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Bribery rife in SA - report
14/05/2002 15:13 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The global anti-corruption organisation Transparency
International's Bribe Payers Index for 2002, released on Tuesday,
shows very high levels of bribery in South Africa and other developing countries.
Corporations from Russia, China, Taiwan, South Korea and several
leading industrial nations were most likely to offer bribes to
developing nations.
This is despite the fact that all of these countries now have
laws making corrupt payments to foreign officials illegal.
"The laws are not being properly enforced. Our new survey leaves
no doubt that large numbers of multinational corporations from the
richest nations are pursuing a criminal course to win contracts in
the leading emerging market economies of the world," TI chairman
Peter Eigen said.
"The governments of the richest nations continue to fail to
recognise the rampant undermining of fair global trade by
bribe-paying multinational enterprises."
Companies from Russia and China which are increasing exports to
other emerging market economies were found to be using bribes on
"an exceptional and intolerable scale".
The extent of bribery abroad of Taiwanese and South Korean
companies was only slightly less.
Domestic companies in developing countries were also found to be
involved in heavy bribe-paying.
US and Japanese multinationals had the highest propensity to pay
bribes to foreign government officials followed by France, Spain,
Germany, Singapore and the UK. Those with the lowest propensity to
bribe officials abroad were companies form Australia, Sweden,
Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands.
"Today's BPI underscores the fact that we have a global problem
of corporate bribe-paying that demands concerted global actions by
official international organisations, civil society organisations
and national governments," said TI advisory council chairman Kamal
Hossain.
The sectors showing most flagrant corruption were public works
and construction, followed by arms and the defence sector.
The UK branch of TI found in a new study that foreign bribery is
associated with tens of billions of dollars of defence deals.
The OECD anti-bribery convention that criminalises
multinational's bribes to governments ratified two years ago has
not made any difference so far. In fact, the new BPI found that
corporations are not particularly concerned about the risk of
criminal prosecution.
The BPI was conducted in 15 emerging market countries: South Africa,
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea and Thailand.
- SAPA
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