The lull in credits for Ukraine from international organizations has been linked with the donor countries expectations that Ukraine would improve its anti-corruption track record, thus saving Western money from being embezzled, World Bank anti-corruption assistance group director Daniel Kauffman recently told journalists. At the same time, he continued, WB representatives “do not see any significant drop in the rate of corruption; on the contrary, it has increased.” What, then, are the roots of corruption and what are the effective ways of curbing it?
Oleksandr DERHACHOV, Editor-in-Chief, Political Thought:
For many years now, international financial and industrial circles have been pointing their finger at Ukraine, accusing it of rampant corruption and basing their criticism on the first-hand experience of Western investors in Ukraine. True, the personal experience of businesspeople is something to be trusted, despite all the official verbiage about the rate of malfeasance. Indeed, one can say that some steps have been taken on the official level to combat corruption in Ukraine. This certainly creates a new environment, which regrettably has been damaged by the wrongdoing of thousands of officials. There is little progress here, as the administrative reform has yeilded no positive results and the relations between entrepreneurs and officials underwent no change. In addition, there are doubts that the executive has sufficient political will to take effective steps to fight corruption in the state sector. Understandably, this is a time-consuming process and few really believe that corruption will be reduced in the immediate future. Corruption could be rooted out only if we come to the level of the European standards for conducting business and political processes, if Ukrainians make their lives transparent.
Yuri PRYVALOV, Director, Center for Social Evaluation and Forecasting:
Gauging the level of corruption, its ups and downs, is a complex procedure and strangely enough a very subjective one in that it is not very accurate. The rate of corruption in any country is based on a number of factors:
— the size and the amounts of bribes per one average bureaucrat (official) and
— the degree of unofficial control this official has over financial and economic processes which he/she can use for personal or corporate gain.
In both cases, the quantitative parameters of corruption can be established by describing each specific case of wrongdoing. Let me stress this: Each case. This casts some doubt on the frequently released ratings of corruption where Ukraine always takes a leading place. Serious talk on corruption should necessarily entail the analysis of its roots in any specific country. For Ukraine, such major causes of corruption are: first, the emergence of private property, a lengthy process which gave birth to a host of economic, legal, and cultural problems.
For Ukraine in particular, we see, on the one hand, the transfer of property de facto and de jure from the state into corporate hands and, on the other hand the creation of a system of civilized utilization in terms of the management and use of this property.
With rare exceptions, an official should not control, let alone possess, property.
Today’s official purposefully or unconsciously tends to combine the controlling (governing) function of which he is an actor with his own personal enrichment. Secondly, the transformation of the totalitarian legislative base into a democratic one has resulted in its almost absolute opacity and arbitrary enforcement of the laws by officials.
Most officials, not to mention common people, can hardly find their way through the existing legislation. The lack of transparency in this area is a feeding ground for corruption. Thirdly, banal as it may sound, in the system of government there is no younger generation of patriotically-minded bureaucrats (in its modern, civilized meaning). In other words, an official must have a fitting salary in order not to steal and not to bite chunks off the public pie.
Ihor ZHDANOV, director of political and legal problems, Ukrainian Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Research:
Ukrainians really believe that corruption is rampant in this country, as evidenced by the latest surveys carried out by our center. Thus, a mere 2% of those polled think that no one in Ukraine takes bribes. The majority takes the opposite view, saying that Ukrainians are forced to bribe officials even when they want to exercise their legal rights. According to statistical reports, from 1992 through 1999 the number of reported cases of bribe-taking by officials has grown 2.6 times. This figure understandably represents only the tip of the iceberg. All this is detrimental to Ukraine’s economy and creates mistrust for officials among Ukrainian citizens.
Such high rates of corruption in Ukraine are caused by the fact that many functions of government continue to remain vulnerable to bribes. With the large number of certificates, permits and licenses that Ukrainians have to apply for, the state retains too many regulatory functions which breed malfeasance. In addition, the procedures for decision- making are not transparent to the common people. The transparency of tenders and competitions also leaves much to be desired. Given such conditions, officials can act arbitrarily. The laws of Ukraine do not impose adequate criminal liability for corrupt actions. In our opinion, the main ways of stamping out corruption are to enact a code for officials, which would list the goals and rules of the government service, to clarify governmental procedures pertaining to specific situations, to introduce reports by the head of the government on the allocation of foreign loans extended against guarantees by the Ukrainian state. Local officials should have to account for their performance through the mass media. Officials should have to declare presents, the value of which exceeds the equivalent of $10. These measures would curtail their chances for illegal enrichment. We also suggest that lists of officials which have been convicted for wrongdoing be published by mass media. Such officials should be barred for life from holding government office.
INCIDENTALLY
According to Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s press center, some mass media outlets, citing foreign news agencies, have been involved in the circulation of untrue information on the Ukrainian government’s excessive corruption, on the growing rate of economic crime, including organized crime, which wards off investors and distorts Ukraine’s image, both inside the country and abroad. The Prosecutor General’s Office categorically denies such allegations, arguing that the growing number of reported corruption points to the increased activity of law-enforcement agencies in this area, rather than being proof of more corruption, the press service report stresses. This is evidenced by the fact that 898 officials were taken to court in 1998, of them 93% for crimes committed in the same year, while 1,155 officials were convicted in the nine months of 2000, of this 43% for crimes committed since 1995. The criminal charges for high-profile crimes committed by Lazarenko, Ahafonov, Zherdytsky, Tymoshenko, Falkovych, owners of Top Service Ltd., etc. also relate to crimes committed much earlier, starting from 1993 and not in recent years.
Reprimands and fines were imposed on 1,190 officials in 1999 under the anti-corruption law, with 1,548 officials punished for the first six months of 2000 alone. As stated in the Prosecutor General’s press center report, any assessments of Ukraine’s level of corruption cannot be based on merely quantitative indicators, as the existing anti-corruption law has a number of flaws, failing to provide a definition of corruption and specify the persons to which the law applies.
As a result, many persons who cannot be regarded as corrupt are considered by the law as such. For instance, an official in the Zaporizhzhia oblast was convicted on a corruption charge for having taken two packages of juice without paying for them. In Prosecutor General’s view, the negative image of Ukraine is also due to the shameful preoccupation of law-enforcement agencies with quantitative indicators to confirm their anti-corruption efforts. Such practices, seemingly correct, “essentially come down to humiliation.”
This leads to the conclusion that most of those accused have been caught for little things, at the expense of which a view is created of the complete criminalization of our society, including its economy. In the last three or four year the total number of those brought to account on minor charges the vast majority, 62% have been for minor infractions.
All this has led to the inclusion of ill-considered crime statistics contributing to the myth of rampant corruption in Ukraine, involving both government and the economy. Incidentally, the share of petty corruption in yearly totals for the last three to four years has remained at 62%.
