Corruption still obstructs business

There are special corruption prosecutors, who investigated those crimes within the government.

An electronic newspaper called Latin Business Chronicle has published an article stating that corruption is a significant obstacle to operating in Latin America, which has resulted in lost business for law-abiding companies, according to a new survey among more than 200 executives in the region. The worse part of it is that 82 percent believe anti-corruption laws in Latin American are not effective.

According to Homer E. Meyer from the U.S. based law firm Miller & Chevalier, the survey responses reflect both a high level of concern in the private sector about corruption and a cynicism about meaningful enforcement of the anti-corruption laws adopted to implement the OAS Convention.

The electronic daily said that the results from another survey commissioned by the American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America shows that corruption is a major concern. When asked what they believe is the key issue affecting the future of democracy in their country, 31 percent ranked corruption as the “most important”.

A frequent complaint by U.S. firms in Latin America is that they are unfairly weakened by the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits U.S.companies from corrupt payments to foreign officials for the purpose of obtaining or keeping business, when it comes to competing with companies from the region or other areas which do not have to comply with the FCPA type regulations.

Nearly 74 percent of the respondents say that they have lost business due to corrupt practicer by competitors.

Almost half of those involved in the survey said that corruption is a significant problem in Latin America. U.S. executives working in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Brazil said that corruption represents a significant obstacle for them to do business.

To make matters worse, according to the daily, 34.5 percent of those interviewed do not think a company individual or government official will be punished for their illicit activities.