How to build a functioning National Anti-Corruption System?

By Janet Oropeza/Fundar

Corruption is an everyday, complex and structural phenomenon that pervades public institutions and has an impact on society. According to the National Health Code and Impact of Government (ENCIG), from 2023, 83 percent of the population will be considered frequent. In addition to economic losses, corruption affects the backs of people and with greater force the historically vulnerable, such as the disadvantaged, indigenous and African-Americans, children, teenagers and women, migrants, people with disabilities, and others.

For example, the development of public health resources directly affects the availability and/or availability of treatments, supplies and medicines available to the people who need them most. Tax corruption victimizes people and their families, preventing them from accessing justice and compensation in cases as serious as extortion, deprivation of liberty or femicide. Ultimately, corruption erodes trust in government and its institutions.

A week ago, the House of Representatives announced that a reform process The National Anti-Corruption System (SNA) created in 2015. The diagnosis is that for more than ten years I have been claiming that the system has not been able to prevent corruption or limit it and mitigate its effects. The reform process will include the review and dictation of the initiative presented by the Comité de Participación Ciudadana and more than 70 reform initiatives of different political parties on the matter. The executive branch is also expected to send the proposal.

For this process to be successful and to rebuild a strong and effective ANS, it is fundamentally important to guarantee substantial citizen participation and accountability to the legislature. Forums prompted by citizen protection legislation are generally expected to be held in Mexico City and only allow simultaneous participation. Good practice would therefore be to organize regional and local forums to address accessibility issues and where sectors affected by corruption in different territories could share their intentions and experiences. It is also essential that there is accountability and transparency about how the contributions of different sectors and groups will be integrated or continue to be integrated in the final reform. On the contrary, the participation of citizens will be only symbolic.

Based on our work at Fundar, we have identified several minimum points that reform must consider to truly prevent corruption:

1. Vision derechos humanos y de son: Anti-corruption strategies must put people’s rights at the center and take into account the different impacts of this phenomenon on different groups.
2. Prioritize preventive and strategic investigations: given the high level of impunity and the fact that only two hundred corruption complaints lead to punishment, it would be better to prioritize preventive investigations that identify areas of corruption risk, their causes and solutions; how to fight health, building jobs and public infrastructure, etc. You can also fall away to dismantle the rings of corruption and important public and private entities that have adapted to them, and also put in place measures to prevent the creation of new rings and acts of corruption.
3. Asset recovery and reparation: reform must create effective mechanisms to enable assets recovered from acts of corruption to be channeled to redress the ills that have occurred. For example, if you recover the fortunes of shell companies that never completed a public procurement, it is important that they can come back and complete the work.
4. Promote greater coordination between actors: the effectiveness of the SNA will depend on the creation of communication mechanisms, cooperation and inter-institutional coordination that allow corruption to be prevented and crimes to be detected. For example, tax entities can be subjected to forensic audits to help identify risk areas and issues that allow redirection of returns for other agencies to create effective prevention policies.
5. Integration of various public policy instruments: The SNA must seek to integrate and articulate the various public policy instruments that exist, such as the National Anti-Corruption Policy, the National Digital Platform and Anexo Transversal Anticorruption how these manuals define and/or support anti-corruption strategies. PDN can offer you information about irregularities in asset declarations or sanctioned companies, allowing you to identify and remove corrupt patrons. On the other hand, the Cross-cutting Anti-Corruption Annex can link resource allocation to priority actions to assess whether they allocate sufficient resources and their impact.
6. Fortalecer la protection alert and report persons: Platforms for reporting corruption are dealt with by both the Federación Supra Audit and the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno. However, these mechanisms should be strong, at least on four roads. Firstly, it is essential that the figure of the complainant and the whistleblower is recognized in the regulatory framework. Second, these mechanisms must be accessible to those who currently require whistleblowers to have a high level of technical knowledge of reported irregularities. Third, these mechanisms must be based on a safeguard with anonymity and confidentiality so that people can be involved in reporting acts of corruption, as in many cases it is reported that the complaint is accompanied by a risk to their physical and legal integrity of his family. Therefore, it is necessary to guarantee the transparency and accountability of the follow-up actions after warnings and complaints, so that they are visible on the door as tools in the fight against corruption.

SNA reform is an imperative for which civil society organizations and other actors have suggestions that are part of our experience. Will the legislature and executive have the political will to implement a reform that recognizes the contributions of all sectors, or will it be a cosmetic reform?

* Janet is an investigator in the program Restitution of accounts and the fight against corruption by @FundarMexico.