Chairperson, Members of the Platform, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. May I thank the Jamaica Customs Agency for this invitation to share in your commemoration of International Anti-Corruption day 2018. Allow me to congratulate the JCA for developing this tradition of an annual commemoration of International Anti-Corruption Day, a celebration in which countries all over the world partake. Justifiably so, because countries big and small, rich and poor, north, south, east and west suffer along with Jamaica and the Jamaican people from corruption, a corruption in which the United Nations estimates that one trillion dollars is paid in bribes to public officials everywhere, including Jamaica, and that 2.6 trillion dollars is stolen from the global economy according to the United Nations again. No wonder the nations of the world agreed in 2015 that “sustainable development” is not attainable without more effective combat of bribery and corruption….
