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The Philippines stands to benefit from the global
efforts of the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations to help
developing nations recover assets pilfered by corrupt leaders.
The Philippines is embroiled in
efforts to recover the ill-gotten wealth of deposed strongman
Ferdinand E. Marcos and their cronies. Lately, it has convicted
former president Joseph Ejercito Estrada for plunder, and government
agencies are being readied to seize assets supposedly generated from
Estrada’s profits from plunder.
The Philippine has agreed to a
Country Assistance Strategy with the World Bank in June, which
underscore the need to recover ill-gotten wealth and other spoils of
corruption as a sign of good governance.
“There should be no safe haven
for those who steal from the poor,” World Bank chief Robert
Zoellick said, adding the Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR)
Initiative was a warning to corrupt leaders “that they will not
escape the law.”
WB estimates the global flow of
illegal funds from crime, corruption and tax evasion at more than a
thousand billion dollars each year, with billions squirreled away in
secret bank accounts, away from the prying eyes of citizens of
beleaguered countries.
“The initiative will foster
much needed cooperation between developed and developing countries
and between the public and private sectors to ensure that looted
assets are returned to their rightful owners,” said UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.
WB officials estimate that 25
percent of the gross domestic product of African states is lost to
corruption every year, counting for some $148 billion, while a
further $20 to $40 billion is spent on bribes to public officials in
the world’s poorest countries.
“Each $100-million recovered
would be sufficient to finance full immunizations for four million
kids, provide water connections for 250,000 households or provide
HIV/AIDS treatment to 600,000 people a year,” WB vice president
for poverty reduction and economic management, Daniel Leipziger,
told a briefing before the launch.
Under the initiative, WB would
work with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to help
developing countries set up institutions “to detect and deter the
illegal flow of funds ... to make it less likely that these funds
would be stolen,” Leipziger said.
The Bank would also bring
pressure on financial centers in developed nations to adopt “the
highest standards of behavior in terms of money laundering,”
Leipziger said.
Former Nigerian finance minister,
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who helped recover $500-million worth of assets
looted by former military dictator Sani Abacha, said the StAR
initiative marked a first step towards “rebalancing”
responsibilities in the fight against corruption.
“There has to be a rebalancing
on the issue of corruption,” said Okonjo-Iweala, who was a key
player in getting the initiative off the ground.
“Developing countries need to
fight corruption and stem the flow of illicit funds, and developed
countries must make sure there is no safe haven for those funds in
their countries,” she said.
“If the two sides cooperate,
the people who are corrupt will know that any money that goes out
will be sent back to the country from which it came.”
Recovering assets is a
time-consuming effort. It took the Philippines 18 years to recover
some $624 million funneled away by former dictator Ferdinand Marcos
into Swiss bank accounts.
But the StAR initiative shifts
the recovery of looted assets from a bilateral effort between two
countries to one with the muscle that comes from having the backing
of international conventions and organizations.
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