RULE OF LAW

New Zealand is one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Prevention of corruption is strongly safeguarded by such independent institutions as the auditor general and the Office of the Ombudsmen. In addition, New Zealand has ratified all relevant international anti-bribery conventions of the OECD and the United Nations. All available indices confirm that New Zealand scores particularly high regarding corruption prevention, including in the private sector.

Sweden is, comparatively, one of the countries with the lowest corruption. Furthermore, trust in the institutions of the Swedish democracy and in Swedish administration is high by any international comparison. The very few cases of alleged corruption that have surfaced over the past couple of years have mainly occurred at the local government level. The low frequency of corruption may simply not be tempting, given the size of the public sector and the fairly extensive autonomy of civil servants. Despite this, however, the rule of law remains still strong and there have been very few cases of actual or alleged corruption.

Canada ranks very high on the extent to which public officeholders are prevented from abusing their position for private interests. To be sure, there have been many examples in recent Canadian history in which officeholders and their associates have benefited from access to influence. In the Chretien era, these include the sponsorship scandal in Quebec, which resulted in the Gomery Commission, and the Karlheinz Schreiber affair, in which CAD 200,000 in cash was delivered to recently retired Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, with no obvious services offered in return. But overall, mechanisms are currently in place that effectively prevent public officeholders from abusing their positions. These mechanisms include: the auditing of state spending; the strict regulation of party financing; accountability provisions for officeholders including asset declarations, conflict of interest rules, and codes of conduct; transparent public procurement systems; and effective prosecution of corruption.
Recently, a deal has been struck to give the Office of the Auditor General the authority to audit the books of the Parliament, including the expenses of members of the House of Commons and the Senate.

In Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2009, Denmark was ranked second on the list with a score of 9.3, after New Zealand, which scored 9.4, but ahead of Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland. Denmark is thus considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world.
We can therefore safely say that there is practically no corruption in Denmark. Norms are strongly against corruption, and the risk of exposure by an active press is high. In the past there has been the occasional case of a local government official accepting “services” from business in exchange for contracts with the municipality, but such cases are rare. There have also occasionally been cases of officials using their representation accounts rather generously. Again, such cases are rare. The latest case involved a well-known member of parliament, Peter Brixtofte, who was sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of office. He had used public funds to finance his wine collection during his time as mayor of the town of Farum.

Since 2000 Finland has been ranked as one of the countries with the lowest level of perceived corruption in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2009, Finland ranked sixth in the world. Since May 2005, a law criminalizing the acceptance of a bribe was made effective. The auditing of state spending is strict. In a like manner, corruption rarely occurs in the economic sector. In 2008 and 2009, however, several political corruption charges were brought to light; Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and other politicians were involved in campaign funding scandals. This inspired discussions on campaign financing and bribery laws.

Corruption among officeholders has not been a serious problem in Iceland. It does occur in the form of politicians granting favors, and in some instances, paying for personal goods with public funds. Post-2006 regulations on political party support might also prevent any such problems in the future, as political parties were not previously required by law to disclose the sources of their funds. It is very rare that officeholders in Iceland are put on trial for corruption. In May 2007, however, shortly before the elections, it came to the media’s attention that the girlfriend of the son of Minister of Environmental Affairs Jónína Bjartmarz had been granted Icelandic citizenship on a fast track. The minister stated that she had had no knowledge of the matter, and remained in office. No legal process followed as a consequence of this issue.
The state has no policy specifically addressing corruption, under the premise that no such policy is necessary. By contrast, the Swedish government recently (2007) set up a new Corruption Unit to investigate private as well as official corruption. To be sure, Transparency International’s corruption perception indices for Iceland suggest that corruption – in the narrow sense of abusing public office for private gain through bribery – is largely absent. Yet while other, more subtle forms of corruption are harder to quantify, they almost surely exist. The collapse of the Icelandic banks in 2008 and the subsequent investigation by, inter alia, the parliament’s Special Investigation Commission (SIC), has brought to light the subservience of the government and state administration to the banks. This was expressed through weak restraints on their phenomenally rapid growth, as well as lax supervision during the pre-bust boom period. Moreover, it has come to light that three of the four main political parties, as well as individual politicians, accepted large donations from the banks and affiliated concerns. Public officials are not required to declare their assets or potential conflicts of interest. However, the SIC reported that of 63 members of parliament, 10 owed the failed banks €1 million or more each at the pre-crash exchange rate of the króna, with their personal debts ranging from €1 million to €40 million. The average debt of the 10 members of parliament, including the leader of the Independence Party, his deputy, and five other party comrades, was €9 million.
Many appointments to public office, in the courts as well as in the central bank, are politically motivated rather than based on merit – appointment corruption might thus be the right term for this persistent practice.

