The Corrupt Cannot Fight Corruption

In this seminar, the speaker will draw from the literature on experiences of anti-corruption agencies and his own experience as the former head of Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption Investigation Task-Force Sweep, to show how addressing police corruption is the lynchpin to combating corruption. Corruption is a pernicious societal disease that has devastating consequences that can cripple a nation. Although Corruption has become a global challenge, its scale and prevalence in any country depend on how it is being addressed. There are countries that are perceived to be less corrupt as graded by Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index in the likes of Finland, Denmark and New Zealand, and there are others that were once corrupt such as Hong Kong and Singapore but were transformed and have become the epitome of the fight against corruption. Countries like Singapore and Hong Kong have adopted centralised anti-corruption agencies (ACA) and New South Wales/Australia, Indonesia and Georgia are among the ones that had followed their models. There are countries that have established ACAs but failed as well. A success of an ACA in one country does not mean that the same blueprint will produce the same results elsewhere. One of the common historical features that stands out is what prompted the establishment of all these successful anti-corruption agencies; they were all responses to scandals involving police corruption. Corruption is an organised form of crime that transcends agency territorial jurisdictions. Police may just be another government agency. However, how this agency of government holds the key to the fight against corruption had not received adequate attention in the international literature. The presentation is part of a research paper the speaker is developing on addressing corruption in a resource rich developing country with communal social context that is struggling with high levels of corruption. He has designed a four-pronged approach to curb corruption effectively, focusing on PNG as a case study. This seminar is co-hosted by the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), ANU Development Policy Centre, and the State, Society and Governance Program in Melanesia (SSGM). About the Speaker Sam Koim has been one of the most significant legal investigators and policy makers in PNG in recent years. From 2011 to April 2017 he was Chairman and Principal Legal Office of Investigation Task-Force Sweep, a national multiagency team investigating corruption, prosecuting offenders, recovering tax and proceeds of crime, and recommending administrative disciplinary actions. Prior to his appointment to the Investigation Task-Force, he was Principal Legal Officer in the Department of Justice and Attorney General, Papua New Guinea. For more detail, visit his RegNet profile: http://regnet.anu.edu.au/our-people/visitors/sam-koim.