No fanfare was heard in Ukraine on International Anti-Corruption Day, which this year was marked in the entire world under the slogan “Your ‘no’ counts.” In the Corruption Perceptions Index made by Transparency International, which measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption, our country scores 144th out of 176. And the fact that a year ago the anticorruption law was adopted and the anti-corruption strategy was approved by President Viktor Yanukovych does not have any effect on the level of corruption. Kyiv has recently hosted the Anti-Corruption Forum, which resumed that the abovementioned strategy, as well as the governmental program developed with an aim to implement it, is under threat of failure. “If the country is not in the first hundred,” the president of the Transparency International Ukraine Oleksii Khmara explained, “It means that corruption in this country is a huge problem, and running a business there will be 20 percent more expensive at the least. In its turn, it affects the foreign investments Ukraine needs so badly today. Khmara notes that every transnational corporation always takes into consideration the level of corruption in the country.”
And it is literally overwhelming. Not only is the business in Ukraine paying the corruption tax, but every family as well, because bribes increase the cost of the production and services, as well as the cost of housing. But even ordinary people frequently have to pay money from their budget to bribe the officials who refuse to properly perform their duties. According to the survey “I have bribed for my child,” Ukrainians annually spend 3 to 10 million hryvnias on bribes, for the most part in schools, kindergartens, and hospitals. Data to prove this have been collected by civic activists, who have accepted Ukrainians’ notices about bribes for eight months. The highest bribe mentioned was 8,000 hryvnias for a child to be enrolled in the first form of a capital’s lyceum, and the lowest – 50 hryvnias paid each month in a kindergarten “for humane treatment of a child.”
WHY IS THERE NO RESULT?
At the same time Ukraine, as it turns out, allots big money for fighting this social evil. The implementation of the Governmental Program of preventing and counteracting corruption for 2011-15 years will cost taxpayers 820 million hryvnias. What will be the feedback from this money? The complex monitoring of this program’s efficiency, published on Monday by the experts, shows that even if this money is not wasted, it won’t be used according to its intended purpose. Thus, Khmara notes, the “governmental bodies have enough possibilities to implement the program, however, they have practically no financial resources for efficient work.” According to the expert, “the average index of successful fulfillment of the program makes 2.7 points according to the 5-point scale.” The program does not envisage a kopek to be directly used for fighting corruption, experts note. Over 85 percent of the program’s budget (more than 803 million hryvnias) is planned to be spent on the needs of the Health Ministry (the development and implementation of electronic circulation of medical registration and digital signatures). Besides, 6.6 million hryvnias have been allotted for the system of electronic document circulation at the Ministry of Social Policy. “Will it have any effect on decrease of corruption level in the country?” the experts ask and reply that they highly doubt using this money will produce any result. And no money has been allotted at all for establishing multifunctional centers which would provide administrative services for physical and legal persons, implementation of a “single-window” system on the nationwide and local levels, implementation of the system of electronic purchases, as well as educational anti-corruption programs in educational establishments.
The program outlines that the Ministry of Justice together with General Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court will publish a scholarly-practical commentary to the Law “On the fundamentals of preventing and counteracting corruption” and corresponding clauses to the Criminal Code and Code on Administrative Offences, but to do so the abovementioned departments are supposed to use the money from their running costs. “It means that such important document probably won’t be published at all,” the head of the programs of the Ukrainian Institute of Public Policy Ivan Presniakov pointed out.
The failure of the program is caused by its pure elaboration and the fact that the society has not been involved in its creation. The document is full of mistakes, which actually make it impossible to succeed. So, it lists among the executors of the program the non-existing governmental body like “Military service in the cases of the armed forces.” (Clearly, the law-enforcement service should have been mentioned instead.) The title of the measure for which over 1.3 million hryvnias has been allotted is even more interesting: “Highlighting of anticorruption measures in the mass media… with an aim to form a negative attitude among the citizens to the manifestations of coordination and involve the citizens in the anticorruption activity.” “So, in what activity and on which conditions do the governmental bodies want to involve the media?” chairman of the board of the Anticorruption Council of Ukraine Bohdan Yakymiuk asks in indignation.
In their appeal to Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, the participants of the Anti-Corruption Forum ask him to show political will for implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy which should become a roadmap for overcoming corruption in Ukraine. The survey materials attached to this appeal mention that the abilities of the bodies that are supposed to execute this document are accessed at 3.3 points, whereas the level of fulfillment of the envisaged measures – at 2.6 points on a 5-point scale.
Why is political will needed? For example, Khmara says, the Cabinet of Ministers is the biggest violator of the Law “On the access to public information.” Khmara says that in 2013 the organization he is heading would like to change the priorities of the anti-corruption programs, because next year the situation will essentially aggravate because a rather scarce budget has been adopted in the country, and one-third of public purchase has been eliminated from the Government Purchase Program. He considers that in this situation the question of corruption will clearly be moved to the background, and its result will be even worse. “Armed conflicts will come next,” Khmara says, “Either the citizens will confront the power, or the officials will defend the remains of the budget with arms.”
VIP-KLEPTOMANIA
At the same time the newly-elected MP Serhii Kaplin is sure that the index published by Transparency International, is very moderate. According to the UDAR member, Ukraine scores even lower place in the total ranking. For the experts of the organization who held the monitoring did not take into account the index of the VIP-corruption in the country. And Kaplin is sure that it is terrible. “None of the experts or analysts can objectively assess the level of corruption in the Verkhovna Rada, for one. On the one hand, our parliament legally forbids the employers and business to pay wages in envelopes, these conditional wages are brought to Verkhovna Rada in briefcases,” the MP said. Kaplin admits that several days ago he personally was offered five million dollars for joining the majority, but he refused. Moreover, Kaplin says, one can only guess what the scale of corruption is on the level of the president, the Cabinet of Ministers, and their milieu. Therefore, the MP concludes, Ukraine can score by a factor of ten lower in Corruption Perceptions Index. “If we take the coefficient of our country’s potential and multiply it by the corruption index, we will see how many actual Ukrainian billions are accumulated on the accounts in other countries of the world,” the MP shared his own algorithm of determining the scales of corruption of the bureaucratic apparatus in Ukraine.
On his very first day in office Kaplin intends to submit several deputy inquiries. According to the parliamentarian, one of them refers to the situation concerning the Morshyn Mineral Water Plant. The UDAR party member says that about ten big companies in fact are suffering from this kind of problem. However, out of ethic reasons Kaplin refused to name them, admitting that those are big companies that employ up to thousand Ukrainians and pay several million hryvnias of taxes to the budget annually. “We are drafting amendments to the Tax Code,” Kaplin shared about the plans of the UDAR in parliament. He, for one, is going to work in the Committee for Fighting Organized Crime and Corruption.