Corruption in Switzerland is rare according to international rankings. Indeed, Switzerland is consistently rated among the most successful countries with respect to corruption prevention. It is governed by the rule of law, offers high wages to public officials and is based on a decentralized democracy with parties that efficiently control and audit public officials.
However, there are opportunities and incentives for political and societal elites to abuse their position for private interests. This is due to the country’s small size, and correspondingly small number of persons interacting in elite positions; to the culture of amicable agreements; and to the very pragmatic problem-solving culture. In addition, holders of elite positions know that they are highly likely to meet again in the future (and probably in different roles). This creates opportunities for the creation of broad informal networks, a reluctance to engage in close mutual surveillance and incentives for the nonobservance of formal rules.

In general, the U.S. political system is fairly responsive to narrowly based private interests, but this influence results mostly from decentralization of decision-making and the influence of lobbying, and is not appropriately identified as abuse of office. The large number of political appointees leads to a large number of private sector actors filling senior executive positions. While strict conflict of interest laws exist, including provisions demanding a separation from one’s own assets and bars on contact, private influence in decision-making cannot be fully precluded. Auditing of state spending is well established through congressional oversight of agencies’ spending decisions as well as through independent control agencies such as the General Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO also oversees public procurement in the United States and recently played a big role in reversing a U.S. Air Force contract to build tanker aircraft. The GAO, however, is powerless to control spending directed at special projects in congressional representatives’ districts or states, so-called pork-and-barrel-spending, which is deeply engrained in the U.S. political system and enshrined in legislation.
An apparent weakness in containing the improper influence of private interest is the nature and state of election finance. Because of the needs for election fundraising, incentives for members of Congress to be responsive to private interests would seem to be strong. However, dozens of carefully designed political science studies have failed to demonstrate a significant effect of campaign contributions on legislative behavior. Flagrant cases of corrupt influence of lawmakers, including outright bribery, are quite rare. There have been no high-level corruption cases.

A variety of bodies have been established by the federal and state governments to investigate corruption by politicians and public officials. Many of these bodies have the powers of royal commissions, which means they can compel witnesses to appear and to answer questions.

Public procurement systems are not always transparent, especially at the state government level, and “commercial-in-confidence” is often cited as the reason for non-disclosure of details of contracts with private sector firms. Audit process are, however, quite rigorous, so that concerns about propriety in public procurement tend to focus on issues of wastefulness and on furthering political party interests ahead of the broader community’s interests, rather than on personal gain.

No corruption scandal was revealed during the period under review. Experts consider Luxembourg a country with a very low level of corruption. Parliament, political parties and civil servants are considered very reliable. Problems however can be found within the private sector and business.
Luxembourg’s Court of Auditors still lacks formal institutionalized controls. So it is less formal audit mechanisms but social control that prevents corruption in this very small country. Indeed, these mechanisms seem to work rather well, except for some instances of nepotism. However, the lack of institutional controls is detrimental to the overall cause of corruption prevention.

There are few instances of corruption. The few cases of government corruption that have surfaced recently have been primarily at the regional or municipal level, and in various public bodies related to social aid. As a rule, corrupt officeholders are prosecuted under established laws. The income declarations of all Norwegian taxpayers are available online. Newspapers often publicize such information, especially in the cases of members of parliament and figures holding influential public administration positions. There is a great social stigma against corruption, even in its minor manifestations. However, there has been a growing concern over government corruption in specific areas such as building permits.

Austria ranks 16th on the Corruption Perceptions Index established by Transparency International. Thus, according to the available data, Austria does not have a significantly high level of corruption. The low levels of corruption may in part be attributed to extensive media coverage, but also to the anti-corruption activities of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and of the Ministry of Justice.
This of course cannot guarantee the complete eradication of corruption, but in the cases which are known – most recently in the case of the privatization of public housing projects – police and public prosecution seem to do their job, even if high-ranking politicians and their friends may be involved. However, there have been cases made public in recent years of known politicians involved in corruption issues, who apparently received for some time passive protection from the government.
Unfortunately, the creation of an independent prosecutor’s body for corruption failed, and the newly created prosecutor’s body is again bound by government instructions.

