IP must fight against corruption in Mexico: NYCE

According to the ranking of the non-governmental organization US News, which gathers the perception of 17,000 professionals from around the world, Mexico ranks fourth as one of the most corrupt countries among 85 countries, while of the 38 countries that make up the OECD, this country is the worst evaluated.

Corruption has a high cost for society in general. In December 2018, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, recalled the 2.6 trillion dollars a year that the World Economic Forum has calculated as the global cost of corruption.

Carlos Pérez, general director of NYCE, mentioned that in Mexico annual corruption figures close to 10% of its GDP are postulated according to the OECD, who affirms that the data is mainly integrated by the phenomenon of bribery (2% of GDP).

The number is huge and worrying compared to the 3% Latin American average for only bribes, which in itself entails a socioeconomic disaster,” he added.

This does not indicate that in Mexico, the authorities have not taken initiatives to change the landscape. For example, in 2016 with the creation of the National Anti-Corruption System in 2016, Mexico ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the Convention to Combat Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Commercial Transactions of the Organization for Cooperation and Development Economics, the Inter-American Convention against Corruption of the OAS.

With the current presidential term, the Integral Business Register (PIE) would be put into practice as an initiative included in the 2020 Budget Project for the promotion of honesty and its compliance within any organization and throughout its supply chain, always aligned with the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the global 2030 Agenda and the 10 principles of the Global Compact promoted by the UN.

However, 3 years after its launch, neither the number of registered companies nor the progress in the delivery of Integrity Badges is available. In fact, images are disabled on the PIE website.

Despite announcing that the Padrón online platform would start operations in August 2019, it was not until September 25, 2020 when it was available for registration.

After 2 months of allowing registrations (December 2020), the platform barely added 600 companies that began their registration. To date, it is not known which companies have obtained the Distinctive of Integrity, which is awarded to organizations that demonstrate their compliance. A program that simply has not generated any value or tangible results.

“I think it is appropriate to comment that it is in the business sphere where emphasis should be placed on the assimilation and application of good practices, self-management and self-regulation, since the law is not sufficient by itself to solve the problem of related behaviors with corruption”, shared Carlos Pérez.

“For this reason, companies and organizations must position themselves proactively in the fight against corrupt practices, assuming systems that establish a culture of integrity, transparency, honesty and compliance,” he added.

A very important axis could be the implementation and certification of international best practices, such as the ISO 37001 standard, Anti-Bribery Management System, published in 2016 and which is considered the first international standard that addresses different types of bribery.

“I would think that our legal framework and the efforts of the public sector lack recognition of international good practices that companies voluntarily assume and implement, and thus give significant value to those efforts, allowing self-regulation to be part of the model anti-corruption in the country. In this way, it would allow the business sector to join in assuming a commitment to ethical behavior that is a vital part of governance”.