Reason for looting: ‘We didn’t have anything before, now we are in charge of vault’

IN SOME Central European, some American countries and in many other parts of the world, a growing number of politicians have acted with impunity, international anti-corruption expert Drago Kos said yesterday.

He was responding to a question in a webinar hosted by Compliance International and co-sponsored by BR, on best practices to prevent corruption, about what can be done in a country such as South Africa, where corrupt politicians were protected instead of prosecuted.

He is an international anti-corruption and integrity expert and also chairperson of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) working group on Bribery in International Business Transactions. He is also co-chairperson Mena (Middle East and North Africa)-OECD Business Integrity Network.

Compliance Intelligence chief executive Roger Latchman said Kos’s views were particularly important because the politically connected in developing countries had seen fit to loot, and South Africa was no exception.

He said the reasons for this trend had to do with, “we didn’t have anything before and now we are in charge of the vault”.

Kos said politicians that were above the law were “the worst thing that can happen to a country”, and the corruption invariably ended up infecting other government agencies.

One way to fight this was to have legislation, which ensured that everybody was treated equally, according to the law.

He said, however, that he knew of many countries with good legislation on paper, but the practical effect of the policy was close to zero.

Politicians claimed to fight corruption and they generally claimed also that their predecessors were more corrupt, but the growing incidences of public sector corruption has suggested otherwise.

A growing number of political leaders globally were claiming that because they represented sovereign states, they were immune to anti-corruption influences of other countries, but this claim was a “cover-up” for corruption, said Kos.

On measures to curb corruption in the public sector, he said governments should have effective anti-corruption agency and these should be allowed to operate independently.

Latchman agreed, saying South Africa needed one large anti-corruption agency that was separate from the National Prosecuting Authority, which suffered from too much political interference.

Kos said that public sector employees needed to be appointed according to experience, education and integrity, and they should not be appointed according to political and family affiliation.

Countries should also begin dealing with the potential for conflicts of interest in the public service because, while conflict of interest was not necessarily corrupt, it was usually a “red flag”, he said.

Kos said another step to prevent corruption in both private and public sectors was the drawing up of codes of conduct. Nonetheless, no code of conduct would be any good unless there were also consequences against people that did not follow the codes.

He said governments and other organisations had assessments and planning in place to deal with risks such as earthquakes and floods, but surprisingly few countries had such plans and assessments in place to deal with the risk of corruption.

Kos said governments lose the most money to corruption in the procurement process and the solution here was transparency of the process, and equal treatment of all bidders, as well as a realisation that the cheapest bid is not necessarily the best one.

Transparency of government finances also helped to reduce the risk of corruption, and in some countries it was already an easy process to follow how local government finances were being spent at any time.

“If there are not specific reasons for the information not to be in the public realm, it should be shared. Confidentiality needs to be the exception,” when it came to public finances, he said.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it,” American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, Warren Buffett, has noted.

In 2004, South Africa enacted a law compelling individuals and companies to prevent and combat corrupt activities.

In the private sector in 2019/20, as many as 57 individuals accused of corrupt activities were convicted,

In the public sector in 2019/20, the National Prosecuting Authority reported a conviction of 202 individuals accused of corrupt activities, however, the audited figure was 210 people.