时间：2022-08-16 10:01:40
Annotation: The article deals with corruption problems in Russia. The causes of corruption, nature of corrupt officials’ motivation, conditions for forming of vertical and horizontal corrupt relations, matter of top and local corruption, its consequences and scale are being investigated. The author points, that corruption is appeared in any sphere of human economic activity. As a final result, the internal markets and economic mechanisms specific for corruption are being formed. The principal technological identity of criminal and corrupt association of the economic entities leads to the forming of the organized economic criminality. More and more, corruption turns into a specific criminal mechanism of repartition of the national wealth for the bureaucratic elite.
Key words: Corruption； causes of corruption； top and local corruption； consequences and scale of corruption
中图分类号： F11 文献标识码： A 文章编号： 1009-8631（2011）03-0014-03
Corruption (from Latin “corrumpere” ― “deprave”) ― denotes using functionary’s official powers and deputed rights entrusted for self-profit, contrary to the established rules (law). Most often this term is applied to the bureaucratic machinery and political elite. The characteristic feature of corruption is the conflict between the functionary’s activity and his employer’s interests, or the conflict between the elected persons and the public interest.
Corruption may be applied to anyone who has the discretionary power- the power over the distribution of anyanother’s resources according to their own discretion (official, deputy, judge, lawmachinery officer, administrator, examiner, doctor, etc.). The main incentive for corruption is the ability to generate economic profits (rents) of power, and the major restrictive factor risk of exposure and punishment.
Public corruption exists because theofficial may dispose of another’sresources by acceptance or non-acceptance of these or those decisions. More oftencorruption means the situation where the officerreaches the illegitimate decision, which leads to the benefit for some other party (for example, a company gets the governmental contractual work as a result of such decision , contrary to the established procedure), and the officer receives a kickback from that company. Signature of the situation: the decision is made which violates the law or social norms, both sides act according to the mutual agreement, both sides receive illicit benefits and advantages, both sides are trying to hide their actions. Or another example:when an official obliged by law to take a decision in relation to a person (for example, issue a license for any type of business) creates artificial illegal obstacles for this. Thus he induces the person to give the payola. In the Russian Empire, this behavior is called bribe-taking. Today it's called extortion.
Some foreign economists have expressed the following formula, which gives veryconcise definition of the main causes of corruption: (corruption) = (monopoly) + (arbitrariness) - (responsibility).
This means that the opportunities for corruption not only directly depend on the State's monopoly on certain activities (e.g. exclusive contracts for Government Purchases of the certain products) and by a lack of control of bureaucrats, butinversely depends on the probability and severity of penalties for abuse.
One should differentiate betweenapical and local corruption. The first type (apical) corruption embraces politicians, higher and secondary officialdom and the adoption of decisions with a high value (laws, government contracts, privatization, public investment, etc.).
Alocal corruption spreads to middle and lower levels and is linked to current affairs and daily interaction of the officials withbusinessmen and citizens (licenses, fines, registration, resolution, etc.).
Attractiveness of local corruption is that it has particular value not only for the receiver (extortionists) of the bribe, but also for the briber, providing the minimum risk level to each other. The bribe helps the payer to solve his problems in quick and efficient way. On the other hand, it is part of the fee to minor violations of laws and regulations.
At the same time, extensivelocal corruption is extremely dangerous, because, firstly, it creates a favorable psychological climate for the existence of other forms of corruption, and, secondly, stimulates the vertical growth of corruption.
Both sides often belong to the same state organization. For example, an official gives a bribe to his chief, therefor the latter covers the payer’s corruption activity. This is also the kind of corruption, commonly referred to as vertical. It usually serves as a bridge between the top and localcorruption. This is particularly dangerous because they represent a shift from being isolated acts of corruption in the organized system.
When we talk about the formation of organized corruption structures and communities, it is understood that both vertical and horizontal ties of corruption appears. Internal corruption occurs when under the corruptorwe meana group of persons between whom there was a clearly assigned roles, hierarchy. In such a system it might be “special supervisors” group, which also checks the local executorsfor loyalty and "honesty" in understanding the behavior of the subculture. When such a hierarchy all the bribes are distributed and transmitted from the bribe-takers at lower levels to higher level officials.
Corruption is evident in various spheres of economic activity, which together form a peculiar market. Formation of market covering corruption services is linked to the distribution of spheres of influence between the officials and to the interactions between them. The most widespread kind is decentralized (external) corruption when the deals are arranged individually between official and private person. However, adding internal corruption among the members of one organization ― gives it features of organized criminality.
One of the most important factors in the beginning and expansion of corruption is an informal structure within the organization. It allows not only violate the established rules, but alsoto overstep the certain border of the law domain. And this behavior has been encouraged by informal sub-cultural code of conduct. Professional environment, informal relationships play a significant role in shaping patterns of conduct of the employee. Employees are able to embrace and adopt inappropriate behaviors, if subculture adopted within the organization considers them acceptable.Especially since this subculture involves the use of certain informal sanctions for rejection and resist to such behavior.
The fact is that very often the official meets the situation which provides corruption-favorable conditions by itself or facilitates its rise due to objective factors.
Corruption-favorable situation is characterized by the following conditions:
1. The official’s possibility to choose between different behaviors as they see fit. Most often, this translates into opportunities: to extend the consideration of the problem; to determine the sanctions, imposed for the offence; to avoid necessity of some kind of activity.The individual citizen can get the beneficial decision of his problem for the "extra charge". 2. A personal contact between the official and citizen. Direct relations availability is one of the main conditions for establishing the corruption contact.
3. Closed procedures and, consequently, low probability of detecting evidence of corruption, and hence the low likelihood of punishment.
