Lack of co-operation among anti-corruption agencies: FM

New Delhi, Sep 29 (PTI) Admitting "slackness" in
implementing laws and lack of coordination between various
probe agencies, India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on
Thursday asked private players and civil society to shoulder
some responsibility in achieving "zero tolerance" on
corruption.
"We are committed to making progress in our fight against
corruption. It is also important that other stakeholders,
including the private actors and the civil society, come
forward in shouldering some responsibilities and contribute to
the efforts of public agencies in this endeavor.
"At the same time, we are one with the global community
in sharing the responsibilities in our collective efforts to
address this issue in its international dimension," Mukherjee
said while addressing the concluding session of three-day
conference of Seventh Regional Conference of the ADB-OECD
Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific Region.
He listed out various departments of the government which
were engaged in controlling corruption but said, "this does
not mean that we are free of corruption. Indeed, corruption is
widespread and deep-rooted in our society.
"There are issues of slackness in implementation of
existing laws, ineffectiveness of some laws, lack of
coordination between different agencies that have overlapping
mandates, policy gaps such as in the area of election funding
and governance failure in several areas of public services
delivery, that have contributed to the pervasiveness of this
phenomenon."
Mukherjee said that in context of present globalised
world, effective international co-operation has become an
essential of any framework against corruption.
"We need to engage with each other at different levels to
effectively block all physical escape routes for those
blatantly propagating corrupt practices...it is a war that has
to be fought on all fronts and in a concerted and coordinated
manner by all stakeholders," he said.
He added that symptomatic solutions would give only
temporary results and the need was for having a comprehensive
framework against corruption.
While addressing delegates from other countries, he said
the efforts to tackle the menace have been unceasing and "we
are committed to the goal of achieving zero tolerance against
corruption".
He said corruption was a multifaceted problem. "It has
diverse manifestations, from petty bribery in the delivery of
public service to major scandals involving large organisations
and even nations.
"It requires a multifaceted approach to address it. There
has to be a framework for prevention of corruption in the
public and the private domain. There has to be a legal
framework recognising the act of corruption as a crime,
supported by an effective enforcement machinery," he said.
The Finance Minister said government has signed amendment
to tax treaty with Switzerland and the Swiss Parliament has
accorded its approval to the treaty recently.
"As soon as Switzerland completes its internal process,
the treaty shall come into force and will allow India to
obtain banking information from Switzerland in specific cases
for the period starting from 1st April, 2011," he said.