A key part of strengthening the civil service system is creating strong, independent anti-corruption investigative units with real authority and power. As I said earlier, no nation is immune to corruption. In the United States we have placed a strong emphasis in our government on creating units within the government, such as Inspectors General, to prevent and combat corruption. While much of the responsibility for putting in place these five elements to combat corruption lies with developing nations, there is much the industrial world can do. To begin, developed countries must deal directly with their own involvement in developing country corruption.
Corruption is a two way street and for every bribe taker, there is a bribe giver.
In 1977, the United Stales passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws bribery by our businesses and investors in other countries. For the last several years, we have been urging the OECD countries to do more to discourage bribery. The OECD Bribery Convention, which was signed in December 1997, and went into effect just a few days ago, was a critical step in recognizing the responsibility of industrial countries to discourage the giving of bribes. While most of the OECD have ended the tax deductibility of bribes, there are still several OECD countries that have not, and they should do so forthwith. We urge vigorous monitoring of the implementation of the Convention, and would like to see more work in the OECD Export Credit Participants Group to encourage increased efforts by official export credit agencies to eliminate bribery.