April-June 2019. While the Myanmar Anti-Corruption Commission presented the first draft of the whistle-blower protection law with UNODC support for consultations, a series of workshops aimed to equip civil society organizations (CSOs) with essential knowledge on features of whistle-blower protection were organized in Mandalay, Yangon, Magway and Dawei. The CSOs in practice will have an important role as a source of advice for whistle-blowers, linking citizens and institutions. UNODC is continuing to advocate for a wider consultation with CSOs for the second draft of the law. 

June 2019- UNODC partnered with the Thailand Institute of Justice, Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand, ChangeFusion, and OpenDream to initiate a collaborative project that will result in the development of the first anti-corruption open datasets  that aggregate and standardise data from many sources together in a single database. On 15 June 2019, tech experts, government agencies, NGOs gathered to prepare the first Corrupt0/zero tolerance open database in Thailand. Find out more about the event and the information used here.

June 2019- Following trainings on fraud and corruption investigations in relation to land registries in March 2019, a group of investigators from the Anti-Corruption Unit were selected to participate in a 2-week mentoring programme. UNODC Cybercrime team also participated in training investigators on digital forensics for seizing and handling digital evidence. 

June 2019- Practitioners from selected countries engaged in drafting legislation (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, East Timor) or in the process of planning legal amendments (Maldives, Nepal) together with practitioners from Indonesia, Thailand, Bhutan and Myanmar and guided by UNODC experts, identified the required steps to improve their respective asset disclosure systems, verification and sanction regimes and public access to asset declarations, in light of the UNCAC second review cycle. 

June 2019- In the context of the E4J initiative, UNODC held an expert workshop for 27 university lecturers from Asia-Pacific at Thammasat University in Bangkok on 25-27 June 2019 to enhance their familiary with the E4J University Modules on Integrity and Ethics and reflect on their experiences adapting and teaching the modules as part of their ongoing courses. Read the full story here. The Modules and an associated teaching guide are freely available on the E4J website. 

June 2019- The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is the agency with the single largest expenditure of Vietnam's public funds, responsible for infrastructure, roads, and irrrigation development in rural Vietnam where 66% of the population live. Estimates indicate that 20-25% of the procurement budget is drained through corruption (OECD, 2013). Following a set of trainings in Northern and Southern provinces of Vietnam in 2018, government officials from the Central provinces received similar trainings and developed their own corruption risks mitigation action plan to prevent corruption in public procurement.

June 2019- Fisheries value chain includes high risks of money laundering, corruption, illegal fishing and tax evasion. UNODC Country Office in Myanmar and UNODC-WCO Container Control Programme organized a joint-training strengthening inter-agency collaboration to address fishery crimes, including a study visit at the port. A wide range of issues were addressed, such as the impact of fisheries crime, gender aspects of corruption, legal frameworks and policies, and private sector cooperation.

May 2019- A three-day training was delivered to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in New-Delhi, a specialized law enforcement authority mandated to investigate white-collar crimes, strengthening the skills of investigators to address corporate fraud and corruption schemes between public and private sector, inter-agency cooperation and international cooperation on banking documents and offshore deposits. A follow-up module will be conducted in August this year with the use of hypothetical case exercises. 

May 2019- All ASEAN countries have completed the first cycle of the UNCAC Implementation Review Mechanism in 2015, covering Criminalizaton and law enforcement and International cooperation. Malaysia and Indonesia have completed the 2nd review cycle in 2018, which is on-going in the region. Myanmar is now finalizing the second review of UNCAC implementation on Preventive measures and Asset recovery. The results will be posted online.