Bru Direct – Brunei | 04-June-2009
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| Pg Kasmirhan Pg Hj Tahir. – P. MARILYN |
Major Shift Seen
Bandar Seri Begawan – Brunei’s anti-corruption cops are to put the screws on crooked businessmen instead of civil servants who are comparatively clean.
Findings showed that the business and the private sector in Brunei are perceived to be the most affected by corruption, which stands at 44 per cent as opposed to public officials and civil servants at 33 per cent.
Brunei’s Anti Corruption Bureau Chief Pg Kasmirhan Pg Hj Tahir said in view of this, Brunei’s ACB has plans to revamp its legislations and strategies for the next five years to shift its anti-corruption focus towards the private sector.
Meanwhile a global survey has placed Brunei third in fighting corruption.
Brunei’s Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) has added another feather on its cap as findings from the Global Corruption Barometer, the only worldwide public opinion survey on views and experiences of corruption, ascertained that Brunei is generally ranked second behind Singapore in terms of corruption.
Classified under the Asia-Pacific region, Brunei achieved an average score of 2.3 while Singapore, one of the cleanest and corruption free countries in the world, achieved an average score of 2.2. A score of 5 signifies extremely corrupt.
Brunei Darussalam also ranked third in terms of effectiveness in current government action in the fight against corruption after Singapore and Hong Kong in the Asia Pacific region.
Director Pg Kasmirhan credited this positive ranking to ACB’s zero tolerance on corruption and its continuous efforts to educate people and civil servants on the dangers of corruption and help them understand loopholes, especially in the public sector where services and processes are prone to corruption.
Despite Brunei’s positive ranking on corruption worldwide, the Global Corruption Barometer, however, discovered a change in trend whereby the public sector in Brunei is no longer considered the most affected by corruption.
Findings showed that the business/private sector instead is perceived to be the most affected by corruption, which stands at 44 per cent as opposed to public officials/civil servants at 33 per cent.
In view of this, Brunei’s ACB has plans to revamp its legislations and strategies for the next five years to shift its anti-corruption focus towards the private sector.
“This is a very interesting finding as it correlates very much with countries that are usually regarded as more developed such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, where the public sees that it is not government officials that are more corrupt but instead the business people,” Pg Kasmirhan said during a press conference yesterday.
“This in fact tells us that we should now shift our focus to private sector corruption rather than just focusing on corruption in the government sector.
“We are now reviewing our strategy for the next five years and are shifting our focus to include private sector corruption as well,” the director said.
“When the ACB was first set up in 1982, our main focus was actually to ensure that there is no corruption in the government sector but now the private sector plays a very important role in the diversification of our economy and we are now seeing that the private sector is an important stakeholder in our fight against corruption,” he added.
However, this should not be completely seen as a setback as the increase in corruption in the business/private sectors denotes a trend when a country moves forward from developing to developed, private sector corruption is bound to increase.
In other words, business activities are picking up in the private sector in Brunei as experienced by Singapore and Hong Kong and other developed countries.
The director also took into account the lack of governance, lack of internal control and greed that contributed to the increase in business/private sectors corruption.
“That’s the reason why we are revamping our legislation. We are extending our jurisdiction of government linked companies for which the bureau has power to investigate.
Corruption in Brunei only second to Singapore “This does not mean that we were not able to investigate private sector corruption before. We have been investigating but our main focus before was very much on the government sector,” the director explained.
In terms of bribery, Brunei also has a positive ranking of six per cent or less, together with Singapore, Denmark, countries that are seen to be least corrupt.
“I am very pleased with the findings and as far as Brunei is concerned, it is a very positive result. We always benchmark ourselves with the least corrupt country in the region, Singapore and Hong Kong. Brunei’s ACB is very committed to improving this ranking and hopefully as time goes by, we can improve this further,” he added.
As of May 2009, the ACB has opened 70 investigation papers, out of which 57 were completed and 48 sent to the Attorney General for prosecution.
In comparison, 59 investigation papers were opened, 41 were completed and 17 were sent to the Attorney General for prosecution in 2008.
Though there is an increase in numbers, this however signifies the public’s courage in reporting incidences of corruption through channels such as the ACB website, hotlines, Facebook and others.
This year marks Brunei’s first entry into the Global Corruption Barometer Survey Report, put together by Transparency International; a global civil society organization with more than 90 locally established national chapters and chapters-in-formation, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
The global corruption barometer is a public opinion survey that actually assesses the general public’s perception and experiences of corruption and bribery.
Altogether, 73,132 individuals worldwide responded to the survey.
As a public opinion survey, the barometer reflects the views of a representative sample of each country’s population aged 16 and above.
The survey in Brunei was conducted by Merdeka Centre through telephone between February 20-25 2009 involving 820 respondents. – Adapted from Borneo Bulletin