First Anti-Corruption Working Group Meeting – G20
Recently, the first meeting of the G-20 Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG) of India G-20 was held, in which four ‘High-Level Principles (HLP)’ have been proposed.
These four high-level principles (HLP) are as follows:
- Improving the ‘Information Sharing Process’ for Action Against Economic Offenses:
- It will be considered to put in place a fast-track mechanism for sharing tax information with other domestic law enforcement agencies.
- The present ‘Mutual Legal Assistance Framework’ will be reformed.
- Principles and standards will be developed for exchange of information in new and emerging areas of economic activity.
- Strengthening the Asset Recovery Mechanism:
- Cases involving economic assets stolen by fugitive criminals or hidden or transferred to other countries will be dealt with.
- Its goal is to improve asset discovery and identification systems.
- Mechanism will be developed to curb illegal assets in time.
- Measures will be standardized to strengthen the asset recovery framework.
- Open-source information and asset recovery networks will be encouraged.
- Strengthening Law Enforcement Cooperation in Action Against Economic Offenses:
- It has been proposed to share information for operational requirements.
- Information will be shared through appropriate framework/nodal agency over protocol based secure communication channels.
- To promote integrity among the specialized authorities involved in corruption control and prevention:
- Under this, the focus will be on the rules of conduct, conflict of interest rules and asset disclosure systems.
What is economic crime?
- Economic crimes refer to a separate category of criminal activities.
- These include drug trafficking, counterfeit currency and valuable securities, financial scams, frauds, money laundering, hawala transactions, etc.
- These crimes affect the economy as well as the security of the country.
G-20Anti-Corruption Working Group-ACWG
- The ‘G-20 Anti-Corruption Working Group’ was established in the year 2010 during the ‘Toronto Summit’ of the G-20 countries.
- The main objective of this working group is to make broad recommendations regarding the practical and valuable contribution made by the G-20 countries to international efforts to combat corruption.
- The ACWG leads the group’s anti-corruption efforts through coordination of collective and national actions by G-20 member states.
- The ACWG works closely with organizations such as the World Bank Group, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development- OECD, the International Monetary Fund, and the Financial Action Task Force for anti-corruption activities.
Source – g20.org
