Working visit to South America
From 21 to 28 January, Mr. Thomas Stelzer, Dean and Executive Secretary of IACA, paid a working visit to Chile, Ecuador, and Peru to strengthen relations with Latin America and to promote IACA’s new academic programme in Spanish - Máster en Estudios Anticorrupción y Compliance (MACC) .
IACA strives to make its educational and training opportunities more accessible, financially, geographically, and linguistically. The Academy is enhancing its scholarship system, developing more online activities, and has started to deliver various educational activities in languages other than English.
During the trip, Mr. Stelzer met with various government officials, as well as representatives of the private sector and academia. Discussions focused on enhancing cooperation between the Academy and stakeholders in Latin America. In particular, concrete ways to expand the outreach of IACA’s capacity-building programmes and technical assistance activities were explored, including in the context of the efforts in the region to achieve the goals set out in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
In Chile, Mr. Stelzer met with Ms. Carolina Valdivia, Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Ambassador Gloria Navarrete, Secretary General for Foreign Policy of Chile; Mr. Jorge Bermúdez, Comptroller General of the Republic; Ms. Gloria de la Fuente González, President of the Council for Transparency; Mr. Pablo Sepúlveda, Executive Secretary of the Public Integrity and Transparency Commission; Mr. Eugenio Rebolledo, Auditor General of the Internal Government Auditing Council and Chile's Expert to the Follow-up Mechanism of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC); Mr. Claudio Orrego, Regional Governor of Santiago and; Mr. Hernán Fernández, Deputy Director of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Unit (UNAC) of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Mr. Stelzer travelled next to Ecuador, where he met with Mr. Carlos Alberto Riofrío González, Comptroller General of the State; Ms. Maria Sara Jijón Calderón, the General Director of the National Public Procurement Service; Mr. Luis Verdesoto, Presidential Adviser in the fight against corruption; Mr. Fabian Pozo, Legal Secretary of the Office of the President of the Republic; Mr. Felipe Ribadeneira, Executive President of the Ecuatorian Business Committee; Mr. Diego Quiroga, Rector of Universidad San Francisco de Quito and; the team Compliance Ecuador led by Mr. Santiago Reyes.
Finally, in Peru, Mr. Stelzer held meetings with the Chief of Cabinet, Ms. Mirtha Vásquez Chuquilin; the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Avelino Guillén Jauregui; and the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Mr. Aníbal Torres Vásquez; Ambassador Ana Rosa Valdivieso Santa María, Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Nelson Shack Yalta, Comptroller General of the Republic; , and Ms. Janeyri Elizabeth Boyer Cabrera, Executive President of the National Civil Service Authority (SERVIR) and; Mr. Walter Gutierrez Camacho, Ombudsman.
Furthermore, on 27 January, Mr. Stelzer signed on behalf of IACA a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Superintendence of Migration of Peru represented by its head, Ms. Martha Cecilia Silvestre Casas. The MoU sets the overall framework for closer cooperation in fighting and preventing corruption. Forms of cooperation under the MoU may include, inter alia, joint initiatives aimed at preventing and combating corruption, convening meetings, information sharing, promoting capacity, research projects, and other activities in the areas of anti-corruption and compliance.
