By Felix Osike
New Vision (Kampala)April 15, 2000
Uganda Kampala - A UN report, released in Vienna on Thursday, has listed Uganda as one of the most successful countries in the fight against corruption.
"Opening up financial records to public scrutiny has been one of the most successful ways of foiling corruption," the United Nations said, welcoming the creation of national anti-corruption agencies in Australia, Hong Kong, Poland, Uganda and Singapore.
The UN report on global corruption, read to 2,000 delegates at a UN congress on crime prevention and the treatment of offenders, says up to US$30b in aid for Africa, twice the GDP of Ghana, Kenya and Uganda combined, has ended up in foreign bank accounts.
The congress also dealt with tax evasion and the disregard of customs duties, which in one unnamed African country, delegates were told, reached the equivalent of six or seven times its health budget. Another report from the UN agency for drug control and crime prevention said some 21 percent of Latin America's population were forced to offer bribes last year to state officials compared with 19 percent in Africa, 15 percent in Asia and 11 per cent in central and eastern Europe.
