"IF, AS an Australian citizen, you perform an act of bribery offshore, you can be fined $1 million, jailed for 10 years and your company can be fined $10 million, which all sounds very proper except that nobody has ever been prosecuted." James Kirby is not impressed with the fact that Australia doesn't appear willing to use its own laws to nab corrupt individuals and companies - and neither am I.
According to Transparency International (Australia):
The overwhelming majority of the world's leading exporting nations is failing to fully enforce a ban on foreign bribery, reveals Transparency International's (TI) 2009 OECD Anti-bribery Convention Progress Report.
The fifth edition of the yearly report shows that just four of 36 countries party to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention are active enforcers. There is moderate enforcement in 11 and little to no enforcement in the 21 remaining countries. Such performance throws into question governments' commitments and threatens to destabilise the definitive legal instrument to fight international bribery.
In 1997, the member states of the OECD adopted the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Hailed as a landmark event in the fight against international corruption, the Convention represented a collective commitment to ban foreign bribery by the governments of the leading industrialised states, which account for the majority of global exports and foreign investment. The Convention entered into force in 1999 and now has 38 parties.
This is what it also said about Australia:
"Australia's slide in its standing as a non-corrupt nation has been halted in the latest international rankings of 180 countries released today by the global anticorruption organisation, Transparency International. Australia has risen to eighth spot from ninth in 2008 in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), halting a slide since 2002 when it was considered the least corrupt country in the world. The Chief Executive of Transparency International Australia, Michael Ahrens, said Australia held top spot in 2002 before the exposure of dealings by the Australian Wheat Board with the Middle East, notably the Iraqi Government of Saddam Hussein. New Zealand has now replaced Denmark at the top of the world list as the country perceived as least likely to allow corruption. In the important regional breakdown of the CPI, Australian ranked third for the Asia- Pacific Region behind New Zealand and Singapore. The CPI is a composite index that draws on 13 expert and business surveys to measure the perceived levels of public sector corruption in a given country. Most of the 180 countries in the 2009 index still scored under five on a zero-to-10 scale, with zero perceived as highly corrupt and 10 to mean low levels of corruption; so the corruption challenge remains undeniable in the region and elsewhere. Highest scorers in the 2009 CPI were New Zealand (9.4) Denmark (9.3) Singapore and Sweden (9.2), Switzerland (9.0), Finland and Netherlands (8.7) and Australia, Canada and Iceland (8.7). Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict scored lowest, notably Somalia (1.1), Afghanistan (1.3) Myanmar (1.4), Sudan (1.5) and Iraq (1.5). Mr Ahrens said the German based headquarters of Transparency International has reported that as the world economy shows a tentative recovery and some nations continue to wrestle with ongoing conflict and insecurity, it is clear that no region is immune to corruption...."
Poll results from Transparency International
According to Transparency International (Australia):
The overwhelming majority of the world's leading exporting nations is failing to fully enforce a ban on foreign bribery, reveals Transparency International's (TI) 2009 OECD Anti-bribery Convention Progress Report.
The fifth edition of the yearly report shows that just four of 36 countries party to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention are active enforcers. There is moderate enforcement in 11 and little to no enforcement in the 21 remaining countries. Such performance throws into question governments' commitments and threatens to destabilise the definitive legal instrument to fight international bribery.
In 1997, the member states of the OECD adopted the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Hailed as a landmark event in the fight against international corruption, the Convention represented a collective commitment to ban foreign bribery by the governments of the leading industrialised states, which account for the majority of global exports and foreign investment. The Convention entered into force in 1999 and now has 38 parties.
This is what it also said about Australia:
"Australia's slide in its standing as a non-corrupt nation has been halted in the latest international rankings of 180 countries released today by the global anticorruption organisation, Transparency International. Australia has risen to eighth spot from ninth in 2008 in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), halting a slide since 2002 when it was considered the least corrupt country in the world. The Chief Executive of Transparency International Australia, Michael Ahrens, said Australia held top spot in 2002 before the exposure of dealings by the Australian Wheat Board with the Middle East, notably the Iraqi Government of Saddam Hussein. New Zealand has now replaced Denmark at the top of the world list as the country perceived as least likely to allow corruption. In the important regional breakdown of the CPI, Australian ranked third for the Asia- Pacific Region behind New Zealand and Singapore. The CPI is a composite index that draws on 13 expert and business surveys to measure the perceived levels of public sector corruption in a given country. Most of the 180 countries in the 2009 index still scored under five on a zero-to-10 scale, with zero perceived as highly corrupt and 10 to mean low levels of corruption; so the corruption challenge remains undeniable in the region and elsewhere. Highest scorers in the 2009 CPI were New Zealand (9.4) Denmark (9.3) Singapore and Sweden (9.2), Switzerland (9.0), Finland and Netherlands (8.7) and Australia, Canada and Iceland (8.7). Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict scored lowest, notably Somalia (1.1), Afghanistan (1.3) Myanmar (1.4), Sudan (1.5) and Iraq (1.5). Mr Ahrens said the German based headquarters of Transparency International has reported that as the world economy shows a tentative recovery and some nations continue to wrestle with ongoing conflict and insecurity, it is clear that no region is immune to corruption...."
Poll results from Transparency International
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