A Note on the 14th UNAFEI UNCAC Training Programme:“Effective Legal and Practical Measures against Corruption”
Naoyuki Harada, Professor, UNAFEI
1. Introduction
From 13 October to 10 November 2011, the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for thePrevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI) conducted the 14th UNCAC
Training Programme.

The main theme of the Programme was “Effective Legal and Practical

Measures against Corruption.”

This programme was attended by 22 participants from elevendifferent countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,Kenya, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, and Japan): sixteen participants were fromoverseas and six from Japan.

Those who participated are all criminal justice practitioners: police

officers, public prosecutors, judges/court officers, officers/investigators from anti-corruption
authorities, and a securities investigator.

In this note, I would like to present an overview of theProgramme from my perspective as its Programming Officer.
Please be reminded that the opinions expressed in this note are my own personal views.

2. Major Points and Issues of the Main Theme and the Objective of the Programme
Corruption involving politicians, elite bureaucrats, or public officials is considered a worldwideproblem.

Japan, where corruption is said to be a relatively less serious issue, still sees no end to thefight against it.

Little wonder that it is of much graver concern, in terms of both volume andseverity, to some developing countries, where sufficient countermeasures against corruption have notyet been introduced.

In the past, in some countries, such as the Philippines, Nigeria, and Peru,

political rulers took advantage of their authority and embezzled public funds, and consistently tookbribes to feather their own nests.

Presently, the same kinds of misconduct is suspected in theMiddle Eastern countries, which have just realized the “Arab Spring.”
According to a shocking report from the World Bank, as much as 20 to 40 percent of the total
ODA (Official Development Assistance) offered to developing countries worldwide is pocketed bycorrupt persons of high rank in the recipient governments.

In some cases, grim actualities ofcorruption even include police officers, public prosecutors, and personnel of the judiciary, includingjudges, as well as officials of municipal, customs, immigration, and other offices handling everyday
public services, who take relatively small bribes or misappropriate public funds. As seen in somedeveloping countries, corruption rampant at various levels significantly lowers the quality of public

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services, and seriously impedes appropriate distribution of wealth to the general public, whom are its
proper recipients, resulting in continuing poverty.

This reality led countries to the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption(UNCAC) in 2003, which was the first global-scale international legal instrument in regard tocountermeasures against corruption. As of October 2011, over 150 countries have become states
parties of the UNCAC.

Regrettably, Japan has yet to ratify the UNCAC.

The UNCAC defines avariety of measures that countries should take in concert, in the following four major areas:(1) preventive measures (e.g. development of institutions and systems to properly employ andmanage public officials and personnel in the judiciary);(2) law enforcement and criminalization of corrupt practices (e.g. introduction of laws thatcriminalize various kinds of corrupt practices, as well as administration of appropriate investigation,prosecution, and punishment of corrupt practices regulated by those laws);(3) international cooperation (e.g. cooperation among countries in instances of those who havecommitted corruption fleeing their countries); and(4) recovery of assets looted by corruption (e.g. development of a legal framework whichenables identification and confiscation of assets appropriated from national coffers through corrupt
practices, and recovery and return of the assets to the victim country).

The main objective of this Programme was to learn best practice in the field of anti-corruption,
as implemented in various countries around the world, referring to the requirements of the UNCAC
in the above-mentioned four areas. A further primary objective was to discuss effective legal andpractical anti-corruption measures that may be feasible for participating countries to adopt into theirown criminal justice systems.

3. Shared during the Programme: Effective Countermeasures against Corruption
In the Training Programme, three visiting experts from overseas, specialists in countermeasuresagainst corruption and investigation of corruption cases, offered us their knowledge and informationof various advanced approaches in different countries and regions, and the United Nations’ activities
aiming to implement the UNCAC.
The visiting experts were:

Mr. Dimitri Vlassis, Chief, Corruption and Economic Crime Branch, Division for Treaty
Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Mr. Tony Kwok Man-wai, Former Deputy Commissioner, Independent Commission2

Mr. Koh Teck Hin, Director (Operations), Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) ofSingapore

The visiting experts were joined by ad-hoc lecturers from Japan, including Professor Keisuke
Senta of the University of Tokyo Graduate Schools for Law and Politics.

