Bangladesh is one of the 21 countries facing “very high” risk of corruption in the defence ministry and the armed forces because of parliament and legislature’s failure to sufficiently exercise control on them.
The very high risk group also includes China, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a report of the Transparency International UK’s Defence and Security Programme (TI-DSP).
The report titled “Watchdogs? The quality of legislative oversight of defence in 82 countries” said two-thirds of parliament and legislatures failed to exercise sufficient control over their defence ministry and armed forces.
The analysis has grouped the 82 countries into six: four countries have been labelled as very low risk group, 12 in low risk, 14 moderate, 17 high risk, 21 very high risk while 14 countries are at critical risk.
The assessment on legislative capacity to stem corruption risk in defence and security was made through a set of 19 questions and the report has detailed assessments across seven areas, namely defence budget oversight and debate, defence budget transparency, external audit, defence policy, secret budgets, intelligence, and procurement mechanisms and oversight.
Bangladesh has secured 25% number in defence budget and oversight, 38% in maintaining transparency in budget, 50% in external auditing processes, 38% in superintendence and debate in defence policy, 13% in secret budget superintendence, 0% in superintendence in detective agencies, and 38% in defence procurement oversight.
Transparency International Bangladesh Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said: “It is time befitting to demand parliamentary accountability in defence and security agencies. Particularly, when so many purchases are taking place and people cannot even talk about this here. It will not bring any good for democracy.
“All democratic countries believe in the armed forces being under the surveillance of civil authorities. Lack of establishing such surveillance globally is alarming.”
The report says 85% countries lack proper superintendence on the defence policy and “there are 29 kinds of corruption risks associated with defence sector and the global cost of corruption in the defence sector is minimum USD 20bn per year.”
The report has merged 29 defence corruption risks into five categories: political, financial, personnel, procurement and operations.
It says parliaments and legislatures in almost half of these countries only have minimal formal mechanisms to scrutinise and debate defence policy.
The study suggests that presidential systems are at higher risk of corruption than non-presidential systems. The TI calls on parliamentarians to establish cross-party committees and groups of external experts to empower their scrutiny and inform their debate of defence matters.
