Photo: Naim Fadil
On October 9-10, 2024, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) held a workshop on anti-corruption in public procurement in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Workshop materials.) The workshop was part of “Pillar IV” of the Framework, which aims to advance. The objective of Pillar IV of the Framework is to advance cooperation, stability, prosperity, development and peace within the region by focusing on “fair economy” issues, including anti-corruption. The workshop, coordinated by Annika Wythes of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), included representatives from many of the member nations of IPEF — Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Representatives from the Open Contracting Partnership and Open Ownership (which supports public access to beneficial ownership information) also contributed to the workshop. The UNODC report on outcomes of the workshop is available here.
Background
When the White House announced the launch of the IPEF in 2022, the Biden administration said that it would seek a “fair economy,” in “commitments to enact and enforce effective tax, anti-money laundering, and anti-bribery regimes that are in line with our existing multilateral obligations.” Those efforts were reflected in the “Fair Economy Agreement” entered into by the IPEF members, which included extensive measures to fight corruption in procurement, from bid challenges to debarment (including corporate compliance and remedial measures), and from open contracting to efforts to disclose contractors’ beneficial owners.
Report on IPEF Member States’ Anti-Corruption Practices
The workshop was launched with a special report prepared for UNODC by Li Anne Lim, Bribery in the Conduct of Business, Addressing Corruption in Public Procurement, and Laundering and Recovery of Proceeds of Crime — A Study on the Main Areas for Enhanced Cooperation Among IPEF Partners (June 2024). The report included detailed information from IPEF member states on their implementation of anti-corruption measures in public procurement. As the report explained (at 30), the debarment initiatives in the member states looked to contractor mitigation efforts as a means of reducing contractor exclusions — an important example of a risk-based approach to debarment.
What Makes an “Effective” Bid Challenge System
One goal of the workshop was to discuss how to assess anti-corruption strategies, such as bid challenges. GW Law’s Christopher Yukins addressed the workshop on October 9, 2024, and the next day made a virtual presentation on what it means (as called for by the United Nations Convention Against Corruption) to establish an “effective” bid challenge system. The presentation discussed the literature and authorities on “effective” bid protest systems, including Daniel Gordon’s 2006 piece, Constructing a Bid Protest Process: Choices Every Procurement Challenge System Must Make, 35 Pub. Cont. L.J. 427 (2006), and the OECD-sponsored Methodology for the Assessment of Procurement Systems.
