ALPON, Kynne Ross D.

AB POLITICAL SCIENCE

International Trade Agreements on Transnational Bribes

Corruption as well as bribery have always been present in every business, politics, and or
even in our simplest ways. It has always been there. Many acts have been made to cure the
corruption but, still, we cannot assure that it will be easily stopped. Corruption is beneficial
especially for those who are powerful but for us, it is a burden. There are transnational
agreements that were made to fight or address bribery these are such: OECD Anti-Bribery
Convention this was made to combat bribery between Foreign Public Officials in International
Business setting and if violated, violates will ne charge of neither civil or criminal violations. The
other agreement is the UN Convention which has 178 parties, in here, it mandates a nation to
put changes on those who will exercise bribery in their field. Auditing and books and records
also have rules to address or prevent bribery. Next is the OAS Convention or the Organization
of American States wherein it establishes preventive measures towards bribery and also allows
charges to those who will disobey. Next is the the Council of Europe Criminal Law and Civil Law
Conventions on Corruption, such acts like bribery is labeled as illegal by the Criminal Law
Convention wherein it also includes clauses addressing witness protection and legal person
liability. Lastly, FCPA or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbid the Americans to offer, promise,
or make a corrupt payment or anything of value to foreign officials in order to win or keep
business. Philippines also have anti-corruption law which are the: Act No. 3815 or the Revised
Penal Code (RPC), Republic Act No. 3019, as amended, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices
Act (ACPA), and Republic Act No. 6713, as amended, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical
Standards for Public Officials and Employees (COCES) and these was all made to prevent or
stop corruption in our country wherein we are all aware that we lives in a country that have
public officials who are highly corrupt.

How does transnational bribery happen? Transactions between people who work for relatively
large organizations and are frequently subject to multiple layers of supervision are an indicator
of transnational bribery: bribe payers work for multinational corporations, while bribe recipients
work for states or international organizations.The state of corruption in Philippine customs
according to Philippine Star, I quote,
“The Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) is going after officials of the Bureau of
Customs who are allegedly collaborating with several big steel manufacturers for improper
import declarations that may have deprived the government of billions of pesos in tax revenues.

These technical smuggling activities, according to the PACC, have been going on for over 10
years. It is claimed that BOC officials have been clearing importations of steel products at the
customs point of entry, even though there are wholesale discrepancies in the documents
submitted for such items.

According to PACC, total steel imports into the country reached 9.1 million tons last year, with
over P2.3 trillion worth of the products brought into the country over the last decade.
One steelmaker alone imported two million tons of steel billets last year, and may be
responsible for over half a trillion pesos worth of lost revenues for the government due to
systematic misdeclaration of its importation figures.

PACC said big steel importers, in collusion with BOC officials, had been manipulating the HS
codes (the universal code for export and import goods), describing the imports of cast and
prime steel billets used for steel manufacturing as Grade 60 when, in fact, the orders under the
same code are a mix of Grade 40 (5sp) and Grade 33 (3sp) to benefit from a lower value”

To combat the issue of corruption, the Philippine Customs Service launched anti-corruption
initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s in an effort to address the perception of character flaws
among customs officers. They combined three strategies that have been shown to be
ineffective: attitudinal modification, value construction, and negative reinforcement. The
initiatives included the creation of specialized government oversight, prosecution, and
investigation teams to combat corruption. But in the end, they were all just the same weapons
used by dishonest people to subjugate the government officials whose job it was to fight this
social ill.