A growing number of corruption cases and conflicts of interest, especially at the local level (local authorities have access to considerable resources in Belgium), extensively covered by the media, have pushed reforms geared to ensuring a higher level of regulation over the affairs of public officers.
Since 2006, the federal auditing commission of state spending is responsible for the publicizing the mandates of all public officeholders (the reason is that some officeholders hold a number of offices). Assets held before and after a period in public office also have to be declared, but are not published. The process seems to be effective (various politicians have been investigated, just after the global financial crisis and the country’s bailout plans). Since 1993, political parties are funded by public subsidies based on their electoral results. Private donations by firms are not allowed. This is often criticized as a way to preserve the political status quo as it makes it more difficult for outsiders to enter the political arena.
To prevent further corruption scandals, public procurements of a certain value must now be advertised in a standardized manner to make them transparent. This rule has, however, been circumvented (as revealed by corruption cases, for example in Charleroi), by splitting the market in sufficiently small units.
There have been several legal and regulatory responses in an attempt to fight corruption. The political parties themselves have made stronger statements in their party manifestos.
At the local level, however, powerful politicians can still use different strategies to maintain “friendly arrangements” (for example, with local contractors, companies and so on) and maintain their potential for patronage, as such politicians still largely control the recruitment of civil servants (party-political “placement”). There are probably only a few remaining large-scale corruption schemes (as were unveiled in the 1980s and 1990s) but rather an accumulation of smaller, local entrenched systems of political exchange.

In the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom 2010, Germany achieved a score of 79.0, ranking 14th in the category “freedom from corruption.” Although that may seem mediocre, one has to acknowledge that Germany is doing better than its peers France, Great Britain or the United States. Additionally, Germany achieved a score of eight out of 10 in the 2009 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) (http://media.transparency.org/imap s/cpi2009/). Compared with the beginning of the millennium, Germany has made slight improvements. According to the World Bank’s “control of corruption” indicator, Germany is doing quite well relative to the world’s 10 most important economies. With a score of 93.2 it is the runner-up behind Canada (which achieved a scored of 95.7).
On the other hand, Germany has signed but not ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). In addition, national rules concerning asset declarations by members of parliament are loose and subject to critique. As early as June 2005, the German Bundestag amended the Political Parties Act and the Annex to the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag, the code of conduct for members of the German Bundestag. Despite inarguable improvements, the new practice of publication of asset declarations still possesses significant shortcomings. The goal of the reform was to give the electorate insight into the deputies’ activities and income structure, but this is not achieved in the best possible way. Each member of the German Bundestag is obliged to give information about his or her ancillary income when it exceeds €1,000 in an individual month or €10,000 per year. In the most recent report as of the time of writing, 25.2% of Bundestag members had to declare additional revenues, with 16.9% earning more than €7,000 in one or more activities during the current legislative term (data extracted on April 25, 2010: www.spiegel.de). In 2007, the average minimum ancillary income for members of parliament was approximately €9,300 (own estimation according to data provided on www.nebeneinkuenfte-bundestag.de) – a figure which has not changed significantly in the last several years. An analysis of the data (www.nebeneinkuenfte-bundestag.de) shows that the release of three income levels provides no clarity as to the potential influence of politicians’ external financial interests in the political process. Transparency International has demanded that, in order to increase transparency, comparability and uniformity, all regulations concerning the code of conduct of members of parliament should be integrated into a single comprehensive body of legislation. That is not the case with the current provisions.
Furthermore, according to the experts from the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), the definition of corruption in the national parliament is also “extremely limited,” and the provisions for political bribery, which are laid down in the criminal code (§108e), are not in accordance with international standards. Only the actual buying or selling of votes in elections is considered to be a criminal offense. The unequal treatment afforded to parliamentarians, public officials and public service employees is also striking. While the latter two categories face prosecution in the case of bribery, no such rules apply to parliamentarians.

