G20 nations endorse graft-busting action plan that includes commitments to protect whistleblowers and make life tougher for corrupt officials
(Updates with comment from Global Witness)
BANGKOK, Nov 12 (TrustLaw) - G20 countries threw their weight behind a U.N. treaty against corruption on Friday as they endorsed a graft-busting action plan that includes commitments to protect whistleblowers and make life tougher for corrupt officials.
Wrapping up a summit in Seoul, leaders of 19 major industrialised nations and the European Union pledged to lead by example by effectively implementing the U.N. Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the only legally binding global treaty to fight corruption.
“Building on previous declarations, and cognisant of our role as leaders of major trading nations, we recognise a special responsibility to prevent and tackle corruption and commit to supporting a common approach to building an effective global anti-corruption regime,” the summit’s outcome document said.
Activists and graft experts meeting at a major global anti-corruption conference in Bangkok welcomed the G20’s commitment to UNCAC, which came with a promise to review transparently how nations are living up to their obligations under the convention.
“It’s clearly excellent that these countries as G20 members very publicly endorse this course,” Francois Valerian, head of private-sector programmes for corruption watchdog Transparency International, told TrustLaw.
“Now we have to see domestic implementation.”
Arvind Ganesan, director of business and human rights programme at Human Rights Watch, said it was not just a matter of getting countries with a poor track record of fighting corruption - such as China and India - to turn expressions of intent into concrete action.
“Will we see out of this action plan, for example, the U.S. denying visas to Equatorial Guinean officials, looking at ways to investigate and prosecute them for the proceeds of what they’ve spent in the country?”
The G20’s nine-point anti-corruption action plan contains a commitment to deny corrupt officials access to the global financial system to launder ill-gotten gains, as well as a promise to “consider a cooperative framework to deny entry and safe haven in our jurisdictions to corrupt officials and those who corrupt them".
Leaders committed to put in place mechanisms for the recovery of property from corrupt officials through international cooperation in tracing, freezing and confiscating assets.
They also pledged to adopt and enforce laws against international bribery, strengthen anti-corruption bodies and put in place rules to protect whistleblowers by the end of 2012.
The action plan sends a strong message to companies in G20 countries to join the fight against corruption, with a goal of agreeing measures with the private sector to improve corporate accountability by the end of 2011.
"It would be good if the G20 leaders follow America's lead. America's just passed the Dodd-Frank Amendment to the Financial Reform Bill, which means that extractive industries, so like oil and mining companies who are registered on the Securities and Exchange Commission in America, have to declare what they're paying in their countries of operation,” said Patrick Alley of NGO Global Witness.
“And it's not just American companies. That takes in top Chinese companies; in fact I think the majority of companies will be foreign. To make this effective globally, we want other countries to enact the same kind of legislation."
G20 countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Britain and the United States.
All but Germany, India, Japan and Saudi Arabia have fully ratified UNCAC, which provides a global framework to criminalise and prosecute corruption and to enable countries to help each other with asset recovery.
“The G20 will hold itself accountable for its commitments,” the summit document said. “Beyond our participation in existing mechanisms of peer review for international anti-corruption standards, we mandate the Anti-Corruption Working Group to submit annual reports on the implementation of our commitments to future Summits for the duration of the Anti-Corruption Action Plan.”
(Additional reporting by Katie Nguyen and Thin Lei Win)
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