8 to 9 percent over the past two decades, by avoiding the most destructive kinds of corruption, kleptocracy and bilateral monopoly. In a kleptocracy, the ruler uses power for material gain; in a bilateral monopoly, the ruler and a few private interests share in the spoils. In post-Mao China, the top leadership has been relatively corruption-free -- but China exemplifies the competitive model of corruption, in which the spoils are shared among multiple officials and private interests. The wide range of offenders and the lack of concentrated "dirty wealth" among the elites demonstrate this.
Institutional continuity is the main reason why China has not experienced the levels of corruption of other post-socialist countries; their example has taught the Chinese leadership to be cautious about rapid democratization. In conclusion, Sun writes that the U.S. government could play a positive role in anticorruption reform in China because of its high credibility after prosecuting the Chinese subsidiary of Lucent Technologies for commercial bribery. According to Sun, China also needs to learn from successful Asian examples such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2004.
Transparency International (TI). October 20, 2004.
Download the document [English-language, pdf format, 8 pages]
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) focuses on corruption in the public sector and defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain. The surveys used in compiling the CPI tend to ask questions in line with the misuse of public power for private benefit, with a focus, for example, on bribe-taking by public officials in public procurement. The sources do not distinguish between administrative and political corruption.
The TI Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) this year ranks 146 countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, drawing on 18 different polls and surveys from 12 independent institutions carried out among business people and country analysts, including surveys of residents, both local and expatriate. A total of 106 out of 146 countries score less than 5 against a clean score of 10, according to the new index. Sixty countries score less than 3 out of 10, indicating rampant corruption. Corruption is perceived to be most acute in Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria, Chad, Myanmar, Azerbaijan and Paraguay, all of which have a score of less than 2. The index includes only those countries that feature in at least three surveys. As a result, many countries - including some which could be among the most corrupt - are missing because there simply is not enough survey data available.