In the Netherlands integrity policy has steadily been afforded greater attention on the political and decision-making agendas of public sector organizations, and it appears to show reasonable success. A large survey among local government officials (n=671) scored a 6.4 (on 0-10 scale) for integrity policy of 11 types of public sector bodies as reported in Huberts (2004). Almost all public sector organizations now have an integrity code of conduct, and there are plenty of workshops, conferences and training sessions where public sector employees’ awareness of integrity policy and its instruments is enhanced. However, the soft law approach to integrity means that rules and sanctions against fraud, corruption and inappropriate use of administrative power are underdeveloped. There have been some major corruption scandals – particularly in the building sector – and a survey among over 300 representatives of public organizations revealed that over 3% of civil servants and 5% of politicians were deemed corrupt.
Under the Balkenende IV cabinet, efforts to prevent and control corruption gained some prominence. In one case, the mayor of a large town and several aldermen in local governments of a southern province resigned over controversies regarding conflicts of interest.
In at least three (out of 17) areas, the Netherlands is not living up to the guidelines for effective integrity policy as identified by Transparency International. All three involve preventing corruption and taking sanctions against corruption: there are no independent bodies for corruption monitoring, prevention and prosecution; corruption prevention in the private sector is left unattended; and there is no clear financial disclosure regulation for politicians and civil servants. In addition, in spite of many, hesitant initiatives on all levels of government, there is no transparent overview of how many disciplinary or civil court cases pertaining to corruption in a given year are actually conducted.

Anti-corruption policies have been strengthened through a number of reforms in the past couple of years. The 2004 Corruption Bill consolidated existing legislation in this area into one law. Legislation in this field dates back to the late 19th century and has thus existed for a long time.
In May 2009, a scandal over expense-report abuses by members of parliament (MPs) caused major turmoil in the British political class. Data detailing how MPs had used and misused the House of Commons expenses regime had been obtained illegally by a major newspaper, and were published on a daily basis to maximize attention and scandal. Public anger erupted, forcing the House of Commons to abandon its initial attempts to ignore the scandal. In an unprecedented move, the speaker had to resign, police investigations and an Inland Revenue inquiry took place, and trust in politicians plummeted. Survey evidence suggests that public confidence in politics has dropped considerably, and voter abstention at European and local elections resulted. A substantial number of MPs decided not to stand again for their seats; others were deselected by the local constituency parties.

While politically very damaging, the expenses scandal can be viewed largely as too-casual implementation of rules on eligible expenses, a situation in which MPs were tacitly encouraged to boost their incomes by ratcheting up expenses while being held to low salary increases. The scandal arose when too many MPs were shown to have gone too far in these expenses claims. It is important to stress that the activity was not corruption in the sense of money being extorted to shape decision-making or legislation, but rather represented a cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money. There have been rare cases of more overtly corrupt behavior of this former sort, but the UK remains on the whole comparatively free of corruption.

New rules for politicians’ behavior are being put in place, but are so far untested. They are important because so much of the UK system of governance relies on trust rather than formal legal provisions, and if that trust is impaired, the system of governance is bound to suffer.

Corruption is relatively widespread at the local government level, but is more unusual (albeit on the rise) at the general government level and in state-owned enterprises.

Statutory provisions relating to corruption in Ireland include the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2001 and the Ethics in Public Office Act, 1995. The latter contains disclosure requirements for significant decision makers in a wide range of public bodies, aimed at ensuring that decision makers are not inappropriately influenced by any outside interests. In 2003, a code of practice for office holders was drawn up. This establishes guidelines for the conduct of office holders, civil servants, etc. with respect to impartiality, avoiding conflicts of interest, accepting gifts, post-employment work, and other such issues. Former civil servants are precluded from taking private sector jobs in sensitive areas for a period after leaving office. This restriction does not apply to elected office-holders, but a similar ban is under consideration.
The Compellability Act, 1997) gives parliamentary committees the statutory power to compel the attendance and cooperation of witnesses and the furnishing of documents. It also confers High Court privilege on all persons directed to give evidence or present documents to such committees. This is virtually identical to the absolute privilege enjoyed by members of two houses of parliament. These two elements are essential to the act: the power to compel the giving of evidence and the power to grant privilege and immunity to those required to testify. The symmetry means that those compelled to answer questions must be given protection from any adverse legal consequences stemming from their complete responses. Virtually every citizen is compellable under the act, including elected public representatives and public office holders (except the president and members of the judiciary). A partial restriction also applies to civil servants, police officers and members of the army who may not question or express comments on government policies. Also relevant are the requirements for politicians to disclose gifts and other potential mechanisms of influence.

