Luxembourg's Félix Braz joined other Ministers of Justice of OECD Convention signatory states for a ministerial meeting on the fight against corruption on Wednesday.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Convention was signed in December 1997 and ratified by Luxembourg in 2001, now holds 41 signatories including 34 OECD member countries and 7 non-members. The agreement establishes legally-binding standards designed to criminalise the bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions, as well as provides a number of measures for the effective implementation of these provisions, such as a signatory assessment process.
At Wednesday's meeting, the ministers adopted a statement in which they expressed their gratitude to the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, for its driving and decisive role in monitoring and promoting the full implementation of the anti-corruption convention. The statement emphasised the States will continue to commit to the evaluation process conducted by the Working Group and announced the launch of the fourth evaluation phase of Convention signatory countries.
Félix Braz stated that Luxembourg fully supports the actions of the OECD working group against corruption and welcomed the launch of the new phase, highlighting the key topics in this evaluation, such as the protection of whistle-blowers, the fight against money laundering and international cooperation, as top priorities on the Grand Duchy's political agenda.
Luxembourg was ranked the tenth least corrupt place out of 168 countries in a 2015 study by Transparency International, although a recent STATEC report found that the Luxembourg population placed the least amount of confidence in the country's political system out of four institutions, rating it 5.0 out of 10 compared with the 6.1 confidence in the police.
Photo by OECD (Félix Braz)
