Anti-Corruption Actions Needed at Cologne G-8 Summit
Finance Ministers Meet this Weekend to Prepare Summit
Most OECD countries have still to ratify anti-bribery convention.
Transparency International, the global anti-corruption organisation, called today on the G8 Summit to address the issue of corruption. It stressed the importance for the leading finance ministers of the world, at their meeting in Frankfurt this week-end, to lay the ground for a Summit anti-corruption declaration at the Cologne meeting one week later.
Prior Summits have called for an OECD Anti-Corruption Convention. This was ratified in February of this year. Transparency International stated that, while the leading industrialised countries with the exception of Italy and France have fully ratified the Convention, almost 60% of the other signatories have so far failed to do so. The OECD Convention makes it a criminal offence to bribe foreign public officials.
Transparency International called on the G8 Summit to:
- press for swift ratification by all OECD countries of the OECD Anti-Corruption Convention;
- stress the key importance of Convention monitoring and prosecution of corporations that continue to pay bribes abroad; and,
- ensure that the new World Trade Organization's round of trade negotiations, to be launched in Seattle later this year, highlights the trade-distorting nature of corruption and seeks international agreements to fight corruption in global trade and investment.
Transparency International's Chairman Peter Eigen said that: "Concrete anti-corruption action is imperative if world trade and investment is to be strengthened, if young and fragile democracies in the South and in Eastern Europe are to become secure, and if poverty in the world's poorest countries is to be reduced."
Transparency International, which has national chapters in over 70 countries, called on the Summit leaders to recognize the linkages between curbing corruption, strengthening global commerce, building democracy and reducing poverty.
Status: The OECD Anti-Corruption Convention
Major industrial G8 Summit countries to have ratified the OECD Anti- Corruption Convention include Canada, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. The following OECD member countries have not Yet ratified the Convention:
|
Argentina |
Ireland |
Slovak Republic |
TI Information & Contacts:
Transparency International is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization with headquarters in Berlin, Germany.
For any press enquiries please contact
TI’s Chairman Peter Eigen
Head of Public Relations, Jeff Lovitt,
+49-30-343 8200
email: [email protected].
TI’s executive director for policy issue sat TI’s London office
Jeremy Pope
tel. +44 (020) 7610 1400;
fax. +44 (020) 7610 1550
email: [email protected].
TI’s chief spokesman on international issues in the United States
TI Vice Chairman Frank Vogl
Tel: +1-(202) 331 8183
Fax: +1-(202) 331 8187
email: [email protected]