Despite the of sophisticated anti-corruption legislation, corruption has been a major issue in Poland. In November 2007, the Tusk government established the new position of a government plenipotentiary for the struggle against corruption. One of its tasks has been the reform of the controversial Anti-Corruption Office (Centralne Biuro Antykorupcyjne, CBA), a powerful, but nontransparent and highly politicized agency created by the previous government. Fearing the charge of not being sufficiently tough on corruption, the government for a long time did not dare to overhaul the CBA. In October 2009, however, it eventually suspended CBA-director Mariusz Kaminski after the so-called gambling games affair. Corruption prevails in public administration and the health sector. In preparation of the 2012 European football championship, the fight against corruption in football teams also became a major political issue.

As noted in the 2009 SGI report, Portugal’s formal corruption-prevention and integrity mechanisms have had relatively limited success in stopping corruption. Some additional measures were adopted during the period presently under review. Law 54/2008 created the Council for the Prevention of Corruption, which is to be an independent administrative unit working within the Auditors Court. However, a leading corruption magistrate criticized the means given to this council in October 2008, saying that “without a permanent body of specialists” this would become a “castle of anti-corruption bureaucracy.” Anti-corruption legislation was a recurrent theme of parliamentary debate during the past two years, reflecting growing public disquiet over the problem’s apparent prevalence. However, many of the proposals were rejected. Some new measures proposed by the Socialist Party were approved in late April 2010. However, their actual impact is not clear and a leading Socialist, João Cravinho, considered the measures to be “ad hoc measures” that fulfilled only the most basic criteria, and which revealed a lack of strategy in combating corruption.
In law, abuse of position is prohibited and it is a crime to do so. This is stipulated in the Statute on Persons in Positions of Responsibility No. 3 of Estatuto 24/84 - Estatuto Disciplinar dos Funcionários e Agentes da Administração Central, Regional e Local. However, corruption persists despite this legal framework. In its most recent annual report, Transparency International gave Portugal a lower rank than in the previous year on the issue of perception of corruption, dropping the country from 28th place to 32th place worldwide. In Europe, Portugal was ranked at 19th place.

No major scandal connected to the central government surfaced in Spain during the 2008 – 2010 period. However, the perception of corruption increased as a result of several local scandals (particularly, the so-called Gürtel, Millet, Matas and Pretoria cases) that arose in the Mediterranean regions (Valencia, Catalonia and the Balearic islands) and to some extent in Madrid. Although there is some evidence of links between these scandals and illegal party financing, most have represented cases of personal enrichment linked to the Spanish property boom. Though these cases have only recently come under investigation, they actually occurred before 2008.
It is true that Spain’s rankings in international indexes measuring corruption have shown some deterioration, but again, this is primarily the effect of the recent emergence of old cases in the media and the courts, rather than a sign that the situation has actually worsened. In fact, the bursting of the real estate bubble, coinciding with the eruption of the 2008 economic and financial crisis, make it quite conceivable that corruption levels may even have declined. The 2008 reform of land use regulation, which limited local public authorities discretion in reforming urban plans and granting building licenses, may also have helped; but to be sure, this probable improvement is much more the effect of the economic cycle than the result of effective enforcement of legal, political or public integrity mechanisms.
The fact that Spanish parties and citizens have demonstrated an incapacity to exclude effectively corrupt politicians from politics (e.g., 70% of mayors shown to be involved in corruption were reelected in 2007, and opinion polls do not show evidence of changes in electoral behavior after a scandal) means that the Spanish society and state cannot completely guarantee that officials will not exploit their offices for private gain. However, political corruption does not affect the daily lives of people (as might, for example, the practice of paying bribes to public employees), and most civil servants and politicians follow regulations to preserve the public interest, including legislation on conflicts of interest and asset declarations.

