Mexico is among the 20 exporting countries that do not fight against corruption by multinational companies or make only a minimal effort, along with China, Russia, India and even Japan, according to the report Exporting Corruption 2022 , by Transparency International .
The organization points out that 55% of world exports come from countries like Mexico, where no progress has been made in the fight against corruption by multinationals and the bribes they can carry out abroad.
Despite the fact that corruption scandals like the one at Odebrecht broke out during Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, in the last two years, Mexico has not done much to get out of the category of “non-existent application” of actions against bribery by multinationals in the world. foreign trade.
And, while the 2018 report detected 3 investigations initiated in the country for this type of case, in the following three years no other investigation was initiated. And no case has been concluded.
In almost half of the countries surveyed, including Mexico, a key to the compliance problem identified was the lack of public registries of information on beneficial owners of companies and trusts or inadequacies in the registries.
In addition, in Mexico, another problem is that state companies are exempt from social responsibility, according to the report. To this must be added the fact that there is no adequate process in the country to protect witnesses and complainants.
Among the recommendations that the NGO gave for Mexico are:
- Publish and update statistics on corruption and international bribery.
- Initiate proactive investigative measures in foreign bribery cases.
- Guarantee the independence of the Attorney General and avoid its political use.
- Provide adequate resources and training for the investigation and prosecution of corruption and foreign bribery cases.
Continued decline in the world
The only two countries that rose in the ranking for their fight against foreign bribery were Peru and Latvia.
In Europe, for its part, the worst positioned countries are Spain, Italy, Portugal and Sweden, where there has been a “brutal abandonment” of the application of programs against this type of corruption promoted by the Organization for Cooperation and Development Economic (OECD).
Other European countries are, along with Mexico, Russia and India, within the category of “non-existent application” of fighting corruption and bribery of multinationals abroad.
Overall, “a profound lack of political will” led to a “continuous decline” in basically all of the world’s 47 largest exporting countries, Transparency International said.
While in 2018 27% of the countries studied actively applied the anti-corruption convention of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), between 2020 and 2022 this percentage fell from 16.5 to 11.8%, which represents a fall of 56% in four years.
The report assesses foreign bribery enforcement in 43 of the 44 signatories to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, as well as in China, Hong Kong SAR, India and Singapore.
The existence of victims is not recognized
Despite the fact that foreign bribery by multinationals can have externalities that go beyond the crime itself and cause damage to competitors, states and even entire populations, the countries evaluated do not recognize the existence of victims.
For Transparency International this is a problem, since there are no mechanisms to achieve justice and the affected people continue to bear the costs and negative consequences derived from bribery.