Then, participants had aseries of group discussions based on the new learning and their own knowledge and experience.
The programme participants are active practitioners with expertise related to anti-corruption
activities in their home countries, engaging in investigation of corruption cases or drafting ofanti-legislation, which inevitably made for lively and fruitful discussions. Their eagerness to learn as
many things as they could to help improve their own countries was evident.

As a result, the participants were able to share various effective legal and practical measuresagainst corruption; thus, the intended objective of the Programme was fulfilled. Due to limitationof space, let me list up here only a part of the effective countermeasures shared during theProgramme.

1) Preventive measures:-Establishing codes of conduct and ethics for public officials and judicial professionals,
and closely monitoring how they conform to them;-Establishing clear criteria for assignment of and disciplinary actions against judges,prosecutors, and other judicial professionals, and preventing undue politicalinterventions;-

Imposing duties on politicians and public officials to report on their assets anddonations; and2)

Public awareness raising and building up a culture of refusing corruption.

Criminalization of corrupt practices and law enforcement:-Enacting laws that criminalize all the corrupt practices required by the UNCAC ;-Introducing measures to facilitate reporting of corrupt practices, such as opening a
hotline or website, which accepts reporting at any time;-Organizing an investigation team specially designed for corruption cases, which has
sufficient number of investigators and ample investigative ability, and which makes
effective and large-scale investigations with a clear-cut assignment of roles and strict
confidentiality;3

-Introducing a witness protection programme and a system that effectively induces
accomplice witnesses to give useful testimony (i.e., a system where accomplices who
cooperate in investigations should be granted mitigation of punishment); and-Defining disputed issues and realizing speedy trials in corruption cases.

3) International cooperation and recovery of proceeds of corruption:-

Making a bilateral or multilateral treaty or agreement in regard to extradition and/or
mutual legal assistance;-

Aside from making an official request for international cooperation through diplomaticchannels, taking advantage of informal human networks to accelerate and facilitateprocedures;-

Enacting laws that allow prompt freezing and confiscation of crime proceeds (includinglaws that allow non-conviction based confiscation); and-Enacting laws that allow return of crime proceeds identified and confiscated in one
country to the country from which the proceeds originated.

4. Conclusion
There was another important purpose for this Training Programme, which was “Building closehuman networks among criminal justice practitioners in different countries/regions.”

UNAFEI has

provided over 200 training courses/seminars for criminal justice practitioners from different
countries/regions and has more than 4,500 international and domestic alumni since its establishment
around 50 years ago.

During the training programmes, participants stay at the UNAFEI dormitory,living and working together.

Close interaction and shared time in public and private life allows

participants to know each other well, which, in many cases, leads them to keep in touch with one
another even after the completion of the training programme.

And it is true to say that there havebeen many instances where alumni working in different countries made full use of these informal
human networks mentioned earlier and helped accelerate and facilitate cooperation between
countries when criminal investigations crossed borders.

Both overseas and Japanese participants of the Training Programme spent time together andbuilt invaluable friendships through this four-week programme at UNAFEI.

I hear a number ofparticipants stay in touch through Facebook and via other means since the conclusion of theProgramme.

Therefore, I believe that the second objective of this Programme—building humannetworks—was fully achieved as well.

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Finally, I would like to conclude my note by quoting one of the overseas participants who madethe following statement on the last day of the Programme.

“My country is rife with corruption because order has not been restored due to a prolonged
internal war.

Corruption is a matter of course, and before I participated in this Training Programme,

I thought it was quite impossible for us to eradicate it.

Through this Programme, however, I

learned that various countries have taken steps against corruption, which actually produced goodresults, giving me the first ever hope in my mind that we may be able to eradicate corruption.
When I return home, I will share this hope with others and try to change people’s mindset.”

I sincerely hope that the Programme helps participating countries’ respective activities for ourcommon goal of eradicating corruption and other crime, and that it is conductive to the promotion ofinternational cooperation.

For your information, the lectures made by the visiting experts, results of the group discussions,and individual presentations made by some Programme participants, which are all mentioned in thisnote, will be included in Resource Material Series No. 86, to be published by UNAFEI in due course.
This publication will also be uploaded onto UNAFEI’s website.
above, please refer to the publication or the website.

5If you are interested in any of the