Up to the 1990s, corruption plagued France. The problem was linked to secret party financing, because political parties are often lacking sufficient resources from member fees and/or public subsidies. On the local level corruption is a major issue, where cases linked to public purchases and the awarding of long-term concessions for local public services have occurred. Illegal payments from the firms which were favored served to obscure party financing. Spectacular cases have been revealed by judges’ investigations, which ended with the imprisonment of industrial and political leaders, and were a factor for growing awareness of the issue. This has led to substantive action to establish rules both on party financing and transparency in public purchases and concessions. But once the momentum had passed, the ad hoc committees put in place to secure checks and controls lost part of their influence and authority and/or have not received the necessary means to assure their mission (for instance the control of assets detained by elected officials is rather formalistic due to the lack of human resources). Corruption is certainly much less important than it was 30 years ago, but it is still more important than in many other OECD countries, as France is only ranked 24th in Transparency International’s 2009 ranking. Evidently, necessary checks are still not sufficient, in particular in areas where corruption is difficult to ascertain (for instance, in building zoning). The concept of conflict of interest still remains a vague and superficial reference, as it is not really part of the French political and administrative culture.

Reports of corruption and bribery scandals have accompanied Japanese politics for decades. These problems are deeply entrenched in the way politics are organized in Japan, for instance in the way Japanese politicians need to secure funds for (re)election purposes, how they rely on local support networks, and how they have to “deliver” to their constituencies in return. These scandals have been common in recent years, concerning both the long-reigning LDP and the DPJ. In early 2010, then-DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa came under strong pressure because of an investigation into his alleged acceptance of bribes and purchase of land with the money.

In spring 2010, then-Prime Minister Hatoyama argued in favor of a revision of the Political Funds Control Law during the ongoing parliamentary session, seeking to ban donations from corporations and other organizations. This was possibly designed to distract attention somewhat from Ozawa’s problems, but it is unclear whether the initiative will be successful.

Corruption remains a major problem in Korea, and government attempts to curb the problem are seen as mostly ineffective by the population. Korea ranked 39th out of 180 countries in the 2009 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, up one spot from 2008. It ranked 14th out of 22 countries in the Transparency International Bribe Payers Index of 2008.
Vigilant civil society organizations regularly conduct surveys of how parliamentarians fulfill their duties. “Blacklisted” candidates running for office face problems in parliamentary elections. Though far from perfect, the blacklisting system has helped to increase voters’ awareness of problems. However, lawmakers who have been convicted for illegal fundraising and other illicit activities sometimes benefit from the presidential amnesties that are granted every year – as was the case in August 2009, when President Lee pardoned 341,000 executives, politicians and bureaucrats convicted of crimes that included fraud and embezzlement. In December 2009, President Lee pardoned Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who had been convicted of tax evasion.
Transparency International has also criticized the Lee administration’s business-friendly policies for undermining anti-corruption measures. On February 29, 2008, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) was launched by the merger of the Ombudsman of Korea, the Korea
Independent Commission against Corruption and the Administrative Appeals Commission. However, ACRC commissioners are entirely appointed by the president, a provision that critics argue undermines its independence.

The Czech Republic has long been characterized by apparently high levels of corruption. Although governments have put the struggle against corruption high on their agenda, they have failed to implement effective anti-corruption measures within the bureaucracy and police, or within politics itself. At one level there is a widespread acceptance of the fact that corruption is a normal part of life, at least in business and in the distribution of public funds – some survey evidence suggests that bribery is usual in such cases – and to some extent in dealings with law enforcement. Remarkably, it also affects universities, although in that case its exposure can gain widespread publicity. A dramatic example was the high-profile corruption case against the law faculty of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in 2009, after a number of high-profile figures gained degrees after relatively short periods of study, often with inadequate or plagiarized work. However, the greatest problem is the inactivity of politicians. Cases are not investigated when leading political figures may be implicated, as for example in the purchase of military aircraft from the UK firm BAE Systems, decided under an earlier Social Democrat defense minister. The case of Jiří Čunek, a Christian Democrat deputy prime minister in the Topolánek government, attracted even more attention, but with little result. The acceptance of corruption by politicians has led to repeated reluctance to implement tough legal measures.

Corruption is rampant on all levels of government and featured prominently in the 2010 election campaign. The existing legislation does not suffice to effectively prevent public officeholders from abusing their positions. The period under review was full of scandals. A spectacular case in early 2010 involved leading officials of the Budapest Transport Enterprise (Budapesti Közlekedési Vállalat, BKV) connected with the mayor’s office. In general, corruption is not only a problem among the political elites, but extends to the lowest ranks of the state administration, with doctors in hospitals, policemen and civil servants involved. Corruption is endemic in the case of infrastructure investments such as the construction of highways and bridges. The Gyurcsány and Bajnai governments did little to address the problems.

