Working Group on Fight Against Corruption and Money Laundering Meets in Abu Dhabi
Author: Irina Carnevale, U.S. GAO
The 17th meeting of the INTOSAI Working Group on the Fight Against Corruption and Money Laundering (WGFACML) was held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, September 3-5, 2024. Egypt’s Accountability State Authority chaired the meeting, which was hosted by the UAE Accountability Authority.
The meeting participants discussed progress made by various subgroups in meeting the Working Group’s three goals:
- developing and finalizing guidelines,
- promoting SAI capacity building and coordination with international agencies, and
- sharing best practices on the topic of fighting corruption and money laundering.
Specifically, in support on the first goal, seven subgroups reported on their efforts to develop guidelines in the following areas:
- SAI compliance with international commitments under the United Nations Convention Against Corruption,
- corruption detection through investigative and other techniques,
- audit of countries’ national anti-corruption approaches,
- audit of corruption risk management,
- whistleblower systems,
- audit of money laundering activities, and
- audit of public-private partnership projects.
In support of capacity building and sharing of best practices, the technical theme of the meeting was “Towards and integrated vision: non-governmental community efforts in fighting corruption.” To that end, participants shared experiences and approaches, common among which were (1) establishment of citizen portals to report potential abuse and topics for audits, (2) citizen education campaigns through various media channels, (3) youth initiatives such as hackathons, (4) coordination with local and other entities that demand government accountability such as local vigilance commissions, and (5) signing of memoranda of understanding between SAIs and national anticorruption agencies.
