By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
A foreign NGO has expressed serious concern over the downscaling of an anti-corruption body.
Transparency International (TI) issued concerns over the rollback of the Korean government's commitment to anti-corruption and related policies in its Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention Progress Report Thursday.
The report assessed how member countries have carried out the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, which was adopted in 1997. Korea established a law to fulfill the convention in 1998. It took effect the following year.
TI expressed concern over the downscaled function of the nation's anti-corruption body.
In February 2008, the Lee Myung-bak administration set up the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission after merging the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption and two related agencies.
``After the three agencies were merged, the anti-corruption function has been reduced. The previous commission was independent, but the current one is under the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and it is hard to avoid the government's influence in dealing with high-ranking government and political figures,'' Jang Bong-hwa, a TI Korea staff member, said.
The Lee administration also scrapped K-PACT, a non-binding social agreement on anti-corruption made during the previous administration. The TI said Korea has not prepared an effective and integrated anti-corruption policy since.
The NGO also said that Korea does not have effective regulations to prevent Korean companies from offering bribes to foreign public officials overseas business. Korea's highest fine for corruption is $16,000, far lower than the OECD average of $40,000, it said.
TI said that the Korean government refused to offer information about its OECD convention progress to the group, even though there were nine indictments of businesspeople and public officials involved in bribery offers and acceptances in overseas business.
``The countries contracting the OECD convention are supposed to submit a report about their progress to the OECD every year, and TI assesses it on behalf of the OECD. But when we asked for the report, government officials concerned did not even know that they were supposed to do so. It was a kind of shame,'' Jang said.
TI advised Korea to carry out the convention more strictly; to boost public awareness about overseas bribery; to make the anti-corruption commission independent; and to make information public.