Although Turkey’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score has gradually improved (2009=4.4), the public believes that corruption is widespread in the bureaucracy and in politics. Activities incompatible with membership in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (specified in Article 82 of the constitution, Law No. 3069, and Law No. 3628 on Asset Declaration and the Struggle Against Bribery and Corruption of April 19, 1990, based on Article 71 of the constitution) are the major preventive measures targeted at corruption in public service.
No conflict-of-interest, code-of-conduct or campaign-financing regulation for politicians exists. Sanctions for politicians are not effective due to the majority in the parliament and strong party discipline. As of March 2009, there were 315 files associated with lifting members’ parliamentary immunity due to corruption-related offences, involving a total of 112 deputies (62 of which were from the incumbent party). The current scope of parliamentary immunity provides a significant shield for corrupt politicians. However, an AKP deputy, Saban Disli, resigned from a top party post after being accused of receiving a million-dollar kickback from a land developer in late 2008. There were several allegations in 2009 focusing on the corruption of local politicians, including the mayors of Ankara and Adana. As mentioned earlier, in late 2008 the sale of the country’s second-biggest media group, Sabah-ATV, to Calik Holding, a company employing the prime minister’s son-in-law, was facilitated by a generous loan from a state-owned bank.
Conflict of interest was first defined by the Regulation on the Principles of Ethical Behavior of Public Officials and Application Procedures and Essentials, dated April 15, 2005. There is no separate code of conduct for public servants, but this regulation lists several guiding principles. However, academics, military personnel and the judiciary have no binding code of ethics. The Council of Ethics for Public Officials, which was established in 2004 and is tasked with reviewing the unethical behaviors of public servants, decided that four public servants, an elected mayor and managers of public enterprise, breached the ethics rules for public officials. In 2010, the Constitutional Court annulled the publication of this council’s decisions in the Official Gazette.
There are also several general or special laws preventing unlawful gain through the abuse of office, with disciplinary mechanisms attached. In light of the GRECO recommendations, the OECD Bribery Convention and the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Turkey’s legal framework was reformed in such a way as to address the liability of legal persons, money-laundering and foreign bribery. Under the coordination of the Prime Minister’s Inspection Board, a national anti-corruption strategy plan was issued in January 2010.
The most common form of corruption on the part of politicians occurs during the allotment of building land in development planning. When assets are graded as building, housing or even trading plots, their values skyrocket, since ongoing large-scale rural outmigration and urbanization has created a lively real estate market. Undue enrichment of local politicians through this mechanism is a daily practice in Turkey, and attracts attention only in cases of extraordinary gains and/or when open violence is used.

In terms of perceptions of corruption, Greece is usually ranked low on comparative lists. One such well-known list is the 2009 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), compiled by Transparency International and containing estimates using a scale from 0.0 (very high perceptions of corruption) to 10.0 (almost no corruption perceived). In 2009 Greece obtained a score of 3.8 and was ranked 71st, tied with Bulgaria, Romania and FYR Macedonia, among 180 countries. This represents a decline from 57th place on the same index in 2008, when its CPI score was also higher (4.7). The CPI is indicative of the extent to which third parties (citizens, businessmen and more generally users of public services) perceive corruption to have permeated the bureaucracy of a certain state.
The index also reveals the way in which perceptions of corruption vary either by policy sector or hierarchical level of bureaucracy. Generally, there is more public service corruption involved in the sectors of customs, taxation and town planning. High-level corruption became very evident in 2008 – 2009, when a scandal broke out involving bribes allegedly paid by Siemens Corporation to Greek politicians in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
Compared to the period covered in the SGI 2009 report, the prevention and prosecution of corruption have not improved. In the period currently under review (May 2008 – April 2010), there was no new legislation aimed at fighting corruption. However, the new PASOK government has pledged to introduce new legislation on the issue, and has already announced that a new anti-corruption law is under preparation.

