Moving the Anti-Corruption Agenda from Recommendations to Action

• The World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative will help implement the action plan created by the B20 Working Group on Anti-Corruption
• Action plan’s top priorities include beneficial ownership, public procurement reform, strengthening anti-corruption enforcement, harmonizing legal frameworks and initiating more collective action
• New report from World Economic Forum, Recommendations on Anti-Corruption in the Infrastructure & Urban Development Industries, already highlights progress towards collective action
• For more information about the Annual Meeting 2015: http://wef.ch/davos15

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 22 January 2015 – The World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) is to expand the work of its PACI Vanguard community of global chief executive officers in 2015, to help implement the action plan created by the B20 Working Group on Anti-Corruption. Top priorities of the action plan include critical issues such as beneficial ownership, public procurement reform, strengthening anti-corruption enforcement, harmonizing legal frameworks and initiating more collective action.

Business leaders as well as key international organizations and NGOs have contributed to developing this plan, including the OECD, UNODC, Transparency International, the Basel Institute on Governance and other leaders in the anti-corruption arena.

“Since 2011, members of the B20 working groups have consolidated the priorities of business leadership into a compelling and far-reaching anti-corruption agenda, but there is a need to move from recommendations to implementation,” said David Seaton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fluor Corporation and Chair of the PACI Vanguard. “It is our hope that a global challenge initiative focused on the implementation of these recommendations creates the enabling environment for key stakeholders to drive action and impact on a much broader scale.”

The PACI Vanguard comprises a group of CEOs from the more than 100 leading companies that are PACI members. Since its inception in 2014, the Vanguard has been moving toward the implementation of a global anti-corruption agenda largely informed by the B20 and G20 anti-corruption dialogues. Convening for its second year at this week’s Annual Meeting 2015 in Davos, the group will begin charting the course for the action plan.

“A key pillar of the action plan will be to leverage the convening platform of the Forum to create alignment and synchronization across global implementation efforts,” said Elaine Dezenski, Head of the Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative. “We have deep expertise and connection points within our PACI community of companies, together with partners in government and civil society. Our goal is to help bring all of this expertise to bear to address some very challenging problems.”

The Vanguard meeting also highlights the past year’s progress on the anti-corruption agenda, including a report on collective action efforts already being made by business leaders from the infrastructure, real estate, engineering and construction industries. The report identifies corruption risks and highlights an industry survey of 50 leading companies that led to a set of specific recommendations on how to level the playing field. Closer interaction between business and government, higher transparency in public procurement and permitting and licensing will be the focus of the implementation phase in 2015.

The project is the second of its kind from the World Economic Forum and PACI, which last year gathered business leaders from the aviation and travel industry to address the same issue. These projects are part of a series of industry-focused, collective action initiatives that demonstrate how traditional industry competitors can come together to combat corruption.

The Co-Chairs of the Annual Meeting 2015 are: Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman and Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Group, India; Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, United Kingdom; Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Alliance Trust, United Kingdom; Young Global Leader Alumnus; Jim Yong Kim, President, The World Bank, Washington DC; Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA; and Roberto Egydio Setubal, Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Itaú Unibanco, Brazil.