Himalayan News service

Kathmandu, March 25:

Nepal has failed to combat corruption despite having good anti-corruption laws, the Transparency International has said in its Global Corruption Report 2004, released today.

Nepal has the Anti-corruption Act, it conducted investigation on property owned by different people at different high level posts at different times through the Judicial Investigation and Probe Commission on Property, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority is also working for wiping out corruption and the National Surveillance Centre has been established for the same purpose but corruption still prevails, the report has mentioned.

The report has identified Indonesia, the Philippines, Zaire, Nigeria, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Peru, Ukraine and Nicaragua as the countries with most cases of corruption adding the former presidents and head of the governments of the respective

nations are the most corrupt persons in the world, who have earned as much as $1million to $100 million illegally.

The report also has indicated that the political leaders are the propagators or corruption world wide."The problem (of corruption) includes a wide range of acts committed by political leaders before, during and after leaving the office," the report states.

The report has identified vote buying as a major problem in Asian countries —the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Japan. The report also says that rampant corruption prevails in development programmes in China.

The report, released by TI Nepal branch, here today said that lack of political will among the leaders is one of the main cause of corruption in the countries.

"Laws regulating political finance must be followed up with the effective enforcement," the report states. This means that independent oversight agencies must be endowed with powers to supervise, investigate and, if required, institute legal proceedings in cases of electoral malpractices.

The report has lauded the adoption of the UN Convention against Corruption by the Mexico meeting in December 2003, which is the first global instrument to fight against corruption in an international level. "The Convention breaks new ground, particularly in relation to the provision on cross-border recovery of assets, but more is needed if it is to have a significant impact on reducing corruption," the report added.