Gardere foreign legal consultant Andres Alvarez and associate Alejandro Ortiz Palacios analyse the structure of Mexico’s new National Anti-Corruption System and consider what still needs to be done to make it an effective tool in the country’s fight against corruption.
Mexico has been fighting corruption for a long time. The Mexican Central Bank estimates that it costs the country the equivalent of 9% of gross domestic product. One of the first agencies in charge of investigating corruption and sanctioning government officials’ corrupt behaviour was the General Comptroller’s Ministry of the Federation, whose accomplishments were average, at best. In 1994 it changed its name to the Ministry of Comptrollership and Administrative Development and its focus changed to modernising the public administration, rather than investigating corruption. In 2003, the ministry changed its name again to the Ministry of Government Affairs and the emphasis on investigating corruption was readopted. The efforts continued and included implementing international conventions to prevent corruption, including that of the OECD.
Notwithstanding these efforts, and perhaps because of disappointing results, the general perception of corruption in Mexico has worsened. On 27 May 2015 the government amended article 113 of the Mexican Federal Constitution to create a new national system that would target corruption. This system, the National Anti-Corruption System (NACS), was to be integrated by members of the public and private sectors and governed by three main new laws on anti-corruption matters; the General Law of the National Anti-Corruption System, Organisational Law of the Federal Court of Administrative Justice and General Law on Administrative Liabilities (GLAL). These laws were published in the Mexican Official Gazette on 18 July 2016 and become fully effective almost exactly one year later.
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