WASHINGTON, USA – Today we commemorate a different International Anti-Corruption Day. COVID-19 and the challenges it brings to our countries and our populations makes the fight against the misappropriation of public goods and services even more relevant. The pandemic has also made it necessary for States to adopt urgent measures for its mitigation. This has led to a heavy investment in public resources that must be implemented with honesty, transparency and efficiency, now even more so as the health and very survival of citizens are at stake.
Corruption continues to be one of the worst evils that afflicts our societies, because it not only deprives citizens of resources that legitimately belong to them, but also undermines the trust of those same citizens in their institutions and democracies.
The devastating effects of corruption are unfortunately very visible today in our hemisphere. No one is safe from corruption, but we are all responsible for ensuring that it is severely prosecuted and punished. In this respect, impunity is corruption’s best friend. The best example of this is unfortunately Venezuela, a country with enormous resources and wealth that has large parts of its population impoverished. Suffering from malnutrition and from previously controlled diseases, this population is held hostage by dictators who have co-opted the institutions, goods, and services of the state for their own benefit. When impunity is the norm, dictators are not afraid of prosecution.
At this moment, the groundwork that the OAS and its member states have been carrying out within the framework of the Follow-Up Mechanism to the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC) takes on greater relevance. It is necessary that our States have strong legal frameworks on matters covered by the Convention, such as public procurement and the prevention of conflicts of interest, to avoid the misappropriation of public resources by perpetrators of corruption.
In this respect, the work of the MESICIC has not stopped during the pandemic. To the 94 systems of government hiring of public servants and the 37 systems of public procurement of goods and services analyzed in the last round of review, several more key issues will be evaluated in the round that has commenced this year.
This will include the lifting of bank secrecy in cases of corruption, extradition of perpetrators of corruption, the criminalization of illicit enrichment, the sanction of transnational bribery, and the responsibility of businesses in the prevention and detection of acts of corruption.
Moreover, in the on-site visits carried out by the MESICIC in its last round of review, in addition to interviewing 784 public officials from 258 state agencies and/or entities, it also met with representatives from 47 civil society organizations, 41 private sector organizations, 28 professional associations, and 11 academics and researchers.
The MESICIC continues to consolidate itself as the hemispheric cooperation forum against corruption, a space for member states to continue exchanging best practices, providing them with new anticorruption tools, such as a model law for the prevention of conflicts of interest, and a set of indicators to objectively determine the results in the investigation, prosecution and criminal punishment of acts of corruption. These indicators will provide countries with early warnings on measures to be adopted, in order to prevent impunity for perpetrators of corruption
On the occasion of this commemoration, guided by our Convention against Corruption and the conviction that less corruption means more rights for more people, we reaffirm our commitment to help States in the fight against corruption. Zero tolerance for corruption.
