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OAS ANTI-CORRUPTION MECHANISM ADOPTS REPORT ON SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
On September 12, at its Twenty-fourth Meeting, the Committee of Experts of the OAS Anticorruption Mechanism (MESICIC) adopted a report on the implementation in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.
This report provides a comprehensive review of the structure, operation
and results obtained in the Office of the Attorney General, the Office
of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the Director of Audit
(DOA), and the Service Commissions Department of the Public Service
Commissions (SCD), four of the oversight bodies responsible for
preventing, detecting and punishing corruption in Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines.
This review was performed taking into account the information provided
by the country under review, and the information gathered during the
on-site site visit held in Kingstown in April this year by
representatives of Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis and the MESICIC
Technical Secretariat, where meetings were held with representatives of
the aforementioned government bodies, and with representatives of civil
society and the private sector in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Besides the review, this report contains a set of recommendations to be
considered by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in relation to the
foregoing oversight bodies that address the following:
With respect to the Office of the Attorney General, establish
inter-institutional coordination mechanisms to assist and ensure that
public agencies abide by their legal obligation of requesting the Office
of the Attorney General’s legal advice in a timely and correct fashion,
particularly in matters involving acts of corruption; work toward the
drafting of legislative bills on transparency and anticorruption,
dealing with, for instance, integrity in public service; and develop
Office of the Attorney General-led policies and/or campaigns that would
allow both public servants and the general population to develop a
preventive attitude to ensure transparency and avoid acts of corruption.
As regards the DOA, provide the DOA with the human and financial
resources necessary to ensure due compliance with its constitutional and
legal duties, chiefly as regards conducting audits and detecting corrupt
acts that trigger responsibility for the persons involved therein; take
the steps necessary to ensure that those public agencies subject to the
DOA’s oversight effectively comply with the recommendations issued in
its audit reports; strengthen control mechanisms of the DOA through the
effective and timely implementation of the terms of section 22(1) of the
Audit Act; and to adopt coordination and cooperation mechanisms to
enable the DOA to send the DPP, the Royal Police Force, and/or the
Financial Intelligence Unit, as applicable, timely notification of such
evidence of corrupt acts that the DOA detects in the audits that it
carries out.
With respect to the DPP, take the steps necessary to conclude the
effective implementation of the National Prosecution Service in order to
strengthen, inter alia, the DPP’s powers of supervision over procedures
carried by police prosecutors; to implement coordination mechanisms
between the DPP, the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police
Force, the Office of the Attorney General, and the Financial
Intelligence Unit, in order to establish effective and timely procedures
and/or guidelines for exchanges of information and legal advice for the
correct presentation before the courts of criminal proceedings related
to acts of corruption; and to prepare statistical data on its duties and
responsibilities.
Concerning the SCD, consider updating the provisions that govern the
SCD, in particular the Civil Service Orders for the Public Service of
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which were enacted prior to the 1979
Constitution, and bringing them into line with the current standards
necessary for the correct, honorable, and due performance of public
functions; promote and regulate public reporting of acts of corruption
in public service; and establish efficient and effective
inter-institutional coordination to encourage and ensure that permanent
secretaries, department heads, or other persons with the responsibility
of doing so provide the SCD with the timely information it needs to
perform its functions of disciplinary control and personnel
administration within the public administration. In a second part, the report also contains the follow-up on the recommendations formulated to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the First Round and with respect to which, the Committee, in previous reports, found required additional attention. Some of the recommendations formulated to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the First Round that remain pending include: to strengthen provisions on standards of conduct aimed at preventing conflicts of interest, to update systems of control and use of resources within the public administration; to adopt standards to strengthen the systems for registering income, assets, and liabilities and, where appropriate, for making such registrations public, and to Adopt, as soon as possible, the necessary measures for the promulgation and full entry into force of the Freedom of Information Act (Act No. 27) of 2003.
With the report of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, there were also
adopted reports for Belize, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, and Suriname, which
are all available
here.
For more information, please visit the Anti-corruption Portal of the Americas . |
Edition N° 187 - September 2014
The Mechanism For Follow-up on the
Implementation of the Inter-American
Convention against Corruption, known as MESICIC for its Spanish acronym, is a tool to
support the development of the Inter-American
Convention against Corruption through
cooperation between States Parties.
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