HomeReportsInvestment Climate Statements...Custom Report - 06542134e4 hide Investment Climate Statements Custom Report Excerpts: Uruguay Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs Sort by Country Sort by Section In this section / Uruguay 9. Corruption Uruguay 9. Corruption Transparency International’s 2020 edition of the Corruption Perception Index ranked Uruguay as having the lowest levels of perceived corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the second most transparent in the Western Hemisphere. Overall, U.S. firms have not identified corruption as an obstacle to investment. Uruguay has laws to prevent bribery and other corrupt practices (No. 17,060), and the acceptance of a bribe is a felony under Uruguay’s penal code. The government neither encourages nor discourages private companies to establish internal codes of conduct. The Transparency and Public Ethics Board (JUTEP by its Spanish acronym) is the government office responsible for dealing with public sector corruption. Traditionally a low-profile office and still with a limited scope, it gained relevance as a result of a case that ended in the resignation of Uruguay´s Vice-President in 2017. Since then, JUTEP has played a role in denouncing alleged nepotism in the public sector. There are no major NGOs involved in investigating corruption. A 2017 law (No. 19,574) set an integral framework against money laundering and terrorism finance, brought Uruguay into compliance with OECD and UN norms, and included corruption as a predicate crime. Uruguay signed and ratified the UN’s Anticorruption Convention. It is not a member of the OECD and therefore is not party to the OECD’s Convention on Combating Bribery. Resources to Report Corruption Government agency responsible for combating corruption: Junta de Transparencia y Ética Publica President Susana Signorino Barbat Address: Rincon 528, 8th floor, ZC 11000 Tel: (598) 2917 0407 E-mail: secretaria@jutep.gub.uy https://www.gub.uy/junta-transparencia-etica-publica/institucional/estructura-del-organismo/junta-transparencia-etica-publica Local branch of Transparency International: http://www.uruguaytransparente.uy Edit Your Custom Report