The articulation of strategies to fight corruption is an extremely complex issue to the extent that this represents a problem that affects all countries and cuts across social, political and economic areas. The social concern and mistrust that corrupt practices generate among citizens are in addition to corruption's effect of undermining development, discouraging foreign investment and usurping public resources that could be used by the State to satisfy other needs and priorities of the population.

The figures speak for themselves. It is calculated that the cost of corruption is equivalent to 5% of the worldwide gross domestic product (2.6 trillion dollars annually), and increases the cost of doing business on a global level by 10%. Likewise, as a consequence of corruption, in developing countries, revenue lost to corruption is estimated at 10 times the amount of official development assistance.

Latin America and the Caribbean are no strangers to this reality. If we consider the data from the 28 countries in the region included in the Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International annually, only seven score higher than 50 points. On the other hand, the average for the region (41 points) is appreciably lower than the global average (43 points), with a situation that is substantially better than other regions of the world, although far from the score for the G20 (54 points). Based on these data, it is reasonable to conclude that while substantial progress has been made, there is still a long way to go.

The causes of corruption are complex and diverse, as are the difficulties that must be faced to achieve greater effectiveness in the fight against the economic-financial crimes linked to it. Among the obstacles identified, lack of coordination between the institutions that participate in the investigation and punishment of this type of crime is a fundamental aspect.

Thus, strategies to fight corruption and economic-financial crimes include a series of key stages that span prevention of the crime to recovery of the assets produced in same, passing through the phases of detection, investigation, processing, prosecution or punishment. In the course of these stages, different bodies are involved, including but not limited to tax and customs administrations; police forces and bodies responsible for enforcing the law; financial intelligence units; public ministries; judiciaries; and comptrollers offices. Given the diversity of the institutions involved, there is a need to achieve cooperation and effective coordination between them.

The fight against corruption clearly constitutes an extremely cross-cutting issue in which different sectors and institutions take part. Therefore, construction of anti-corruption policies must be considered a multi-dimensional process in which a plurality of actors and issues must be taken into account.

Article published in the Latin American and Caribbean Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (OLACEFS) Magazine, issue 17 (January to June 2015)

Full paper (pdf)