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OAS ANTI-CORRUPTION MECHANISM ADOPTS REPORT ON CHILE

On September 13, at its Twenty-Second Meeting, the Committee of Experts of the OAS Anticorruption Mechanism (MESICIC) adopted a report on the implementation in the Republic of Chile of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.

This report provides a comprehensive review of the structure, operation and results obtained in the  Public Prosecution Service, the Office of the Comptroller General, the Judicial Branch, and the Financial Analysis Unit, four of the oversight bodies responsible for preventing, detecting and punishing corruption in Chile. 

This review was performed taking into account the information provided by the country under review, and the information gathered during the on-site site visit held in Santiago in April this year by representatives of Honduras, El Salvador and the MESICIC Technical Secretariat, where meetings were held with representatives of the aforementioned government bodies, and with representatives of civil society and the private sector in Chile.

Besides the review, this report contains a set of recommendations to be considered by Chile in relation to the foregoing oversight bodies that address the following:

With respect to the Public Prosecution Service, make it possible for members of the public to file on-line complaints on the functions that this Service performs; strengthen the Public Prosecution Service’s complement of staff; establish a specialized anticorruption prosecution office; permit the use of electronic surveillance and undercover operations for detecting and investigating acts of corruption; analyze the causes that could be influencing the application of judicial outcomes other than a final judgment with respect to offenses committed by public officials; and prepare statistics on the prescription of corruption investigations pursued by the Public Prosecution Service.

As regards the Office of the Comptroller General, continue the process of harmonization of the standards of the country’s General Accounting System with international government accounting standards; continue to implement information technology projects to facilitate its work; raise awareness about the “Contraloría y Ciudadano” portal; strengthen its accountability mechanism with greater citizen participation; and give the Office a greater say and more autonomy in determining its budgetary resources and their management.

As to the Judicial branch, adopt pertinent legal provisions to provide it with the human resources that it needs to perform its functions properly, especially those connected with trying acts of corruption; strengthen the programs imparted by the Judicial Academy with modules on ethics, integrity, and transparency; grant it greater financial autonomy; advance implementation of the Strategic Plan 2011-2015; analyze the possible causes leading to the number of cases involving such crimes that end in a dismissal with prejudice or that are closed on the other grounds being higher than the number of cases that end in a judgment; and prepare statistics on judicial proceeding concerning all acts of corruption and on proceedings initiated or admitted with respect to crimes committed by public servants in the performance of their official duties.

Concerning the Financial Analysis Unit, strengthen its training plans with courses or modules on investigation of corruption-related offenses; strengthen the dissemination programs and activities that it implements with panels or other specific activities on prevention of corrupt practices; implement, where appropriate, the different stages of the participatory public accountability reporting process; and strengthen the way in which its prepares and keeps its statistics with precise data on the number of STRs recorded each year in connection with corruption-related predicate offenses.

In a second part, the report also contains the progress made on the implementation of recommendations formulated to Chile in the First Round of the MESICIC, which highlights the various opinions issued by the Office of the Comptroller General that address the regulations on conflict of interest and their application to various public authorities; the draft Integrity in Public Office Law, which is intended to consolidate the regulations in force on declarations of assets and interests, and their disclosure; the creation in 2009 of the Transparency Council; the promulgation of the Law on Associations and Citizen Participation in the Conduct of Public Affairs (Law 20.500); adoption of the “Citizen participation policy in the framework of co-responsibility” and Presidential Orders Nos. 002 of 2011 and 005 of 2012 on citizen participation in the conduct of public affairs and open government

Finally, the last section of the report briefly describes a broad set of best practices to which Chile provided information such as the Semáforo Municipal [Municipal Traffic Light], the Contraloría y Ciudadano [Comptroller and Citizen], Unidades de Control Interno [Internal Control Units], and Asociativismo Regional y Local [Regional and Local Partnership] portals, the electronic form El Presidente Responde [The President Answers] of the Judiciary, as well as the quarterly disclosure of executory administrative penalties against regulated entities for breach of anti-money laundering legislation and the development of a Manual of Probity that sets out administrative responsibilities and the grounds for post disqualifications and incompatibilities; and the issuance of a set of recommendations to strengthen the money-laundering preventive measures implemented by the sectors regulated by the Financial Analysis Unit.

With the report of Chile, there were also adopted reports for Colombia, Guatemala, Panama and Uruguay, which are all available here. 


Edition N° 144 - Sept. 2013

What is the MESICIC?

The Mechanism For Follow-up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, known as MESICIC for its Spanish acronym, is a tool to support the development of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption through cooperation between States Parties.

Read more here


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