Corruption International
April 13, 2009
Last week I attended a conference organized by “Partnering against Corruption Initiative” (PACI.) an initiative of the World Economic Forum. The sessions were superbly organized and were both informative and inspiring. Keynote speakers included Samuel DiPiazza the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers who was hosting the event and Richard Daley, the Mayor of Chicago who created the first office of compliance for the City of Chicago that is independent from all other government offices.
There were more than 60 participants from Fortune 500 and other global corporations. Each had an interesting story to tell.
Ruder Finn is a signatory of the initiative and is a member of the Task Force. Ruder Finn is (or rather always has been) committed to a “Zero-tolerance policy towards bribery” and will develop a practical and effective implementation program for the Agency.
Corruption and bribery costs an estimated 5% of Global GDP or $2.6 trillion a year.
It is a major, if not the major cause of the disastrous state of the economy of most developing countries. If the funds lost in corruption were used as intended, world hunger could be drastically reduced and many diseases cured.
Although realistically corruption will never be completely eradicated, its practice can be dramatically reduced if anti-corruption measures are implemented and world governments are enlisted to give their active support to these measures.
It is a monumental task but there is hope. Since the implementation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA), corruption has been dramatically reduced worldwide. (FCPA imposes severe penalties and jail time for U.S. companies involved in bribery whether the crime is committed in the US or abroad.)
Cobus de Swardt, the managing Director of Transparency International (a global anti-corporation organization and founding partner of PACI) told us that there was reason for optimism. He said that if someone had told him, some 15 years ago, while he was in jail in South Africa because of his opposition to Apartheid that the SA regime would fall and/or that the U.S would have an African-American President, he would not have believed it. The world is changing. Some governments have fallen because of corruption. Corruption is more and more viewed not as just “the cost of doing business” but is increasingly perceived as simply “no longer acceptable.”
Corruption violates ethical values such as fairness, justice, honesty and transparency. We each can play a role in fighting corruption because it happens ever day and at many different levels.
I have heard the following inspiring quote from Edmund Burke more than once at the conference and it well represents the attitude of those present.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Post Your Comment
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)