Agenda Item 108: the Resolution Adopting the United Nations Convention Against Corruption

Released by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations

Mr. President, bribes were still tax deductible in some countries ten years ago and no international anticorruption treaties existed. Today’s resolution is therefore a milestone achievement in the global effort to ensure transparency, fairness, and justice in public affairs.

This is vital not only to the rule of law, but to the fundamental confidence citizens must have for representative government and private enterprise to succeed.

Corruption and democracy are incompatible; corruption and economic prosperity are incompatible; and corruption and equal opportunity are incompatible.

As a consequence, I am pleased to say that the draft convention (A/58/422 and Add.1) we consider for adoption represents the first globally negotiated anticorruption treaty and will likely be the first anticorruption treaty applied on a truly global level. It is more comprehensive than any existing anticorruption treaty, and, for the first time in any multilateral agreement, provides a useful framework for governments to cooperate in recovery of illicitly obtained assets. An important chapter of the text creates a Conference of States Parties that will be responsible for follow-up. We expect that this body will play a prominent role in promoting implementation, and we believe it is not too soon for us to share our visions informally of how that body can be most effective.

Like other anti-crime treaties before it, the new convention establishes commitments to criminalize certain undesirable and harmful conduct – in this case, corrupt actions such as bribery, embezzlement, and money laundering. But the convention does not stop there. It also requires that governments take action in a number of areas – for example in public procurement, public financial management, and in regulating their public officials -- that will help prevent corruption from happening in the first place.

The international fight against corruption has long been a priority for my country, beginning with our efforts in the 1980's to rally international attention to bribery in international business transactions. In fact, President Bush considers anti-corruption efforts to be so central to development that he has made progress on fighting corruption an essential element for participation in the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which we expect will add $5 billion and thereby increase our core development assistance fifty percent by fiscal year 2006.

Mr. President, experts from approximately 130 countries spent countless hours over the past two years developing this convention. The United States was pleased to participate actively in these long and highly technical negotiations. Our experience convinces us that the United Nations Convention Against Corruption is the product of a true partnership among most of the countries represented in this room.

We think this is crucial. A successful fight against corruption requires action on many fronts; clearly our efforts will only be effective to the extent that we maintain the partnership we have forged over the last two years.

So now, as with all treaties, the end of negotiations marks the real beginning of engagement. The words of this convention must be translated into action, or else the hard work of the ad hoc committee will be for naught. Numerous compromises had to be made in the negotiations; no country obtained everything it sought, but with an agreed text before us, the time has come for all countries to move as quickly as possible in their national processes to consider signature and ratification, to engage civil society and the private sector and to work to promote the implementation of the innovative and helpful approaches that we have developed together.

In closing, we thank the members of the bureau of the ad hoc committee and its secretariat from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Eduardo Vetere and his staff, particularly Dimitri Vlassis, for their tireless dedication during the two years of negotiations.

Our acting chair, ambassador Muhyieddeen Touk from Jordan, deserves special credit for his wise leadership following the sad and untimely death of ambassador Chary Samper of Colombia. We also want to recognize the contributions of the late Ambassador Samper, who believed wholeheartedly in our efforts and, we believe, would be pleased with the finishing touches to his work.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me the floor and congratulations to our colleagues who participated in the important work of the ad hoc committee.