Vietnam adopts law to combat graft
BANGKOK - Vietnam's legislature yesterday adopted a long-awaited anti-corruption law that requires officials and their close relatives to declare their assets, as the ruling Communist party seeks to step up its battle against pervasive graft.
Hanoi's communist authorities are intensely concerned that corruption could erode the party's legitimacy in the eyes of the population.
During the past several years some high-level officials and powerful state enterprise managers have been arrested and prosecuted for graft.
But foreign investors yesterday expressed scepticism that the legislation would be sufficient to curb rampant corruption in a system where authorities still have vast discretionary power over business decisions and are shielded from public scrutiny by state control over the media.
Tony Foster, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the law firm, said. "Everyone is rather worried that it is words rather than substance."
Vietnam's National Assembly adopted rules requiring officials to disclose their assets several years ago. But Frederick Burke, a Ho Chi Minh City-based partner at Baker & McKenzie, said that at the time legislators rejected the proposal that officials' relatives also be asked to disclose their assets. "They said, if you couldn't put your assets in your wife's name, how can you make a living?"
While the decision to extend the disclosure burden to officials' relatives was "a good step", Mr Burke said, much would depend on how the rule was enforced and who was allowed to scrutinise the asset declarations.
"Would it be possible for the public to inspect these disclosures or will it be the same old guys from the Central Committee?" he asked.
Even as the authorities express concern about corruption, they are adopting new laws that will increase the government's discretionary authority to license and register businesses and projects, widening opportunities for graft.
"They can pass all the anti-corruption legislation they want but unless they take care of the systematic problems that give rise to the temptation to extract corrupt payments, its never going to stop," Mr Burke said.
Earlier this year Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy rated Vietnam the third most corrupt country in Asia, behind Indonesia and the Philippines.
Some analysts suggest closer scrutiny of officials' assets could trigger a downturn in the country's overheated property market, which many say is fuelled by officials trying to hide ill-gotten "black money".
By Amy Kazmin - The Financia Times - November 29, 2005.
|