Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption efforts are reflected in the ongoing reforms within the Kingdom’s institutions, which started with the Council of Ministers’ approval to organize the anti-corruption commission, strengthen transparency and uproot financial and administrative corruption in all its forms.
The Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) revealed a number of criminal cases related to corruption, based on Saudi Arabia’s awareness of its impact and danger at the economic, social, security and cultural levels.
The Kingdom has provided support to the bodies and committees concerned with combating corruption, and enacted a number of legislation that play an important role in this regard.
A higher committee was launched by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz in 2017. The committee was entrusted with fighting corruption, by registering violations, crimes, persons and entities involved in public corruption cases, in addition to investigating and issuing arrest warrants, travel bans, in addition to disclosing and freezing accounts and others.
In fighting financial and administrative corruption, Nazaha targets two objectives: prevention and cure.
The preventive aspect includes bridging the systemic gaps that lead to the occurrence of corruption, following-up financial disclosures, monitoring indicators of corruption, conducting studies and research in the field and raising awareness, in addition to launching the electronic control center.
As for the curative aspect, it works on four main tasks, mainly: Investigating financial and administrative corruption in public contracts, receiving reports about financial and administrative violations and abuses involving corruption, monitoring the implementation of regulations criminalizing financial and administrative corruption, in addition to following up the execution of orders and instructions pertaining to public affairs and the citizens’ interests.
This year, Saudi Arabia achieved the highest levels of compliance with the 40 recommendations on combating money laundering and the nine recommendations on combating terrorism financing, based on the report of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Financial Action Task Force for the Middle East and North Africa (MENAFATF).