By Gabriel Omoh

The President of the World Bank Robert Zoellick has said that corruption is a dirty business that will not sort itself out by politely and discreetly informing wrongdoers of their missteps.

Speaking at the 2011 World Bank integrity record he stated, “we need to instill a moral revulsion to corruption, both across geography and generations.”

The Bank announced in Washington its integrity results for the last fiscal year, highlighted progress in managing investigations, pursuing delinquent companies and working with national authorities to advance national enforcement action.  He said that the Bank’s results were the work of the institution’s integrity.

According to the report during this fiscal year, the World Bank debarred 32 entities, and honoured 37 cross-debarments together with other multilateral development banks. The Bank also built preventive precautions in 48 high-risk projects and stopped a number of tainted contracts from being executed. In addition, the Bank developed tailored preventive and forensic training reaching 2,700 government officials and Bank staff”.

This year the report further said, the Bank achieved some promising progress relating to referrals stemming from its investigations, as evidenced by actions taken by the Norwegian National Authority for the Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, the UK Serious Fraud Office and the Indonesia’s Special Crime Unit.

“We expect national authorities to give proper attention and consideration to the Bank Group’s referrals of investigative information,” said Zoellick. “Ideally, this should lead to their undertaking competent investigations, prosecutions, and adjudication within the country—but it often has not. Real progress can only happen when national authorities dedicate proper attention to our referrals of investigative information.”

According to the report “Taking a consistent aim at delinquent entities, the World Bank has introduced negotiated resolutions as part of its group’s operating model and as part of sanctions reforms, which were approved by the World Bank Board of Directors in September 2010.

“The Bank’s negotiated resolution with the engineering firm Lotti, which included a 27-month debarment and a US$ 350,000 restitution payment to the Government of Indonesia, set the tone for a higher impact mode of delivery that should raise public confidence in international criminal justice,” said World Bank Integrity Vice President, Leonard McCarthy.

On the global anticorruption front, the Bank has launched the International Corruption Hunters Alliance, which coincided with the Bank’s signing of 18 bilateral cooperation agreements with national anticorruption entities and development agencies.