TI lauded China’s move to put foreign companies and domestic operating overseas under the jurisdiction of anti-corruption laws. Hailing it as a big step, TI China’s Rian Jianmin cautioned of potential “bottlenecks.”
Elena Panfilova, director of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiative --Transparency International Russia, wrote that “there are no islands of integrity in Russian public and business life.”
However, she said there has been noticeably increased enforcement of “new national anti-corruption legislation and compliance with international commitments.”
TI also assessed which industries are the most susceptible to bribes. Agriculture and light manufacturing topped the list of 19, while public works and construction were at the bottom.
But the authors tempered this assessment, acknowledging that construction is often done through multiple contractors and sub-contractors, making it fragmented and hard to track.
Oil and gas energy, mining, real estate, and legal services are also marred by bribery, according to the report, because these sectors are “all characterized by high-value investment and significant government interaction and regulation, both of which provide opportunities and incentives for corruption.”
TI indicated some surprise that bribery between companies was as prevalent as bribes paid to governments. The report extolled the UK Bribery Act, passed last year, which criminalizes bribery between business firms, including firms that do business in Britain. “This sets a new global standard” that should be copied elsewhere, the authors wrote.
TI called on governments to honor their international anti-corruption commitments because of corruption’s “very real impact on human lives,” citing the role that shoddy construction has in times of natural disasters that have caused “many deaths…in highly corrupt countries.”