A variety of mechanisms aimed at corruption prevention exist in Italy. These include systematic auditing of administrative spending, regulations concerning party financing, mandatory asset declarations for office holders, codes of conduct, and more. However, evaluating and measuring their ability to effectively prevent the misuse of public resources with any degree of certainty is not easy. The number of cases of corruption of public officials reported by the press suggests that the extent of corruption is high, and is particularly prevalent in the areas of public works, procurement, and local building permits. Evaluations based on different measures of perception also indicate high levels of corruption compared to other OECD countries. Attempts to measure the extent of real corruption were initiated by the Anticorruption and Transparency Service ( Servizio Anticorruzione e Trasparenza, SAeT) of the Ministry for Public Administration in its first report to the parliament of 2009. This report is based on the number of reported cases of corruption; however, it obviously cannot report on cases that have not been reported, which are presumably numerous but the quantity of which is difficult to estimate with precision.
In addition, prosecution of corruption remains quite ineffective because Italian officeholders do not meet the integrity criteria maintained in other OECD countries. Thus, politicians and members of parliament only rarely resign after being convicted in the first instance of a law suit, instead continuing their political career. Members of the government revised the “Bribesville” (Tangentopoli) scandal of the early 1990s, trying to rehabilitate protagonist and former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who had escaped trial in Italy. There are many voices who speak today about a second and new “Bribesville” existing in Italy.
Some Italian public officeholders seem to be quite happy to abuse their positions for private interest. Indeed, a part of the government’s legislative projects matches perfectly the personal interests of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. His personal conflicts of interest as an indirect owner of the Mediaset Group (and other companies) are still far from resolved. Berlusconi has also called people (crime suspects) whose phone lines had been tapped by the police. According to many observers, it was this fact that gave rise to the wiretapping draft law. This proposal would restrict wiretaps and media use of wiretap transcripts so completely that police unions, judges, the OSCE and the United States all have expressed opposition to the draft law. Berlusconi’s government serves as a good example of how Italy’s public administration uses power and influence for personal and private benefit. The government during the period under review has faced substantial accusations of corruption or of benefiting illegally from officeholders’ positions. Minister for Economic Development Claudio Scajola had to step down shortly after the close of the period under review. Guido Bertolaso, powerful head of the Civil Protection Agency, is under investigation.

Corruption has been a major issue in Slovakia for some time. Corruption claims against the center-right parties contributed to the 2006 change in government. However, the new government did not pay much attention to the prevention of corruption. The fight against corruption did not feature in the government’s program and no official government strategy in the field existed. The Fico government also abolished the special court and the special prosecutor’s office for corruption cases which had been established by the previous government in order to improve enforcement. In the period under review, party cronyism and clientelism flourished. In a number of cases, public subsidies, state contracts or emission rights went to firms close to representatives of the governing coalition. Corruption scandals involved the leaders of two parties in government, Ján Slota, the chair of the SNS, and Vladimír Mečiar, the head of the L’S-HZDS. In addition, three ministers were replaced after being implicated in corruption charges. Popular dissatisfaction with the government’s record was high. In a poll by the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in November 2008, 42% of the respondents said the level of corruption had worsened and another 45% did not see any progress (Bútora et al. 2009, pp. 103-131). According to the poll, corruption was the field in which citizens were the most critical of the Fico government.

Corruption in the form of outright theft from the federal government is probably on the decline, due to the formalization of official procedures. There are significant institutional mechanisms that make this kind of corruption more difficult, as well as a growing practice of investigative journalism – though the latter’s ability to scrutinize organized crime and its links to the public sphere is under serious threat. There is more likely to be corruption at the state and municipal level, where scrutiny is less keen, and understanding of the law is more limited. This is particularly true of the less-developed states, mostly in the south of Mexico, where high levels of social inequality and marginalization have to be considered as breeding grounds for corruption. There is also significant corruption within the state oil company, PEMEX, with the worst problems centering on procurement and the occasional theft of oil for resale. While the current government has attempted to modernize the state-owned company, it has not been able to win approval for the reforms in the National Congress, where these reforms remain highly ideologically charged. The worst corruption is undoubtedly drug related. Hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, are spent by drug dealers in bribing politicians, police, judges and the military. Formal procedures do not work well here, since what is happening is not exactly theft from the government but a system of payoffs to officials to look the other way. Documentary evidence is rarely available.
Small-scale corruption by traffic police and local judges is also endemic, with disproportionate effect on the poor. The money extorted by routine corruption may be small in scale, but the practice is pervasive and falls hardest on those least able to pay.