Brazil Adopts Anti-Corruption Plan for Next Three Years

The document has been drafted in cooperation with anti-corruption experts from 53 public bodies and representatives of civil society organisations (30 representatives from the Council on Transparency, Integrity and Fight against Corruption (Conselho de Transparência, Integridade e Combate à Corrupção, hereinafter, the Council), an advisory body under the Office of the Comptroller-General of the Union (Controladoria-Geral da União, hereinafter, the Comptroller)), academia (around 50 representatives) and business community (representatives of around 100 organisations).

The monitoring and assessment of effectiveness of implementation of the Plan will be undertaken by the Comptroller and the Council. The obligation to publish the information on implementation of the measures under the Plan submitted by the competent bodies every six months on a dedicated website will also rest with the Comptroller.

The Plan is based on such principles as:

Effective combination of the measures for promoting integrity and combating corruption;
Engagement of the public in relevant processes;
Employment of the approach implying consideration of the context and specific situations;
Interagency cooperation.

The Plan includes 260 measures for ensuring integrity and countering corruption distributed across five key areas:

1. Efficient use of public resources (42 measures)

The goal of this area consists in enhancing effectiveness of the use of public resources and reducing costs.

In order to meet this goal, the Plan includes such objectives as:

Ensure control (oversight), including drafting and adoption of relevant normative legal acts with regard to the use of public resources in the areas particularly vulnerable to embezzlement by public and local government bodies also through the use of digital technologies and factual data, including surveys of heads of public and local government bodies, population, representatives of civil society organisations, academia and business community with a view to developing recommendations on how to draw up budget plans;
Improve public procurement management with the aim to facilitate and speed it up, as well as to enhance its economic effectiveness, in particular, by expanding the functionality of the e-procurement portal in order to ensure transparency of the contracts concluded at the level of states and local government bodies;
Automate analysis of public contracts also by implementing digital solutions allowing for automatic detection of indicators of violations;
Ensure joint action of public bodies in detecting collusions in procurement;
Improve the control mechanisms for providing financial incentives and enhancing transparency of the relevant processes;
Strengthen institutional potential of public bodies authorized to exercise control (oversight) of the use of public resources.

2. Interaction between the public and the private sectors (60 measures)

The second area under the Plan includes the measures for promoting the principles of integrity in the interaction between the public and the private sectors also with regard to the prevention of conflicts of interest and incentives for organisations to adopt compliance programmes, in particular, by:

Improving the processes of obtaining permits and licences, concluding leasing contracts with a view to enhancing legal certainty and predictability, ensuring equality and reducing the number of regulatory costs and possibilities for abuse in the interactions between the State and the public sector;
Enhancing the level of transparency of activities and promotion of the principles of integrity in the regulatory bodies interacting with the private sector;
Expanding the list of means for incentivizing private companies to promote the principles of integrity and anti-corruption, ensure consistency of the requirements applied to compliance programmes with the social and ecological policies, human rights policy and standardization of assessment processes with regard to compliance programmes;
Improving legal framework, in particular, by developing the measures for mitigating corruption risks in the private sector, strengthening public control of compliance with anti-corruption norms by companies.

3. Transparency and openness of the government (74 measures)

In the framework of the third area, the Plan establishes the goal to enhance transparency of activities of the public bodies, including their use of public resources, and develop their cooperation with the general public also by exchanging data.

In order to meet this goal, the Plan sets the following objectives:

Enhance transparency of execution of the State budget;
Ensure active interagency interaction on how to enhance transparency also with a view to strengthening the use of open data;
React efficiently to the requests of access to information;
Promote transparency of regulation, in particular, the existing rules, procedures, administrative processes etc.;
Ensure openness of governance also at the level of states and municipalities.

4. Fight against corruption (49 measures)

Another goal of the Plan consists in improving the processes of detection, investigation and imposition of liability for corruption offences.

To this end, the Plan suggests:

Improving the mechanisms for detecting, investigating and prosecuting corruption offences, in particular, by standardizing the methods of investigation of illicit enrichment, improving the mechanisms for analysing income declarations and assessing compliance programmes etc.;
Promoting the policy of reporting corruption offences also by training and raising awareness on relevant issues and improving protection of whistleblowers;
Strengthening the potential of the bodies empowered to detect, investigate and prosecute corruption offences, in particular, by training anti-corruption specialists;
Improving the procedures for interagency cooperation of relevant bodies, defining the guiding principles for their joint action and promoting interaction of the federal bodies with the bodies at the level of states and municipalities;
Using digital technologies in the framework of monitoring of activities of the public bodies and processing of big amounts of data, for example, in detecting and investigating corruption crimes.

5. Strengthened institutions to promote integrity (35 measures)

The goal of this area of the Plan consists in ensuring compliance with the ethical standards.

This area of the Plan has such objectives as:

Promote the principles of integrity in the public bodies also by implementing training and awareness-raising initiatives and issuing relevant guidance;
Enhance public capacities in ensuring integrity and fighting corruption by conducting training and raising awareness;
Support public bodies in enhancing transparency of their activities, accountability and ethical conduct of their servants;
Standardize the procedures for recruiting public and municipal servants at all levels of government;
Implement anti-corruption strategies in the public bodies;
Conduct research on enhancing the potential of public bodies in ensuring integrity and countering corruption.