The fight against corruption gets high-tech

Opinion

A NEW anti-bribery treaty, negotiated on the other side of the planet, is about to make its mark on the way business is done in the South Pacific. It’s just one of a number of developments since the Asian economic crisis, which are putting paid to the idea that a little bit of corruption in developing countries is good for greas ing the wheels of business.

In fact, in many Asian countries, which before the crisis were seen as good examples of this philosophy, it was corruption and lack of accountability that led to the huge scale of the crash.

“at the core of our dark experience lies the ugly truth that there was an absence of transparency, accountability, public interest and public responsibility,” former Thai prime minister, Anand Pan yarachun, told an audience in Bangkok recently.

Tonku Adbul Aziz, a former Malaysian central bank official now working for the world-wide anti-corruption group Trans parency International, put it more bluntly, saying that the philoso phy of turning a blind eye to corruption “proved to be nothing more than an elaborate prop for what was basically a morally inde fensible and decadent heritage”.

Transparency International (TI) has documented numerous cases of corruption, especially in the letting of government con tracts and the privatisation of government corporations, which have cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is just these problems that the new anti-bribery treaty, spon sored by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is designed to tackle. the treaty makes it a crime for business-people from OECD or other signatory nations, to bribe a foreign public official.

By the end of 1999, all 34 nations that have expressed interest in the treaty, are expected to have made its provision binding by ratifying the document.

Those countries account for 70 per cent of world trade and even more of foreign direct investment. They include most the Pacific’s main trading partners, for example, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States and Britain.

At the same time there is growing grass-roots movement against corruption in the Pacific.

In Papua New Guinea, the Business Council was the driving force behind the establishment of a local chapter of Transparency International. Transparency International itself is just five years

old but, such has been the enthusiasm for its approach of putting together community coalitions to fight corruption, that it now has chapters in 70 countries.

The Papua New Guinea chapter has leading lawyer and chair of the Port Moresby Stock Exchange, Sir Anthony Siagaru, as its president. It has held meetings across the country and worked with the ministry of education to develop ethics and values courses that are now in use in secondary schools and in induction courses for new students at the University of Papua New Guinea.

TIPNG’s key parliamentary initiative, a proposal for an Inde pendent Anti-corruption Commission, has not been able to win support from enough politicians to see it approved.

As yet it has not drawn up its action plan but it has won the support of key figures such as the Police Commissioner and the Director of Public Prosecutions. This high profile support will be important if corruption is going to be dealt a telling blow.

Corruption is a difficult area in which to obtain convictions and more so when the offence is committed away from the offenders home country. The success of the OECD treaty will rely on author ities receiving good tip-offs either from the competitors of a sus pect company or from whistleblowers within the company or affected government agency.

Whistleblowers, in particular, need good support if they are to come forward. While Transparency International focuses on bring ing together local non-govemment organisations to fight corrup tion and support whistleblowers, international aid donors and many governments in the region are working on prevention.

Last year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) brought in a new anti-corruption policy that has implications for every aspect of the bank’s operations. The ADB has committed itself to ‘zero tolerance’ and will do everything it can to stamp out practices such as the selection of uneconomic aid projects because of opportuni ties they provide for kickbacks or patronage.

Procurement fraud, facilitation payments to government offi cials, misappropriation of confidential information for personal gain, theft and embezzlement, nepotism in promotions or the use of threats of tax audits to extract personal favours are all on the ADB’s hit list. But accordirig to the ADB’s Director of Pacific Operations, Basudev Dahal, the most effective way of dealing with corruption is through providing competitive markets and the legal framework for open and accountable government. Corrup tion thrives on secrecy. Without that secrecy it will either disap pear or become obvious, giving police or other agencies a better chance of taking action against it.

Only last month, the World Bank blacklisted three companies that had failed to meet its standards of accountability.

In privatisations and the letting of government contracts, such open procedures can save the government 20 to 30 per cent of the project costs.

Jemima Garrett

Sydney