In contrast with the early days of the ICAC when most of the corruption reports were against government officials, the number of complaints concerning the private sector increased to two-thirds of the total in recent years.
“Apart from a clean government, a fair business environment is also essential to economic development and attracting investment. Therefore, we are constantly enhancing our professionalism and deployed more resources to assist the private sector in preventing corruption,” said Ms Liaw.
Unlike the public sector, the CPD has no legal power over private organisations to “audit” their systems or give them preventive advice. Corruption prevention service is only provided to the private sector upon request. A dedicated unit was set up since 1985 to serve private organisations ranging from small companies to multi-national corporations and listed companies.
“The past four decades saw a notable change of the business community’s attitude. They now attach great importance to corporate governance and staff integrity management,” Ms Liaw said.
In 2018, the Corruption Prevention Advisory Service provided a total of 895 corruption prevention consultations, a double of the figure five years ago. Ms Liaw added that CPD’s advisory services were confidential, free and tailor-made.
“To prevent corruption, we need a strategy which is diversified, wide-ranging and multi-layered. Therefore we also produce best practice checklists, training toolkits and corruption prevention guides covering specific industries such as construction, catering and listed companies, or high risk areas including procurement, staff administration and contract management,” she noted.
A CPAS web portal was also launched earlier to promote corruption prevention best practices, enhance the accessibility of reference resources and services, and disseminate regular updates on red flags and prevention tips, case studies, sample codes of conduct to users.
Ms Liaw added that to ensure those recommended measures were practicable and effective, the CPD had engaged major industry stakeholders such as trade associations, chambers of commerce and professional bodies, as well as regulators in preparing and promulgating the packages.
“Capacity building seminars were also organised jointly with trade associations and professional bodies to promote our preventive packages and help the industries adopt a robust anti-bribery management system and raise their alertness to corruption risks,” Ms Liaw said.
Ms Liaw will retire from the Commission in mid-February this year. She affirmed that Hong Kong’s holistic approach to fight corruption through law enforcement, prevention and community education had proved to be effective.
“But there is no room for complacency and we must stay alert and respond swiftly to changes in order to sustain our success,” she concluded.
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