Battling Corruption

Graciela Dixon, CEO of Dixon Attorneys and a retired Supreme Court Judge of Panama, said in the case of Panama and perhaps most Latin American countries, “corruption is not an abstract phenomena.”  For public entities, it is a symbiotic social structure that arises from the commercial and economic interest of the parties who want to develop a project—the investor, the constructor and the public employee who may determine who will carry out the project, Dixon explained. It is an issue, she said, because it “distorts the economy, having a huge negative impact that can extend even to the level of violence.”

Why does corruption happen in a particular location? Dixon looked to the social basis at the root. She acknowledged sensitive differences between societies involving history and cultural underpinnings and said it depended on the moral values that have been instilled and passed on from generation to generation. When certain behaviors are considered as moral or even as smart or accepted, there is flexibility and tolerance that leave way for forms of corruption that are not recognized as such by the participants, she added.

How can this distorted behavior be challenged? Dixon said she believed that there are ways to build a healthier society. She recommended designing systems that block the possibility of corrupted practices, introducing formulas within public entities that reduce the human manipulation of information.

Safeguards do already exist. Juan G. Ronderos, the case officer for the Inter-American Development Bank, made the point that sanctions for corruption imposed by one of the global banking institutions carry over to others as well. Prohibited corruptive practices include not executing a contract, giving or receiving bribes, collusive practices such as bid rigging, coercion, and obstructive practices when companies try to stop investigations.

People also are often overlooked in risk analysis. On highly complex projects, one of the biggest variables is people—how they think, how they view the world, how they handle pressure, said Greg Sauter, president of Engineers Without Borders.

“These projects have major pressure associated with them—the politics, the environment they are working in, the risk. We all know that unmitigated risk is a killer of projects,” Sauter said.

Important values, he said, are a project leader with the right public image, the ability to attract human capital, the emotional intelligence, the strength of character and the ethical grounding to protect the team from outside pressures.