[Global Corruption Report 2007] Enforcement of anti-corruption laws

Abstract

"Central to any successful comprehensive anti-corruption policy is the deterrence of corrupt behaviour. Allegations of bribery, influence peddling, money laundering and other violations must be investigated and, when the evidence warrants, prosecuted. Courts must expeditiously, but fairly, adjudicate the resulting cases, and the penalties imposed on those convicted must be sufficient to dissuade others from similar acts. To ensure that anti-corruption laws are indeed being effectively enforced, governments need to begin monitoring the enforcement process. Enforcement data can help administrators discover trends and allocate limited resources based on actual enforcement activities and developments rather than on perceptions. Bottlenecks in processing individuals through the various steps in the criminal justice system can be identified and resources allocated to relieve them. Statistical outliers and precipitous trends can help identify areas warranting further investigation and possible corrective action. The World Bank is developing tools to help countries improve the ways in which they monitor the enforcement of their anti-corruption laws.2 Preliminary work discloses a number of issues that complicate the effective monitoring of enforcement. In some countries corrupt officials may be charged with bribery but end up being convicted of, or agreeing to plead guilty to, tax evasion or lying to the police. Without careful cross-checking of data, such cases may be incorrectly catalogued. Nor is the criminal law the only avenue of enforcement. Public servants guilty of corruption are typically fired and often lose their pensions and other accrued benefits under administrative proceedings. A complete picture of the enforcement regime must pick up such non-criminal actions as well. Despite these challenges, an objective in the monitoring of anti-corruption laws is to provide performance measures that can be acted upon. These are in contrast to such indicators as perceptions of corruption. At least in the short run there is very little policymakers can do to change perceptions of corruption. By contrast, an actionable indicator is one that is within a country’s power to address. Thus, if a country finds that it has an inordinately low rate of convictions for corruption offences, it can improve its score by such steps as providing better training to prosecutors and judges and more carefully selecting cases for prosecution."(pg 310)