Review of anti-corruption strategies Rob McCusker - Australian ...

The review noted a number of weaknesses in anti-corruption measures including inequalities and
insufficiencies in penal and criminal provisions and a lack of criminalisation of certain forms of corruption.
Equally, the involvement and utilisation of the public in the fight against corruption had not been
acknowledged sufficiently in most countries. A weak regulatory environment was also seen to lead
to discouragement of the private sector in enhancing transparency and accountability in business
transactions with public officials.
In the area of procurement, deemed to constitute a central point of abuse, it has been suggested that it
may be necessary to create third party oversight processes, given the unlikelihood of either party in the
procurement process reporting each other’s activity. These could include evaluation and risk profiling
of procurement activities and procedures, monitoring of the awarded contract at the site of the project
for which a tender was successful and performing post-project evaluations to ensure that the money
provided for its completion can be fully accounted for.
It is recognised that locating evidence of corruption is difficult and might arguably impact upon the actual or
perceived success of anti-corruption efforts, especially in those environments where corrupt practices are so
endemic as to constitute normal behaviour. The provision for safe and objective whistleblowing procedures
might provide the crucial link between corruption, evidence and subsequent law enforcement action.
The other evidentiary issue lies in locating and then extracting the pertinent information from the banal.
The use of forensic accounting procedures to facilitate this is becoming increasingly important. However,
in those countries in which such a facility would be beneficial there is currently neither the expertise nor
the capacity to provide such coverage. The final issue of note in the overview is mutual legal assistance
which is becoming more important in tracing both the corrupt activities and the money secreted around
the globe as a result of those activities (ADB/OECD 2004).
An additional area concerns technical strategies in which improvements are made to improve the
efficiency of monitoring and accountability mechanisms in the political, administrative and private sectors.
Such measures include procurement laws, sound accounting procedures and transparent financial
management systems, regulations on financial disclosure and receipt of gifts by state officials. It also
requires the establishment or strengthening of supreme auditing institutions and the establishment of
special commissions of inquiry or special prosecutors to investigate individuals and groups accused of
corruption (Tay & Seda 2003).