The Dominican Republic ratified the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption (IACAC) on June 2, 1999. It is a State Party to the Follow-Up Mechanism for the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC) since June 4, 2001. The country also signed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) on December 10, 2003, and subsequently ratified it on October 26, 2006. Accordingly, the Dominican Republic has undergone five rounds of review under MESICIC, and one round of review under the UNCAC review mechanism.

The Dominican Republic’s record in implementing its commitments to IACAC and UNCAC exhibits a number of failures and few successes, with over a third of all measures committed to found to be in progress. With an overall score of 55.7, the measures adopted place the country in the lower level of compliance with international norms—but not far from countries at the middle point—surrounded by Trinidad and Tobago (51.1), El Salvador (51.5), Belize (58.1), and Haiti (58.2). Progress in implementation is unequally distributed, while no measure in the preventive section is found to be fully or partially implemented, all fully unimplemented measures pertain to criminalization and law enforcement. The country’s efforts to implement its international commitments are mostly found within the section of international cooperation rather than across the sections of prevention and criminalization, where they are generally lacking.

The prevention of corruption is significantly deficient, classified as “core-deficient” by its average score of 41.6. The majority of measures are found to be deficient, including transparency in government contracting (29.7), the state of oversight bodies (34.4), and standards of conduct (35.9), among others. In fact, with the exceptions of the enforcement of standards of conduct and the training of public officials—both of which are in progress—all key measures within this section are considered to be deficient. On the positive side, the country’s assessment does not reveal any commitment pertaining to the prevention of corruption to be fully missing.

In terms of criminalization and law enforcement, the Dominican Republic shows only slightly better results than those regarding prevention. Significant deficiencies remain, with the majority of measures within this section classified as core-deficient or not implemented. Some measures in progress are given a score above 50, including those pertaining to the active bribery of foreign officials (57.8), embezzlement in the public sector (71.9), and the liability of legal persons (71.9). Furthermore, the country is found to have successfully implemented three commitments, among them the criminalization of embezzlement in the private sector. However, significant measures are found completely lacking—the criminalization of illicit enrichment, the illicit acquisition of a benefit (i.e., influence trading), the passive bribery of foreign officials, and bribery in the private sector—or given deficient scores, including those pertaining to active and passive bribery in the public sector and the abuse of functions.

Among the severe problems identified in connection with criminalization and law enforcement, the country’s limited jurisdiction over the offenses covered by the conventions deserves special attention, as the Dominican Republic has not established jurisdiction over offenses committed by a national or when the offender is present in its territory and it does not extradite them. On the other hand, and in contrast to those measures related to prevention and criminalization, the Dominican Republic’s active implementation of its commitments regarding international cooperation results in an average section score of 81.4, with two thirds of all of measures here receiving an “implemented” score of various degrees.