Does Taiwan suffer from high levels of corruption? Numerous reports on corruption within government agencies have appeared over the last year or two.

Last July, three High Court judges and a Ban-qiao District Court prosecutor solicited an NT$8 million bribe from former legislator Ho Chih-hui. The four overturned Ho's 19-year sentence for his involvement in the Tong-luo Science Park development scandal, declaring him not guilty of receiving kickbacks. The charges against the judges and prosecutor resulted in jail time for more individuals than in any previous ethics case.

In March of this year, news broke that administrators and doctors at several Department of Health hospitals were suspected of taking kickbacks ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of NT dollars from pharmaceuticals and medical device manufacturers. Collusion and bid rigging helped firms with good relationships to the hospitals win medical device contracts worth tens of millions of NT dollars. The amount of "black gold" discovered to be pouring through the white corridors of our hospitals was simply staggering.

According to the Global Corruption Report, corruption cost businesses billions of US dollars worldwide over the last two years, while also damaging employee morale and customers' faith in businesses. The photo was taken at a 2010 Ministry of Finance presentation on corporate integrity.

Transparency International publishes a Corruption Perceptions Index, rating and ranking the nations of the world every year. Taiwan's 2010 score of 5.8 on the 10-point scale (higher numbers represent greater integrity) ranked it 33rd in the world, versus 37th in 2009.

In addition to providing an overall score, the organization asks the public of each nation to rate institutional corruption in their own countries on a scale of 1 (the cleanest) to 5 (the most corrupt). Taiwan public scored the police at 3.9, indicating a perception of severe corruption. The police were the most egregious offenders, followed by the legislature, civil servants, and the political parties. That compares to the 2004-2006 survey, where our political parties and legislators took "top honors." (No survey was conducted in 2007-2009.)

According to the Ministry of Justice, it investigated and prosecuted 5,645 corruption cases between the government's July 2000 rollout of its campaign against "black gold" and March 2011. Those cases involved NT$34.17 billion in illicit payments and brought 15,976 people to trial. More than half of the dirty money the government investigates every year goes to civil servants (including elected representatives).

Some 1,866 cases involved central-government agencies. The Ministry of the Interior (MOI), which accounted for 536 of those, was the most troubled ministry, followed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).

As a mainland Chinese saying puts it: "Bribe takers are always people with power and control over the coffers."

Why is it that those in power and those interested in money are so readily corruptible?

Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu notes that the MOI has jurisdiction over the police and the Construction and Planning Agency, which issues construction licenses, while the MOTC oversees bidding on many major projects. In other words, the key operations of these ministries involve a great deal of interaction with society at large, providing unethical public servants with opportunities for graft. The prosecutorial apparatus of the MOJ, meanwhile, is charged with bringing cases involving the public to trial, which provides opportunities for unethical individuals to use their standing as prosecutors to extort money. "We're all stigmatized by the actions of a few bad eggs."

A still larger case came to light in 2008 after the handover of presidential power, when members of the former president's family were charged for their involvement in numerous corruption cases. The case, the first time in the history of the Republic of China in which a national leader was convicted of taking bribes, was enormously detrimental to Taiwan's national image.

President Ma Ying-jeou made cleaning up corruption a major policy focus following his inauguration. He stressed that judges, prosecutors, and police are our last line of defense in the pursuit of social justice. "This line of defense cannot crumble," said the president. "If the government is to justify its own existence, it must take more effective action against corruption."

The president decided to start by establishing an agency dedicated to rooting out corruption.

The establishment of an independent anti-corruption body wasn't a new idea.

Former KMT legislator Jaw Shau-kong proposed the formation of an anti-corruption bureau to the Legislative Yuan as early as 1987, persuading 102 fellow legislators to cosponsor his bill. Six years later, Jaw made a similar proposal as head of the New Party, but this time attracted only 23 cosponsors. During the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000, the establishment of such a body was a mainstream position.

When the DPP took over the presidency in 2000, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan pushed hard for the formation of such an agency, drafting organizational proposals and memoranda, but the KMT and the People First Party opposed his efforts. It wasn't that the two parties were pro-corruption, but that the MOJ's Investigation Bureau (IB) was worried about power being placed in hands other than its own and about institutional overlap.

More than 20 years of wrangling from all sides finally came to an end this year with the passage of a statute establishing the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA). The ACA may be late to the party, but expectations are nonetheless running high. On the other hand, the public has doubts about the establishment of the ACA within the MOJ, fearing that it won't have sufficient standing or independence.

