On Wednesday, May 23, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) together hosted an integrity workshop in Georgetown, Guyana. This joint workshop is the first in a series of events aimed at promoting integrity in CDB and IDB development financing interventions in each institution’s respective Borrowing Member Countries.

The objective of the CDB-IDB event was to raise awareness among workshop participants of the multilateral development banks’ (MDBs) integrity frameworks and improve their capacity to manage risk in development-financed activities, including project procurement. Officials from various Government of Guyana agencies and ministries attended the workshop.

Both MDBs take a collaborative approach to dealing with integrity issues that may arise in projects they finance, and the workshop was intended to raise awareness about the role of CDB’s Office of Integrity, Compliance and Accountability (ICA) and the IDB’s Office of Institutional Integrity (OII). ICA is mandated to prevent and investigate fraud and corruption in the Bank’s activities and projects. CDB works to prevent, investigate and sanction violations of its policies and procedures, particularly those that are procurement-related.

The IDB’s Office of Institutional Integrity is an independent office of the IDB Group, which was created to investigate and prevent Prohibited Practices in IDB Group-financed activities. OII works closely with the IDB’s Country Office in Guyana to manage integrity risks in IDB-financed operations. OII is part of the IDB Group’s Sanctions System in order to address allegations of corruption and other prohibited practices in IDB Group-financed activities. The IDB Group requires that all participants in the activities it finances adhere to the highest standards of ethics and report to the IDB all suspected acts of Prohibited Practices they know of or become aware of during the procurement processes or contract implementation. As part of its outreach efforts in Guyana, OII staff met with leaders of the Guyanese business community on May 23rd. 

Dr. Toussant Boyce, Head of ICA, CDB emphasised, “At CDB, we take a proactive approach to dealing with fraud, corruption or any other corrosive practices that may arise during implementation of our projects. We also take seriously any allegations of environmental and social harm allegedly caused by projects we finance and encourage persons to report any known or suspected violations to the Bank.”

He further noted, “Today, CDB and the IDB are raising awareness among our key stakeholders in Guyana about the applicable integrity frameworks, mitigation of risks throughout the project cycle and about the investigation and sanction of wrongdoers.”

Sophie Makonnen, the IDB’s Country Representative in Guyana stated, “This series of IDB-CDB integrity workshops will help to enhance public awareness of our multilateral institutions’ unwavering commitment to integrity, transparency, and accountability in our respective lending programs in Guyana.  Integrity is absolutely central to the IDB Group’s mission of promoting development throughout its member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

To know more about the work of the IDB’s Office of Institutional Integrity, please go to this link: https://www.iadb.org/en/about-us/departments/oii

To read the IDB’s “Office of Institutional Integrity and Sanctions System: Annual Report for 2016” please go to this link: https://publications.iadb.org/handle/11319/8434