Transcript of Kathleen Moktan Presentation

Director, RSDD - Anti-Corruption Initiative

25 August 2009

Good morning everyone and welcome to ADB. I am actually the Director of Public
Management in Governance at ADB and some of the work that we focus on of course is
our own implementation of our governance policy through the completion of public
financial management, procurement and corruption risk assessment. But we are the focal
point at ADB’s flagship anti-corruption activity which is the ADB-OECD anti-corruption
initiative for Asia and the Pacific and that is what I have been asked to discuss with you
today to just give you an idea of a type of forum that is working in the region and has
been working for some time.

The ADB-OECD initiative has been around since 1999 and its structure is quite simple.
We started with 17 member countries and jurisdictions. We have jurisdictions because in
addition to PRC we also have Macau, China and Hongkong, China so we have
jurisdictions and member countries started with 17 in 1999 and the first step was to
decide what exactly the initiative would be about. So what was developed was what was
called the action plan for anti-corruption in the region and you can get copies of this and
stuff on the website but it basically has three pillars: strengthening public systems,
improving private sector and the civil society element.

So it has got a very broad mandate that impacts all levels of corruption. It was initially
started, driven a little bit by the OECD anti-bribery convention and the convention
against bribery and forum public officials. But because the action plan is so broad, it
actually allows or serves as a very effective support to implementing the United Nations’
convention against corruption in the region.

For anybody to join, and we have now 28 government member countries entities and
jurisdictions, to join the initiative, the Government simply needs to endorse the action
plan and undertake to implement it, and then regularly report on the implementation
progress. So that is all it takes really to join the initiative but (we) let me talk a little bit
about the management structure.

We have a Steering Group that is comprised of one representative from each of our
member countries and jurisdictions, so there (is) are 28 members. The government itself
appoints the appropriate representation and from time to time as government institutional
arrangements shift, we have had different people come on, right now for example in
Indonesia KAPIKA, about two years ago was appointed a member, and in Thailand
recently the NACC replaced the Ministry of Justice. So again, we leave it completely up
to the government to decide who the focal point is, for the initiative. But it is just the
focal point. When we do discussions for example, we have done a thematic review on
corruption and public procurement across the region, in that case the focal points brought
all their procurement colleagues, so some of you may even have actually participated in
the process or the procurement colleagues together to talk about the linkage between

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corruption and procurement and what is going on in the region. So the focal points are the
entry point between the initiative and the whole of government back in the countries.
In addition to the Steering Group, again, to join the Steering Group, government usually
at the Cabinet level approves the action plan and appoints the focal point.

We also have an Advisory Group. The Advisory Group is comprised of civil society
represented primarily in our case by Transparency International. It also represents the
private sector. We have the Pacific Basin Economic Council, and the American Bar
Association, that are private sector organizations and representatives of the donor
community both bilaterals: in Australia, Sweden and multilaterals like the World Bank
and the UNDP.

There is a Secretariat and because we are the ADB-OECD Initiative, the Secretariat is 50
percent in Paris and 50 percent in ADB. But I will tell you there is a real benefit to
partnering; for ADB to partner with the OECD. They have a different set of country
experiences to share, they have a different set of experts. In the anti-corruption world,
there are two schools of practitioners, there is the people working on prevention, the
people that are actually anti-corruption advocates in countries, and there is also the
international legal element that requires linkages with Ministries of Foreign Affairs and
Ministries of Justice. So the OECD can bring a certain element to that picture and it helps
to broaden the experience that is made available to the parties. But it does pose some
challenges because ADB is a development organization and the OECD is more of an
economic organization and sometimes the view of the world is slightly different between
the two.

The Secretariat basically, manages the member list, newsletter, website, organizes the
publication and arranges the events. But to me one of the key benefits of the initiative is
that it is owned by the members. The member countries actually set the direction, they
say what they want to work on, we identify thematic review priorities that they may have,
and we also identify capacity development workshops that are required. The next one
coming up in September we were a little surprised because the request was for a
workshop on political corruption. As a multilateral organization with a Charter that
requires us to be apolitical, we doubt that this could be a little bit dangerous, but what we
are doing is a workshop on the political economy of corruption that will look amongst
other things, institutional mechanisms for strengthening independence of integrity
organizations in government, but also looking at the political economy and stakeholder
analysis tools that anti-corruption fighters might actually use to push through reforms in
their own country. So again, we do try to respond very much to the needs of the
members.

We are currently finalizing a review because after ten years, we thought it was
worthwhile seeing if we have done any good. The general feeling from country reviews
and from meeting with sponsors and with members is that the initiative provides an
extremely important informal network for practitioners throughout the region to get
together and to discuss issues that they face in their day to day jobs. It is not a very
bureaucratic structure, and in fact many of our members also participate in other activities

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like the APEC anti-corruption group etc. but because this is not driven by ministerial
level decisions, it is actually driven by the practitioners, what we focus on is driven by
the practitioner needs. There is a general feeling amongst the members that this does
give a network and a safe ground where a lot of things can be discussed. It is very
difficult to say whether we have actually had any significant impact on reducing
corruption as a result of it but in a number of anecdotal cases, the members have been
able to say where they have learned something from colleagues or from a thematic review
or from a capacity development workshop, that they have then taken back to their home
country and started to improve things. For example, the Indian Civil Service
Commission strengthened the code of conduct following a conflict of interest workshop.
So I think the messages and the lessons is and I will answer any questions you may have.
Ownership of the members is the most important so from your side sometimes you may
need to control the donor’s side or the advisory side and make very clear that you set the
agenda. The challenge is getting several countries, I think we have 24 in the room today,
to agree on what that agenda can be so there does need to have some ownership on your
part.

The other thing is to keep it informal because what is really important in learning from
each other is providing a safe space where people can discuss and share and be open. So
try to remove the politics from the discussion, try to remove the formality. And I think
that is what our members value the most from this.

And if you have any question, I sort of rumbled a bit, I apologize, but if you have any
specific questions about the initiative or some of the ways that we structure things, I
would be happy to answer them.