Maravi

World Bank urges effective use of structures in corruption fight

World Bank urges effective use of structures in corruption fight
By Mutale Kapekele
Tue 16 Nov. 2010, 04:01 CAT

WORLD Bank has challenged governments to effectively use institutions that have been created to fight corruption. In its 2010 Integrity annual report presented by the managing director Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the World Bank reported that corruption cases involving its projects in Africa had increased.

Responding to a press query on the matter, Indrawati observed that countries already had proper institutions to fight corruption and should now put them to good use.

“From my perspective, we the international community, national authorities, the private sector, civil society - have worked hard to put the tools in place, to build the structures for an effective anti-corruption regime,” Indrawati stated.

“We now have to put those structures to use. Here I see two challenges. First, enforcement. When the public, citizens think about whether progress is being made in fighting corruption, they do not immediately think of transparency.

They look at whether there are successful prosecutions of the officials, individuals and corporations that they think may have been involved in corrupt practices and whether commercial banks and other institutions that may have given safe haven to the proceeds of corruption assist in retrieving the stolen funds.

This is, I would argue, the area where we have the greatest challenge, where progress will have the greatest impact on public opinion, where we will begin to restore trust.”

She stated that despite the World Bank not being a law enforcement agency or prosecutor, it was still committed to the corruption fight.

“We do not bring cases to court, and we do not prosecute officials or companies.
Still, we are committed to the anti-corruption agenda and we would like to see much faster progress and more concrete results,” she stated.

“The World Bank’s integrity vice-presidency is dedicated to working with our partner governments to root out corruption in World Bank financed projects.

We have made significant progress with debarments increasing to 58 over the past two years, from nine sanctions the previous two years. And we’ve also had successes in several high-profile cases.”

She stated that the remaining challenge was to follow through at the national level for the cases that had been reported to enforcement agencies.
“The remaining challenge, and I know you would agree with me on this, is to see more follow-up from national authorities,” Indrawati stated, “and I don’t just mean in developing countries, we have seen rich countries drop investigations as well, or perhaps not follow up on them as effectively as they should or could. Corruption was not invented by the poor.”

She disclosed that in the fiscal year to June 2010, 32 referrals to governments and anticorruption agencies were sent “so that they could undertake corrective action and their own criminal investigations to determine if the laws of the country have been violated”.

She stated that follow-up investigations took time and did not always lead to prosecutions but that the bank would like to see action and expected to see a steady increase in the number of convictions over time.

Indrawati also encouraged the private sector to take a keen interest in fighting corruption and ensure transparency in all their dealings.

“From the point of view of businesses, combating corruption is about leveling the playing field, seeing fair competition and, above all, about managing costs specifically, individual costs and company level costs,” she stated.

“Every bribe taken is a bribe paid, and more often than not, it is a company official delivering the envelope.

And while corruption may benefit individual companies in the short run, over time it becomes a real barrier to development, innovation and business growth.

Because sometimes the corruption is in the form of counterfeit drugs, so people don’t get better, or they die.

Sometimes corruption is a building that collapses in the face of a natural disaster, because the quality inspector took a payment from the construction contractor to falsify an inspection. Corruption can kill.”

She stated that it was unfortunate that many anti-corruption initiatives lacked the “teeth” of enforcement.

Indrawati stated that embracing the governance and anti-corruption agenda posed some difficult trade-offs to the World Bank Group as much of its work was in the poorest countries, “where institutions are often weak and the likelihood of something going wrong is high”.

Labels: CORRUPTION, SRI MULYANI INDRAWATI, World Bank

posted by MrK @ 6:01 AM