Best practice for preventive anti-corruption bodies

This Anti-Corruption Helpdesk brief was produced in response to a query from the European Commission. The Anti-Corruption Helpdesk is operated by Transparency International and funded by the European Union.

Query

Could you please provide an overview of best practices for preventive anti-corruption bodies? We would like to have examples from the Baltic region

Content

1.  Preventing corruption: the role of anti-corruption bodies

2.  Good practice in anti-corruption bodies

3.  Country examples

4.  References

Summary

Prevention, including the development, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of anti-corruption policies and strategies, is widely recognised as a key component in the fight against corruption. This is also reflected in the obligation to ensure the existence of a corruption prevention body or bodies, under Article 6 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

While fulfilment of this obligation may be ensured through a variety of different institutional designs suitable to the specific legislative context of each country, a series of principles and standards for these types of bodies has gradually been developed to ensure their impartiality and effectiveness.

Several countries in Central Asia, such as Azerbaijan and Georgia, have opted for establishing high-level consultative councils with representatives of the different agencies, branches, and levels of government. In the Baltic region, Latvia and Lithuania have chosen a different model, where corruption prevention has been tasked to multi-purpose anti-corruption agencies.

Authors

Reviewers

Date

21/04/2015

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