SECRETARY GENERAL INSULZA HIGHLIGHTS THE
PARTICIPATION AND “GROWING INTEREST” IN THE REGION IN THE FIGHT AGAINST
CORRUPTION
Source: OAS
Press Department
September
10, 2012
The Secretary General of the Organization of
American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today highlighted the
growing interest of the countries of the region in the fight against
corruption, at the opening of the 20th Meeting of Experts of the
Mechanism for Follow-Up on the Implementation of the Inter-American
Convention against Corruption (MESICIC). “It is gratifying that this is
the twentieth time that this Committee has met and it confirms that our
countries have a growing interest in participating,” said Secretary
General Insulza at the inauguration of the event at OAS headquarters in
Washington DC.
The
Secretary General of the OAS said that, through MESICIC, the
organization “continues to help our countries to strengthen their legal
and institutional frameworks to address corruption more effectively, to
make concrete recommendations so that they can benefit from the
provisions of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, to
prevent, detect, punish and eradicate this scourge, through its proper
implementation.”
Among the “achievements reached” by MESICIC during the past Third Round
of Committee of Experts, Insulza listed: the detection of bribes
disguised as legitimate expenses intended to be used to obtain tax
benefits, criminal liability for companies that pay bribes, both in the
case of domestic and foreign officials, the establishment of accounting
requirements that prevent the formation of “front companies” whose
purpose is to commit acts of corruption, and avoiding that the defense
of “professional secrets” serves as an obstacle to denouncing
corruption.
The OAS Secretary General mentioned “the classification of illicit
enrichment of public servants, a key issue for the effective punishment
of corruption,” and “extradition for crimes of corruption.”
Moreover, Secretary General Insulza recalled
that during the months of March and April 2012, Brazil, El Salvador,
Mexico, Bolivia and Paraguay were visited by members of the Department
of Legal Cooperation of the OAS; visits in which meetings were held with
“more than 30 public institutions” of the five mentioned countries, and
“more than 90 public officials” were interviewed.
During the sessions of the Meeting of the
Committee of Experts participants will discuss mutual cooperation
between MESICIC and the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a
multilateral initiative initially promoted by the United States and
Brazil - which many states in the region have joined - which seeks to
encourage concrete commitments from governments, with the participation
of civil society to improve transparency and access to information.
In this regard, Secretary General Insulza
stressed that the Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama, and
Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, “issued a statement last year, in which they
pledged to jointly support the implementation of the Inter-American
Convention against Corruption, including the development and use of
national action plans and joint support of the visits in situ.”
Insulza said that “from the General
Secretariat of the OAS we have supported the states by providing tools
to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations that this
Committee has made. Among these are the development of national Action
Plans, a project which 17 States have already taken on: Argentina,
Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Republic Dominican,
Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.”
The chief representative of the hemispheric
organization said that the General Secretariat “has promoted the
exchange between our countries of knowledge and experience in fighting
corruption, hosting events such as the Conference on Progress and
Challenges in Hemispheric Cooperation against Corruption, held last year
in Cali, Colombia, with the support of the government of that country.”
On that issue, Insulza said “we are very satisfied with the explicit
recognition made
by the Conference of States
Parties to the MESICIC at its last meeting, concerning the usefulness of
legal cooperation tools developed by the Technical Secretariat of
MESICIC such as the systematization of national laws, legislative
guides, model laws, the Anti-Corruption Portal of the Americas, and the
Anti-Corruption Bulletin, as well as the Action Plans program mentioned
above.
Finally, the head of the OAS said that “the
OAS General Secretariat continues to make available to the countries of
the MESICIC more and better tools of cooperation to help them to fight
corruption.”
The Twentieth Meeting of the Committee
of Experts of MESICIC takes place from today, Monday 10 September until
Friday 14 September in the Padilha Vidal Room of the General
Secretariat`s building of the OAS.
A gallery of photos of the event is
available here.
The video of the event is available here.