12.09.2004 07:10

Happy International Anti-Corruption Day


On this date in 2003, delegates met in Merida, Mexico, to finalize and sign the treaty against corruption, at a United Nations sponsored convention.
In the last year, over 110 countries have signed on to the Convention and nine have ratified it. Ratificiation by 30 Member States is necessary for the Convention to enter into force.

...

The Convention must come into force as soon as possible to provide the legal framework for countries to criminalize corrupt practices, as well as to cooperate to deny safe havens to corrupt officials and to help each other recover illicitly acquired assets.
International Anti-Corruption Day - 2004

To remind us, the BBC has an article today, Nations mark anti-corruption day, in which Mark Gregory, a business reporter, writes, without a touch of irony:
[The World Bank] says corruption takes place in rich nations as well as poor ones.

To highlight the scale of the problem and efforts to fight it, the UN initiated the anti-corruption day.
As they say in quantum chromodynamics, 'truth is stranger than fiction.'