SA failing to act on cross-border bribes

SOUTH Africa isn’t tackling its cross-border corruption effectively, and fines for committing foreign bribery are too low.

This was one of the findings of Transparency International’s 2015 progress report, which carries out independent assessments of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s enforcement of the Anti-Bribery Convention.

There are 41 countries that are signatories to the convention, which account for nearly 90 percent of world exports.

One of the purposes of the convention is to create an environment free of corruption for global trade and investment.

Among key findings were: About half the signatory countries had failed to prosecute any foreign bribery case since 1999.

In 20 countries there was little or no enforcement of the convention. These accounted for 20.5 percent of world exports.

Nine countries – including South Africa – had limited enforcement of the convention. Other countries were France, New Zealand, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal and Greece.

Six countries with 8.9 percent of world exports showed moderate enforcement: Italy, Canada, Australia, Norway and Finland.

Just four countries, with 22.8 percent of world exports, displayed active enforcement of the anti-foreign bribery convention: Germany, Switzerland, the UK and US.

The report said it was essential to recognise that cross-border bribery had “enormous negative consequences” for the people of affected countries. “Top priority should be directed to cases of grand corruption involving politicians and senior politicians.

“Not only is the largest damage done by grand corruption involving major contracts and permits, but failure to prevent grand corruption has the most corrosive political and societal consequences,” the report said.

South Africa, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Portugal and Slovakia all needed financial resources and specialised training for investigators to tackle foreign bribery. In South Africa, the safeguards designed to protect the anti-corruption offices from politicisation were insufficient.

David Lewis of Corruption Watch said it was encouraging that the number of investigations in South Africa had increased three times since 2011 to 2013, “but to meet our obligations under the convention, we would have to see these probes resulting in prosecutions and sanctions”.

‘Prosecution, sanctions must follow probes’