At the 42nd session of the IMO’s Facilitation Committee (FAL) in London, on 5-8 June, The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) submitted a paper to the IMO, that discusses the impact of corruption on society, how it acts as a trade barrier and how it hinders social economic growth. BIMCO backed the request to IMO and member states to fully recognize the scale of maritime corruption and to take a stand against this type of crime.
MACN is a global business network established in 2011 and working towards a corruption free maritime industry that enables fair trade to the benefit of society. The network has to date made significant progress in tackling corruption.
Supporting this work, BIMCO has advised the IMO about the BIMCO Anti-Corruption Clause for Charter Parties. The clause addresses corruption by providing industry players with a way to respond to unlawful demands for gifts or cash. The BIMCO Anti-Corruption Clause is designed for use in both voyage and time charters and sets out a series of steps that contracting parties can follow in co-operation to resist unlawful demands.
Should these steps fail, a number of options are available through the clause, with termination by either party being the ultimate sanction. The termination option has a high threshold in order to avoid misuse such as an easy way out from an inconvenient charter.
During a recent interview at SAFETY4SEA, John Sypnowich, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer of The CSL Group Inc & Chair of MACN, indicated Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, and Argentina as areas where corruption has a well-known and detrimental impact on vessel operations and the welfare of crew. However, the overall trend seems positive, rather than worrying, he said, noting that there is increased global recognition of the impact of corrupt practices and shipping has banded together to cooperate in fighting corruption.
Recognising the challenges that the industry is facing from corruption, the IMO Committee, member states and organisations have decided to strengthen the work against corruption and propose ways to do so, ahead of the next IMO Facilitation Committee meeting.
The Economist Intelligence Unit and the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) recently released its Global Illicit Trade Environment Index, indicating Finland as the country with best environment for preventing illicit trade. In addition the index showed that:
- Europe is the best-performing region and by a significant margin.
- The Asia-Pacific region places second, followed by the Americas and Middle East and Africa.
- The overall score across the 84 economies is just 60.0 (out of 100), with the supply and demand and transparency and trade categories being the worst.
Chris Clague, the author of the main white paper, said:
More can and should be done when it comes to combatting illicit trade, especially because it helps to fund the operations of transnational organised crime and international terrorist organisations. Governments around the world have a variety of policy measures at their disposal, including some very low-hanging fruit like enforcing rules and regulations that are on the books with regards to monitoring and enforcement of free trade zones and improving their international reporting of data on drugs, human trafficking and intellectual property theft.
