Moscow News
www.MN.Ru
January 11-17, 2006
Inefficient Governance Breeds Corruption - Think Tank
By Natalya Alyakrinskaya
Russia remains one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, according to a recent report published by Transparency International, a non-governmental organization devoted to combating corruption. It has also been borne out by a comprehensive survey of Russian corruption conducted by the Indem foundation. Indem President Georgy Satarov reviews the "corruption" results of 2005
What has been the most dramatic discovery in the past year?
As far as I am concerned, the past year began with a comprehensive survey based on a countrywide sample of Russians, including business people. Because we conducted a similar survey in 2001, the latest study helped us evaluate corruption dynamics. The first shock came when we saw the extent to which corruption had grown in the business sphere. The relative average size of a bribe has grown approximately seven to eight times, while the gross income of a civil servant has grown at least about four times. This means it has been growing at a rate four times faster than economic growth. Our findings were subsequently corroborated by various sources - other studies and surveys, media reports, and even statements and comments by high ranking government officials.
Does this mean that 2005 saw an unprecedented rise in corruption?
Certainly not. It has occurred during the past five years. It is simply that last year a certain psychological barrier was crossed - a barrier that had existed for many people who for various reasons approved of the incumbent political regime. In other words, their expectations were dashed.
A person always has a certain ideal model in his head, but then there is also reality, or rather signals and manifestations of reality. An individual can ignore them if they contradict his ideal model. But if there are too many of them, the model begins to crumble. The impression was that this "seeing the light" thing finally happened in 2005 - not only in Russia. I believe that international organizations monitoring the situation in Russia had for a long time ignored the ongoing changes, giving Russia higher grades than it deserved. In 2005, Transparency International all of a sudden brought Russia more than 30 spots down. Clearly, this did not result from some instant rise in the level of corruption in Russia but from the breach of that barrier between a rosy-colored model of reality and reality itself.
According to Transparency International ratings, Russia is in the same league as Costa Rica, Gabon, and Nepal. What is the reason for this?
Russia has long been in this company. Of course, the Russian economy is a little larger and a little richer, but we do not have to thank our ruling authorities for that. After all, corruption is a manifestation of the inefficiency of governance on all levels. Therefore, Russian government officials are just as inefficient as in the aforementioned countries. But Russian officials control such flows of oil, timber, and arms - none of which they created with their own hands, I will have to add - that these countries could not even dream about. Yes, the average living standards in Russia are higher. But at the same time, official statistics on social (property) stratification have not been released for several years in succession. The public is not being told that there are almost 100,000 dollar-millionaires and dozens of dollar-billionaires in Russia. Russians are not being told that growth in average living standards has been achieved at the expense of 5% of the richest individuals. Suffice it to travel outside the Rublevka Highway to see that Russia does not in fact differ from Costa Rica.
At the same time, Transparency International comes to the conclusion that the level of corruption in neighboring Estonia and Kazakhstan has declined considerably. Does this mean that these countries know how to combat corruption?
Estonia has been implementing serious anti-corruption measures. Nazarbaev [president of Kazakhstan] is also striving to improve governance, which is already producing results. Russia has something to learn from them. Russia has the most rampant and "successful" forms of embezzlement - state monopolies. State companies exist throughout the world - in New Zealand, the UK, and the Americas. But everywhere (other than in Russia) they are managed differently. Nowhere in the world can a state or government official be a member of a corporate governing board. Not so in Russia. In the rest of the world, such companies are subject to multi-tiered control and are absolutely transparent. In Russia, the opposite is true - i.e., fantastic inefficiency and endemic theft. Gazprom, a state-controlled natural gas giant, only stays afloat due to tax breaks. It is the Russian people who feed Gazprom, not vice versa. But the Russian people are not being told about this. And this is yet another manifestation of corruption.
You have once said that the level of day-to-day corruption in the West is incomparably lower than in Russia and that it is all but impossible to offer a bribe to a policeman in the United States. Does this have anything to do with the level of public consciousness?
The level of consciousness did not evolve overnight, but over a very long time, and this applies both to policemen and ordinary citizens. One hundred years ago, U.S. policemen would accept a bribe of any size and in any form from anyone. This is the result of target-oriented, focused, painstaking and very serious work that could also be done in Russia. "Russian" is not synonymous to "corrupt." Corruption is not in our genes.
Some time ago, a draft law on combating corruption failed to receive enough support in the State Duma. As a result, Russian legislation does not provide a definition of corruption as a concept. Does Russia really need such a law?
There is no such concept as "love" in Russian legislation, but there is the institution of marriage. So it is not a matter of concepts or definitions. The Russian Criminal Law Code has such concepts as "bribe" and "abuse of office." But when a Russian state or government official takes a bribe, the following "law" applies: The larger the bribe, the less likely this official will be prosecuted. Even if he is, he will at best be given a suspended sentence. This is common practice in Russia. Only some police lieutenant may be sent to prison, but never a big-time corrupt official. So when someone says that laws are paramount, he is being disingenuous. Russia has enough laws to punish corrupt officials, but the problem is that these laws are often applied by these selfsame officials.
You say that corruption is a product of inefficient governance. Could Russia see a change for the better in the foreseeable future?
Not before 2008, no. For the situation to change, the political regime has to change first. This does not mean that corruption will disappear immediately after the 2008 presidential election. But Russia might get a chance. And of course this does not depend only and not so much on the ruling authorities. Our survey has shown that Russians today are less willing to offer bribes than they were five years ago. And whereas earlier there was much speculation to the effect that those offering a bribe were as guilty of corruption as those accepting it, today this thesis is not backed up with facts.
MN File
According to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index 2005, almost one-half of 159 countries included in the survey got less than 3 points on a 10-point scale, which points to a very high level of corruption. Corruption is the highest in the world's poorest countries - Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, and Haiti. Corruption has grown in Costa Rica, Gabon, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Russia, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. Of the 159 countries included in the survey, Russia took the 126th spot in 2005. Russia's ranking in an international survey on corruption has fallen in 2005 to its lowest level in four years. The survey gives Russia the same rating as Albania, Niger and Sierra-Leone.
On the survey's corruption perception index, Russia's ranking fell to 2.4 points, a drop of 0.4 on the 2004 figure. At the same time during the past year, the level of corruption has declined in Estonia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Qatar, Taiwan, and Turkey. Berlin-based Transparency International's study is based on 16 different polls from 10 independent institutions, including Freedom House, The Economist Intelligence Unit and the World Markets Research Center.
According to the Indem foundation, the "daily corruption" market (the amount of money paid by Russians in bribes throughout a year) is at $3 billion. During the last four years, the incidence of corruption in Russia has grown from 26 percent to 35 percent. But at the same time the Russians' readiness to offer bribes has declined considerably - from 75 percent to 53 percent. The only exception are military draft and enlistment offices, where the level of corruption has grown by 70 percent. This is attributed to both the ongoing war in Chechnya and the unfavorable situation in the Russian Armed Forces. The average size of bribe at a military draft and enlistment office has increased fivefold - from 3,250 rubles to 15,000 rubles, while the aggregate volume of corruption in this sphere has grown from $12.7 million to $354 million. The runners-up in the level of corruption are public schools (corruption risk growth of more than 200 percent) and land acquisition agencies (a growth of almost 170 percent). The level of corruption is the lowest in the pension, employment, housing maintenance, and housing registration spheres.