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Punish the Bribe-Taker 7/31/2013 6:43:09 PM
Bribe takers need to be punished as well as Bribe-payers. The Bangkok Blog, August 1, 2013
“Everywhere on our planet hands are greased daily in the business world. Often it’s done with a bloated face, wearing a serpent’s smile.”
This is a quotation from RANSOM DROP, one of my novels, and it depicts the rampant corruption that exists in todays business world. Since bribery and corruption are linked to the themes of my noivels, I write about this issue often and encourage the public to speak out against corruption and support legislation that punishes the criminals.
Think of it this way. You go to buy a hat in a department store. The retail price of the hat is $5.00. The real price, minus the bribes and kickbacks used to get the hat on the market, is $ 4.00. That’s what you should be paying. The seller makes his profit, the store owner makes his. And you walk off wearing a hat that you like at a fair price. This is how the story should end, with everyone winning. But it doesn’t work out that way for the consumer because of bribery and corruption practices.
But there are agencies out there now trying to do something about the problem.
Trace International continues to hold Corruption & Compliance Summits in Southeast Asia. The focus is on strategies to help solve corruption and compliance issues existing in multinational and international Asian companies operating in Southeast Asia. Transparency International is another agency devoted to rooting out the bad guys and making sure laws are enforced to punish them.
But we need to take the issue one step further. We need to punish not only those who offer bribes, but those who take them. Too often corruption is ignored as, “just a part of doing business,” when goods and financial aid arrive in Third World countires. These resources are there to help reduce poverty and develop infrastructure, buildings, roads, and power supplies within the country. But often a high percentage of the money is skimmed off the top by middle-men and greedy public officials before it ever reaches the people who need it most.
As Michael Robinson states in a recent article in Globe and Mail titled: ‘We Need To Punish Bribe-takers, Not Just Bribe-payers, “The World Bank sets a target of a 50 per cent reduction in corruption by 2030. But It is estimated that between 10 and 20 per cent of poverty-reduction and development financing is skimmed off the top by corruption.” He states further that the World Bank did its part by introducing a sanctions and debarment regime. And Canada took on engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and banned them from projects financed by the World Bank for a ten year period. Harsher laws need to be written and enforced to ensure that corruption and bribery are eliminated and officials held accountable.
But these laws are all on the supply side. What about the demand side? Aren’t supply and demand linked together? Of course, they are. Therefore, the bribe payer as well as the bribe taker should be held accountable and prosecuted. Fines, sanctions and stiff penalies need to be enforced against countries not complying with their anti-corruption laws. Again, Mr. Robinson, ” The institutions creating the sanctions should include the Big Five international development Banks, the International Monetary Fund, the many export credit agencies of developed countries, the UN Development Program, the World Trade Organization, non-governmental institutions and institutional aid providers.”
Mr. Robinson also reports that the IMF recently cut off the Democratic Republic of Congo’s loan program when it refused to reveal details of suspicious transfers of mining licences to a tainted foreign investor.
Trace International and Transparency International push constantly for action on the demand side. These dedicated, highly efficient agencies want to root out corruption at both ends. Why should the bribe taker be let off so easily when he/she is just as guilty as the one offering the bribe? People the world over are fed up with pervasive acts of domestic corruption and are speaking out against it. We can only hope in the years to come that the public outcry leads to stiffer penalties and sanctions for those who break the law.
