A senior Chinese prosecutor Tuesday called on the international community to actively push forward bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the prevention and fight against trans-border corruption.
Chen Lianfu, director of the General Bureau of Anti-Embezzlement and Bribery with China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate, made the remarks during an interview with Xinhua, on the sidelines of a seminar of the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA).
Terming trans-border corruption a “global cancer,” Chen said it not only causes losses to a single country or enterprise, but also undermines the economic development, social stability and national security at a global level.
“Anti-corruption therefore is not simply the internal affairs of a single country, but an issue that requires attention and active responses of all countries and their anti-corruption agencies,” Chen said.
At present, the UN Convention against Corruption and the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime are accepted as the most important international conventions on fighting trans-border corruption within the UN’s framework, Chen said.
But actually there are still many obstacles that prevent the role of the Conventions to be best played in promoting the international cooperation in the regard, he said.
“Because different countries acknowledge and sign the two Conventions in different time, and they are at different stages of the course of integrating the two Conventions into their internal laws.”
Chen proposed that all countries accelerate the signing of the two Conventions, speed up the process of integrating the two Conventions into their internal laws, and establish a legal procedure for trans-border anti-corruption cooperation under the two Conventions.
“In doing so, the two Conventions can be truly turned into the basis for international cooperation in law enforcement regarding the fight against corruption,” Chen said.
The countries should also set up a swift, efficient and well-coordinated information and data exchange mechanism and enhance their capacities to collect information and data on corruption, he added.
Noting that recent years witnessed surging cross-border transfer of criminals’ illegal proceeds from corruption via money laundering, Chen said all countries should better coordinate their fight in this regard.
He urged for stepped-up trans-border cooperation on fighting money laundering in accordance with bilateral and multilateral conventions and treaties to retrieve the illegal proceeds.H “By doing so, we can cut off the channels of illegal proceeds at the root, and leave corruption criminals nowhere to flee and hide,” Chen said.
Xinhua