The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has announced measures designed to improve Egypt’s reputation bribery, according to Standard Club's release. The SCA has sent a letter to International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) policy director Georgia Spencer-Rowland, stating that, in line with Egypt’s national anti-corruption strategy, all shipping companies transiting the canal should refuse to hand out any type of facilitation payments. The same letter has been sent to local shipping agencies. The SCA said that it had adopted the use of digital transactions to avoid bribery, and claimed that it was investigating reported cases of corruption.
Last month, the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) released the results from 10 years of collecting data on demands in maritime trade. The Suez Canal came out with the worst record in the global corruption table with a total of 1795 reported incidents since 2014. Egyptian Ports featured three times within the top 10 hot spots by total incidents in the same period, Including Alexandria (1001 incidents) and Port Said (577 Incidents).
MACN operates efficiently across industry segments through a wide range of collective actions in high-risk jurisdictions, allowing members to share insights for the implementation of anti-corruption compliance programs on an industry-specific level.