This week, 200 leading anti-corruption leaders are meeting in France at an International Anticorruption Practitioner Conference hosted by the French Ministry of Justice with support from the World Bank Group, the OECD and the United Kingdom.
· Conference theme and sessions build on the commitments made at the UK Anti-corruption Summit held in May 2016 while aiming to drive attention and boost momentum in addressing some of the key risks to development impact.
· Corruption is a symptom of governance weaknesses and the World Bank’s efforts are designed to address both symptoms and root causes impacting its projects while promoting global and regional initiatives to strengthen and promote collective action, information exchange, transparency and public accountability.
This week, the World Bank Group is participating in the International Anti-Corruption Practitioner Conference.
With a focus on strengthening international cooperation and action against corruption, conference sessions cover a range of priority themes including risk prevention and compliance tools as well as mechanisms of collective action and multilateral cooperation to strengthen governance practices while enhancing the rule of law.
Drawing on the experience of members the World Bank International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA), the conference is expected to generate new opportunities for engagement with some ICHA members from Africa, Europe and Central Asia to promote information exchange and innovative tools in addressing global challenges such as illicit financial flows, tax evasion, and asset recovery among others.
The World Bank Group has stepped up its efforts to engage with governments, private sector and citizens in managing integrity and governance-related risks with an emphasis on strengthening systems, promoting transparency and a clearly-defined accountability standard as well as mechanisms for reporting fraud and corruption.
Recently, a number of World Bank programs have been designed to support clients in building systems for asset disclosure by public officials and to protect against money laundering. These efforts to build transparency and accountability also aim to ensure that clean public officials and business are recognized, while corrupt and criminal ones are sanctioned.
Relying on the investigative, forensic and preventive work of its Integrity Vice-Presidency (INT), in 2015, the World Bank debarred 73 firms and individuals while preventing about $138 million from being awarded to companies that had engaged in misconduct. Debarments are part of a robust administrative sanctions system that excludes proven wrongdoers from projects but is carefully designed to ensure that accused parties are treated fairly and given the opportunity to mount a defense.
INT’s Integrity Compliance Office also works with sanctioned companies – about 50 in 2015 -to improve their compliance standards.
Country Example:
NIGERIA – The country was the first African government to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), and one of the first steps it took was a comprehensive audit of the oil sector value chain to verify that all payments were correct and settled.
The audit revealed $9.8 billion in outstanding recoverable revenues from 1999 to 2008, including an estimated $4.7 billion owed by the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
As a result of the audit, at least $2.4 billion of the lost revenue was recovered.
