Search results

Four decades ago, the Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal (1970, p. 230) attributed the paucity of research on corruption in South Asia to the research taboo on this topic. Fortunately, this taboo has been gradually eroded since the 1990s as reflected in the tremendous amount of research that has been done on corruption in the Asia-Pacific countries. Corruption has emerged in the 1990s as “a truly global political issue eliciting a global political response” (Glynn, Kobrin, & Naim, 1997, p. 7). Indeed, the globalization of corruption has given rise to an overriding concern with how to combat corruption in many countries among their governments and many international agencies. Consequently, many international organizations like the Asian Development Bank, Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management, Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration, International Institute for Administrative Sciences, Organization of American States, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Transparency International, United Nations Development Programme, World Bank, and World Economic Forum have organized numerous conferences, symposia and workshops on various aspects of corruption.

Corruption is a serious problem in many Asian countries, judging from their ranking and scores on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). To combat corruption these countries have relied on three patterns of corruption control. The first pattern relies on the enactment of anti-corruption laws without a specific agency to enforce these laws. For example in Mongolia, the Law on Anti-Corruption that was introduced in April 1996 is jointly implemented by the police, the General Prosecutor's Office, and the courts (Quah, 2003a, p. 44)¹. The second pattern involves the implementation of anti-corruption laws by several anti-corruption agencies. In India, the Prevention of Corruption Act (POCA) is implemented by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), and the anti-corruption bureaus and vigilance commissions at the state level (Quah, 2003a, p. 66). Similarly, the Philippines has relied on 18 anti-corruption agencies to enforce the many anti-corruption laws since the Integrity Board was formed by President Quirino in May 1950 (Batalla, 2001, p. 47; Oyamada, 2005, pp. 99–101).

Corruption, broadly defined as ‘the abuse of public power for private gain’ is extremely harmful to any community. It threatens economic growth, social development, consolidation of democracy and the national morale. Politically, it creates situations of potential instability by destroying trust and confidence, for when an administration loses its credibility a climate for instability, unrest and general lawlessness is created. Economically, corruption stifles private initiative and enterprise, and the huge kickbacks and commissions demanded may act as disincentives to investment whether by foreign or local entrepreneurs. Corruption often goes hand in hand with other criminal practices, for example money laundering, drug trafficking and organised crime, which may threaten a legitimate economy. Corruption thus negatively impacts on practices of productivity and performance as well as efforts to bring about recovery and development.

The implicit assumption underlying the work of most anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) is that they need to change public attitudes toward corruption to ensure a cleaner future. The means of achieving this objective usually rest on sanctions, prevention, and sermons. Changing attitudes is seen to be largely a matter of prosecuting the corrupt, putting preventive measures in place, emphasizing the negative social and criminal consequences of corruption, and exhorting the public to achieve higher moral standards. Engaging the public is rarely undertaken directly. If it were, it would entail a community relations approach based on face-to-face, decentralized interaction between the ACA and the public. In principle, this approach might have three significant advantages. First, it could enable the anti-corruption message to be communicated more directly and, possibly, more effectively. Second, it might assist the ACA in identifying groups within the community which have developed, or are developing, attitudes which are potentially antithetical to its objectives. Third, it could serve as a springboard for local anti-corruption initiatives which might help to embed desired practices in the community or groups within it. In this chapter, we examine the extent to which one of the few agencies to adopt a full-blown community relations strategy – Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) – has been able to achieve those benefits.

The aims of this paper are threefold: first, to present a brief description of the history and work of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC); secondly, to emphasise the importance of international liaison and cooperation as a strategy to transcend jurisdictional barriers in the fight against corruption and corruption‐related crime; and, thirdly, to reconfirm the ICAC's continued role in and commitment to that strategy beyond 1997.

This paper examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to deter and detect fraud, domestically and abroad. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), and other national and foreign professional associations, in promulgating auditing standards and procedures to prevent fraud in financial statements and other white‐collar crimes. It also examines several fraud cases and the impact of management and employee fraud on the various business sectors such as insurance, banking, health care, and manufacturing, as well as the role of management, the boards of directors, the audit committees, auditors, and fraud examiners and their liability in the fraud prevention and investigation.

The negative consequences of corruption for a country's development have been identified in Chapter 1. Corruption is ubiquitous and is found in “all political systems, at every level of government, and in the delivery of all scarce public goods and services” (Caiden, 1988, p. 6). Corruption is a universal problem, and governments all over the world have introduced measures to tackle this “social pandemic” which has “many faces” and is “the most challenging obstacle to economic development” (Campos & Bhargava, 2007, pp. 1–2).

Corruption undermines good governance. Strategies for preventing malfeasance in low-corruption environments require a different approach to that applied in high-corruption environments. This paper aims to ask if criminological theories and practice contribute to the study and prevention of corruption in public organizations? Do crime prevention techniques help us in preventing corruption?

Empirical data demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of public officials in rich countries demonstrate high levels of integrity; yet, significant sums are invested in anti-corruption agencies and prevention strategies. This paper reports on recent work with an anti-corruption agency, which forced us to re-think how to deliver an anti-corruption agenda in a low-corruption environment. The authors build on their research of public sector corruption in rich countries to develop a set of 20 situational corruption prevention measures for public administrators.

The result, with lessons from crime prevention, is a prevention tool to support continued good governance in low-corruption environments. Figure 1 is a template that readers can apply in their own environments. Figure 2 is the authors’ attempt to populate this template based on the research reported here.

The matrix of situational corruption prevention techniques provides two original approaches. First, it recasts the language of crime prevention into a non-confrontational approach to avoid alienating honest public officials. Second, the matrix incorporates common public sector functions to guide the development of context specific corruption prevention techniques.

Chapters 2–6 have dealt in turn with how Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore have been effective in curbing corruption, as manifested in their rankings and scores on the five international indicators of the perceived extent of corruption. In contrast, Chapter 7 focuses on India’s ineffective anti-corruption measures and identifies the lessons which India can learn from their success in fighting corruption. The aim of this concluding chapter is twofold: to describe and compare the different paths taken by these six countries in their battle against corruption; and to identify the lessons which other countries can learn from their experiences in combating corruption. However, as the policy contexts of these six countries differ significantly, it is necessary to begin by providing an analysis of their contextual constraints before proceeding to compare their anti-corruption strategies and identifying the relevant lessons for other countries.