Transparency International's Yemen branch has called to double efforts to combat corruption and enhance transparency in Yemen on the occasion of international Anti-Corruption Day.

The team expresses its sorrow as the cases of corruption increase in Yemen, pointing out that corruption has devastating impacts on public potentials and economic growth and stressing that it also creates an unsecure investment environment and undermines opportunities of sustainable development.

The Yemeni team for transparency and integrity which includes the Yemeni Observatory for Human Rights, Information and Human Rights Rehabilitation Center, Women Journalists Without Chains, the Democratic School and the Social Democratic Forum stressed the importance of giving extensive powers for the Supreme Public Authority for Combating Corruption in order to be able to investigate cases of corruption, hold corrupt people accountable and bring them to justice according to mechanisms which guarantee the resumption of looted funds.

The Yemeni team for Transparency and Integrity calls for making legislative and institutional reforms regardingcombating corruption and achieving integrity in public and private sectors with the aim of sparing the country from corruption and collapse. It also demands to make constitutional amendments on the law of official accountability, the Yemeni constitution, the law of high office holders, the code of criminal procedures, the financial disclosure law, the Money Laundering Act, and the criminal code and relating codes.

The team also calls to implement reforms on the tax system in order to overcome all negative aspects of collecting tax and custom revenue and to limit tax evasion.

It also calls all states and all organizations to combat poverty in Yemen and provide technical and material support to administrative and financial reforms and work to spare Yemen from collapse.

It urged the Yemeni government to combat corruption, enhance transparency and accountability and spread the values of integrity and take the report of 2009 Transparency International into consideration.

It spelt out that the report put Yemen at the rank of 154, asking it to get its indications better in the next year. The team also declared about holding a symposium to discuss the report of Transparency International next Thursday, December 17, 2009.