ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Anticorruption treaty holds promise of action

When a United Nations meeting signed the world's first anticorruption treaty in Mexico last week, the news was received with logical skepticism by the press. Most U.S. newspapers, probably tired of international treaties that are never enforced, didn't even report the story.
The most I could find in American newspapers last week were two-paragraph, wire-story excerpts in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times' "foreign briefs" sections.
But skeptics may be missing the point. While the U.N. Convention Against Corruption signed Thursday in Merida, Mexico, by 94 countries -- including the United States, Britain and Switzerland -- does not have teeth to force its immediate implementation, it's the first world treaty seeking to crack down on political corruption.
As such, it's a great first step to go after people such as Mexico's former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's brother, Raul Salinas, who has been charged with funneling $139 million into U.S., British and Swiss banks; Peru's former intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos (who deposited $230 million abroad); former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman ($100 million); former Gabon President El Hadj Omar Bongo ($52 million); and the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha ($1 billion).
While a good portion of these funds has been identified in foreign banks, only a small percentage of the money has been recovered. Until now, international law offered more protection to depositors of dubious funds than to the countries that suffered the looting of their treasuries.
Requirement
The new U.N. convention requires governments to criminalize bribes and asks governments to take measures to prevent corruption. Most important, it requires international cooperation to return ill-gotten funds to their countries of origin and creates a legal framework for possible extradition procedures among those countries that don't have bilateral extradition treaties.
"It's great," said Charles Intriago, a former U.S. prosecutor who publishes Money Laundering Alert, a newsletter specializing in corruption-related issues. "It's the first time that nations have agreed on establishing legal mechanisms to pursue corruption money and to guarantee that these funds will be returned to their countries."
The convention does have loopholes.
UFirst, it would have to be signed by all countries to eliminate all dirty money havens. Among the Latin American and Caribbean countries that had not signed the treaty by the end of the week were Uruguay, Honduras, Belize, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.
USecond, the new convention must be ratified by at least 30 countries to be effective.
UThird, even if 30 countries ratify it, governments must have the political will to enforce it. In most Latin American countries, justice systems are still riddled with corruption.
UFourth, the convention has no monitoring system built into it. U.N. officials say a monitoring body will be created once the convention enters into effect, which they estimate will happen in 2005.
But despite these obvious shortcomings, there's progress.
Only eight years ago, before the 1995 Citibank scandals over Salinas de Gortari's transfer of funds to the United States and Switzerland, money-laundering was a nonissue.
In recent years, many countries have signed regional anticorruption treaties or have moved on their own to clean up their act.
The United States, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands have recently returned to Peru nearly $100 million of the Montesinos money, and Mexico is actively seeking to repatriate about $600 million from Salinas and five other former Mexican officials charged in corruption cases. All of this is real progress.
Pressure necessary
Now, building on the new U.N. treaty, the international community should start putting pressure on nonsignatory countries -- Uruguay, Honduras, Belize, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, among others -- to join the convention. And international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should begin conditioning their financial assistance to compliance with the new U.N. treaty.
This is a great cause. Rather than ignoring it, the press should start putting nonsignatory countries on the spot, much like many of us have done with the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto Clean Air Treaty or the International Criminal Code convention.
Besides making it more difficult for crooked politicians to hide their money abroad, there are a lot of good things that a poverty-ridden country such as Nicaragua could do with a newly recovered $100 million, or Nigeria with $1 billion.
XAndres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.