Tag Archives: corruption risk assessment

New Resource Guide on Corruption Risk Assessment of Legislation

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As a too-familiar cliché has it, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is a message many in the anticorruption community have taken to heart. But talking in general terms about the  importance of preventing corruption is one thing; figuring out how to design specific, practical anticorruption measures is a much greater challenge. Among the preventative tools in the anticorruption toolkit, one that has shown some promise in a number of countries, and that has attracted attention in many others, is the pre-enactment analysis of proposed laws to assess the corruption risks associated with those laws. This process is sometimes referred to as “corruption risk assessment” (CRA). (It is also—rather unfortunately—sometimes referred to as the “corruption-proofing” of proposed legislation, a label that vastly oversells what this sort of assessment is capable of doing.) We have had a couple of posts on this technique on the blog previously (see here and here).

Last month, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) published a useful resource guide on CRA intended primarily for parliaments (and other legislative bodies), authored by GAB’s own senior contributor Rick Messick. (Full disclosure: I provided some comments on a very early draft of the guide, and I also worked as a consultant, though in a comparatively minor role, on a related project with the NDI’s Bangkok office.) To quote from the introduction, this guide “suggests how a CRA procedure can be incorporated into the standing rules of parliament and provides a checklist of issues the CRA should consider…. While primarily written for stakeholders in parliament, the guide can be adapted for use by anti-corruption agencies, executive branch agencies, civil society organizations (CSO) and other groups to detect and highlight the corruption risks that exist in legislative processes.”

The link above goes to the NDI page with information about the guide and related documents. You can also go directly to a PDF of the guide itself here. I hope some of our readers find this to be a useful resource.

Developing an Effective Corruption Prevention Strategy: Insights from Sierra Leone

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It is often said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is nowhere truer than in the fight against corruption. That insight has helped shape the approach of Sierra Leone’s campaign against corruption over the last several years. In 2018, Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), of which I am the Commissioner (Head), made a deliberate policy decision to emphasize prevention over enforcement. The ACC created a designated “Prevention Department,” which was empowered to work, in conjunction with other oversight bodies such as the Supreme Audit Institution and the Public Sector Reform Agency, to ensure that corruption prevention systems and processes are embedded in the national administrative and governance architecture.

Of course, talking generally about “prevention” is easier than actually implementing effective corruption prevention mechanisms. So, what are some of the key tools that Sierra Leone has deployed to enhance its corruption prevention system? I will highlight five that have been especially important and effective: Continue reading →

Corruption Risk Assessments: Am I Missing Something?

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Surely one of most salutary developments to result from the intense focus on corruption over the past two decades is the growing use of corruption risk assessments by public and private entities alike.  Risk assessments were first employed in the 17th century to assess the likelihood a steam engine would explode and refined over the years to address risks as varied as the meltdown of a nuclear reactor or climate change.  A corruption risk assessment estimates the chances a government agency or private corporation will experience one or more types of corruption.  Just as assessing the risks of an engine explosion or reactor melt-down is an indispensable prerequisite for designing measures to mitigate if not eliminate these risks, a corruption risk assessment provides the critical information public and private sector decisionmakers need to design practicable corruption prevention programs.

A plethora of guides explaining how to conduct a corruption risk assessment are posted on the internet (examples for the public sector here and here; for the private sector here, here, and here).  All recite the standard method for assessing risks of any kind found in text books and government reports.  First, all conceivable forms of corruption to which the organization, the activity, the sector, or the project might be exposed is catalogued.  Second, an estimate of how likely it is that each of the possible forms of corruption will occur is prepared and third an estimate of the harm that will result if each occurs is developed.  The fourth step combines the chances of occurrence with the probability of its impact to produce a list of risks by priority.

The critical steps are the second and third.  If the estimate of where bribery is likely occur or its impact if it does occur is wrong, prevention efforts will not be properly targeted. That happened to the U.K. insurance firm Aon Limited.  Thinking bribery was more likely to occur in its U.K. operations than those overseas, it put the bulk of its enforcement efforts into preventing bribery in the U.K.  Because, as the U.K. financial regulator found, it “failed properly to assess … the higher risks presented by some of the countries in which [its overseas] divisions operated,” it thus spent little time overseeing its non-U.K. agents.  That mistake was costly.  When it was revealed that many non-U.K. agents had paid bribes, the U.K. Financial Services Authority, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Securities Exchange Commission all brought enforcement actions.

Given the importance of accurate estimates of bribery risk and impact to developing a corruption risk assessment, one would expect “how to” guides to explain ways to improve the accuracy of the estimates.  Especially since risk assessments in other areas do. Continue reading →