Minister Tseng argues that given that prosecutors play a central role in investigations under our nation's criminal justice system, placing the ACA under the Office of the President, directly under the Executive Yuan, or under the Control Yuan would have reduced their efficiency and created chaos within the system.

"The division of labor between the ACA and the Investigation Bureau will create a sort of 'crossfire,' says Tseng. "Their objective is the same: to expose hidden corruption. But, to avoid diluting manpower resources, the ACA will focus primarily on anti-corruption and corruption-prevention communications, and secondarily on eliminating corruption. Moreover, it will be limited to investigating corruption within governmental organs. Eliminating corruption is, along with investigating national security and economic crimes, just one of the IB's many responsibilities." Tseng says that the IB, which employs 3,000 people, is well staffed and well equipped, but that the two agencies will pursue their cases in different fashions. The anti-corruption agency will have prosecutors on staff and be able to direct police and the IB. It will be highly mobile and able to quickly lay hands on evidence. The hope is that the agency will be able to increase the conviction rate in corruption cases to 70% from its current level of 65%.

Establishing the anti-corruption agency is only the first step towards cleaning up corruption. The real challenges will be having the courage and determination to prosecute big cases and building public trust in the authorities.

Hong Kong's economy grew rapidly in the 1960s, driven by manufacturing, but public services such as education, housing, and medical care failed to keep pace with citizens' needs. In those days, individuals seeking public housing, admission into schools, or to utilize fire and emergency services had no choice but to bribe civil servants. In some instances, firemen went so far as to demand payment before putting out fires.

Fed up, residents eventually brought the power of public opinion to bear. Hong Kong established the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974, giving it broad powers and placing it under the direct control of the territory's governor, at that time Baron MacLehose. ICAC acted swiftly, targeting the police force first. Frightened, police officers took to the streets for demonstrations in 1977, triggering a conflict with the commission that was not resolved until the governor offered officers amnesty. In Hong Kong, cleaning up entrenched corruption was no cakewalk.

Hong Kong Democratic Party legislator Emily Lau has written that the foundations of the success of Hong Kong's anti-corruption efforts were ICAC, the independent judiciary, the people's respect for the law, and constant public education. Nowadays, the city's 7 million residents provide ICAC with annual funding of some HK$800 million (roughly NT$3.2 billion). The commission employs some 1,300 persons charged with investigating bank statements, and seizing and examining personal and business records. ICAC also has the power to demand detailed accounts of suspects' assets, income, and expenditures. Given Taiwan's larger size and population, and its more complex politics, we shouldn't skimp on our own agency's budget.

ICAC's internal control systems are stringent out of concern that the body's power will corrupt its own employees. As a result, fewer than three of its 1,300 workers are prosecuted each year on corruption -charges.

Corruption has to be eliminated at the source, which means reducing opportunities for people to offer bribes and for officials to accept them.

In recent years, our executive and legislature have created legislation intended to shine a light on the actions of public servants. These laws have included the Lobbying Act, the Political Donations Act, and the Act on Property-Declaration by Public Servants. But other regulations have yet to be brought fully online. For example, the Anti-Corruption Statute, passed in April 2009, includes a provision on "assets of unclear origin," but officials have yet to prosecute anyone on this charge.

Tseng says that the provisions on "assets of unclear origin" are far too stringent, requiring for a conviction that suspects have already been investigated for taking bribes. But if a suspect has already been charged with corruption, for which the sentence is a minimum of five years, adding on the assets charge, which carries a sentence of just three years, seems superfluous. "We are considering expanding the provisions of the article on assets of unclear origin so that we can utilize it when a civil servant's assets have expanded rapidly in a given period of time, and the civil servant cannot explain why."

A provision is also to be added to the Anti-Corruption Statute to criminalize the giving of bribes that don't induce violations of professional conduct. "Prior to this, giving a red envelope [to an official merely to encourage them to perform their normal duties] wasn't an issue," says Tseng. "But in the future it will constitute a crime. We're attacking 'red envelope' culture from both sides."

"Giving red envelopes without inducing violations of professional conduct" refers to practices such as giving gifts to encourage an official to act within the law to expedite the approval of a project. Even if the official in question doesn't take the money, its offer will constitute a crime.

The government has made a commitment to clean up corruption. For its part, the public has no need to and should not give red envelopes. Corruption disrupts market operations and distorts the distribution of resources, inflicting profound harm on our economy and our society. In recent years, the public has come to expect better. Its attitude today is: "We've given you the power. We expect integrity in return."