Co-Sponsorship Speech
United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC)

Senator Edgardo J. Angara
November 06, 2006

Recently, I attended the 2nd Global Conference of Parliamentarians Against Corruption in Tanzania. One memorable speech was that of a Nigerian senator. He reported that he was able to indict five governors, the justice minister, as well as the education minister for corruption. And, Mr. President, within the span of six months, they were able to recover five billion US Dollars deposited in Switzerland.

Mr. President, I narrate this episode because that kind of recovery was made possible as a result of this UN Convention. Switzerland volunteered to surrender that money without much ado. In that same Conference in Tanzania, I tried to intervene but could only say, "In the Philippines, we've been trying to recover the Marcos wealth for the past 17 years. And we've succeeded only in recovering 630 million US dollars, which in one year was won by this administration."

Mr. President, this convention is quite remarkable, as my co-sponsor Senator Defensor-Santiago stated, because this is the first time in international law that there is a universal global consensus that corruption is a plague on the House of every country.

This convention rests on four pillars.

The first pillar, Mr. President, is preventive measure. The convention outlines certain measures stating that each country can adapt a provision in order to prevent corruption. And it involves not just the public, but also the private sector as well as civil society. These measures are all outlined very clearly in the convention.

The second pillar, Mr. President, is to criminalize certain well-known or notorious acts and activities which in our case is already criminalized. For instance, the bribery of national public officials, active bribery of foreign public officials, misappropriation, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

Those are just the mandatory offenses that this convention criminalizes. And there are other offenses which Senator Santiago had already mentioned. Many of them are already covered by the existing Penal Code of the Philippines, though some are yet to be covered.

The third pillar of the UNCAC, Mr. President, is international cooperation woven in the entire fabric of this convention. There is now a clear-cut obligation on the part of each state to cooperate in the implementation of all the measures enumerated here. Therefore, as I mentioned in the beginning, there is now an easier way of recovering looted assets and treasures of a country that may have been deposited to another country.

And the fourth pillar, Mr. President, is the principle of "asset recovery". This is a fundamental pillar of this convention, that is new and that is quite important especially to us developing countries, where our public money is usually shipped out and deposited in some third party. Under this convention, Mr. President, especially if the party assigned and confirmed in this convention, it's now easier to recover that looted treasure and that money can be repatriated to our country.

So, Mr. President, I'm proud to be associated with this convention because as a member of the international executive board of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), I chaired the small committee which helped draft some of the language of this convention. And I have the honor to co-head the Philippine Delegation to Merida, Mexico, coinciding with this convention.

I would like to add, Mr. President, for the record, that our own ambassador, Victor Garcia, was the vice-chair of the drafting committee of this convention. And therefore, we can all claim a sense of ownership of this convention, if I may say that, Mr. President.

In conclusion, Mr. President, I join Senator Santiago in urging our colleagues to have this passed on second (third) reading today, so that we can become a state party to the convention and entitled to all the privileges of the state party. And obtain the honor of being one or two of the South East Asian countries who have ratified this convention, the first being Indonesia.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.