Centro Argentino de Estudios Internacionales www.caei.com.ar 2 I mproving the OECD’ s I stanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan By Bryane Michael 1 and Donald Bowser The 1999 OECD Convention on the Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions (Anti-Bribery Convention) represented a leap forward in international co- operation to fight corruption. 2 Roughly summarising, the Convention obliged all OECD member states to criminalise the payment of bribes by their citizens in foreign countries. The Convention was translated into national law in the OECD member states and these states commit themselves to mutual evaluation under a process of monitoring. 3 There were a number of reasons to believe in the usefulness of such a Convention from the outset. First, OECD member states had the institutional capacity needed to enforce the Convention. In other words, executives can (generally) implement laws passed by parliaments in these countries. Second, the Convention was focused on very specific elements (revolving around “bribery”) which could be translated into law. Third, the Convention was discussed in national legislatures and thus was in a sense “democratically legitimate.” Fourth, negotiations about the Convention were conducted by officially appointed representatives of the member states and funded collectively by these states – thereby having a “funded mandate.” Following up on the Convention, the OECD Secretariat has been engaging in “outreach” in other parts of the world which are qualitatively very different than the those covered by the Convention. In the Caucasus and Central Asia region, the OECD has “outreach” will need to address a number of issues related to this qualitative difference if the OECD is to avoid the same problems which besieged the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). This paper will evaluate a recent and key element of such outreach – the OECD’s Istanbul Action Plan -- discuss possible risks to the OECD, and suggest 10 ways the OECD can address these risks. While the OECD might disavow any ownership of the Action Plan (claiming that it acts only as a Secretariat), popular perceptions of a close OECD link with the Action Plan will form this link. This policy brief discusses the nature of these perceptions and how the OECD can manage these to avoid potential risks inherent in its sponsorship of the Action Plan. What is the I stanbul Action Plan and its Institutions? The Istanbul Action Plan commits Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Ukraine “to specific actions to increase integrity and transparency in public services, promote corporate responsibility and accountability, and allow active public participation in making reforms.” 4 Figure 1 lists the main elements of the Action Plan, which broadly speaking focuses on the public sector, the private sector and the “third sector” or civil society. 5 Figure 1: Main Pillars of the I stanbul Action Plan Preamble Pillar 1: Developing effective and transparent systems for public service § Integrity in the Public Service 1 Presentation made at the Conference Multilateral Organisations in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in June 2004. This DRAFT paper is currently under review for publication. Please contact the author before citing. 2 For the text of the Convention, see http://www.oecd.org/document/21/0,2340,en_2649_34859_2017813_1_1_1_1,00.html 3 Source: http://www.oecd.org/document/21/0,2340,en_2649_34859_2022613_1_1_1_1,00.html 4 OECD Press Release. Six Transition States Commit to far-reaching Plan to Fight Corruption. 10 September 2003. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/document/42/0,2340,en_2649_34855_15786218_1_1_1_1,00.html 5 For the complete action plan, see http://www.anticorruptionnet.org/indexgr.html#