Practice shows that the corrupter inherently has clear similarities with the typical fraudster. His activity always contains some element of deception. Corrupter cheats the State, pretending to be working tirelessly in his walk of life, though in fact mainly sought to “squeeze out” of his public position as much illicit income as possible. Official harms the State through using State resources in order to satisfy his own corrupt interests and relationships.
At the same time, it should be noted that corruption is always an individual moral choice. Therefore, official’s motivation includes the bias to get the illegal lucre using State resources.And according to the Russian proverb “birds of a feather flock together” all con artists of different levels and differenttypes seek for confluence and joining. That is, one can say that it’s a real merging trend between corruption and organized criminality.
The Russian market is estimated at $300 billion to corruption. These "free money" is available only in the shady sector. It is the corruption and crime relationship which allows the criminal community to get easy access to high value markets and sectors of the economy, to lobby for laws, to mess up any cases involving criminal prosecution.
The greatest losses occur in the area of public contracts and procurement. Estimated losses from corruption in this area often exceed 30 percent of total budgetary cost for these items. And according to our law enforcement agencies in selected industries oil, gas, rare metals up to 50% of profits (real, not declared) are spent for bribing of officials. According to estimates of experts of the "Technologies XXI century” small undertakers spend at least 500 million dollars per month across the country to bribe officials!It turns to6 billion dollars per year. A preliminary analysis shows that 10% of total income in small and medium business is spent on corrupt deals. These losses are directly passed to ordinary consumers and small business customers, becausethe money spent for bribe is added to the price of goods and services.
Proper attention has not yet been paid for identifying the crimes connected with the illegal participation of officials in entrepreneurial activity and money-laundering. There’s not enough tracking of formation and movement of the budgets of different levels, using interest-free and purpose trusts. Weakly, in our view, the practice of so-called rollbacks is suppressed. Meanwhile, according to some estimates, about 40%of the budget is plundered around the country. Experts have calculatedthe magnitude of successful firms rollbacks tenders: renovation of housing and communal services, ranging from 35% to 50% ;roads repair 50%; building roads 35%;capital construction 40%; the procurement of food and medicines 20%; the organization of social activities and land improvement 50%.
For example, it has been calculated that after anti-corruption operation carried out in Italy and called“Clean Hands”, public expenditure on roads decreased by 20%. But scientists from Harvard University estimated that reducing corruption from the level of Mexico to the corruption level ofSingapore produces an effect equivalent to a tax collection increase by 20%.
In some Russian regions corrupt system evolved to such a stage that bribe tariffs are well-known and even are indexed to inflation. In a corrupt countrythe enterprises with high patrons become more successful; they also take the ability to pay off the State. The shadow economy grows. Prices in stores increase as well because the sellers include the cost of bribes in them. Bureaucratic procedures for obtaining various documents are seriously delayed, declining confidence among potential investors, decreasing foreign direct investment, and more. Socio-economic consequences are, ultimately, the impoverishment of the population and rising of social tension in the country. The result of corruption in political sphere is the loss of State institutions’ supportfrom society side due to mistrust of corrupt officials.
Corruption scale in Russia is so large that this country is recognized as one of the most bribable in the world. This is the conclusion drawn by Transparency International Centre on the base of annual analysis of corruption perceptions index (CPI) in 180 countries around the world. The Center annually measures the corruption perceptions index in the state sector of a country on a scale from 0 to 10 points, where zero indicates the highest level of perceived corruption andten the lowest. In 2009, the CPI for Russia stood at 2.2, and we have 146 position. There were no fundamental changes over the past year. Russia hasworsened its rates by level of corruption. In 2010, Russia was billed 2.1 points out of possible 10. None of the G8 or G20 countries exceptRussia has got the lowest rating section. Russia's ranking 2010 divides its 154 place with countries such as Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, the Republic of the Congo and Guinea-Bissau. This year the leaders from CIS countries are in Kazakhstan and Moldavia at 105 position. The Russia is also left behind Armenia (123), Belarus (127), Ukraine and Azerbaijan (divide 134). Highest score in the ranking of the Transparency International were Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore 9.3. The last place was given to Somalia. It has been assigned 1.1.
In 2010 corruption was considered to be the major barrier for business development in Russia together with access to financingand tax regulations on the second and third place respectively. For these reasons, Russia loses billions of dollars in direct investment. So, in 2010 the Committee of Inquiry Of the Russian Federation has commenced 11465 criminal processes involving corruption. At the same time, it becomes apparent that the greatest assiduity in that struggle manifests itself in the field oflocal, or lower, corruption. Mass media and law enforcement attack is aimed primarily at doctors, pedagogues, minor officials, lower officers and so on. It gives the impression that they are major reason of corruption. And it’s even estimated that the average domestic payoff for the past two years increased from 8 thousand to 27 thousand rubles.
But here we have to understand that at the local administrative level an official does not have these government resources and tools which are necessary to get high corrupt income. The main instruments and resources are concentrated in the upper echelons of power. All important decisions are made at the top. Therefore the possibilities of bureaucratic elite to get the corrupt income are simply incommensurable with corrupt capacity at local level. One can compare at least the order of figures revealed the facts of corruption at the lower and upper levels. If at the local level we are talking about thousands or tens of thousands rubles, top order includes already tens or hundreds of millions rubles. And the higher the level of officials, the higher the price of solving the problem. Corruption reports related with Accounting Chamber of Russian Federation, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Internal Affairs is the best confirmation to this fact. In the Pension Fund ofRussian Federation there was foiled an attempt to steal more than 1.2 billion rubles. Director of the Office for the coordination of the fight against organized crime and other dangerous types of crime in the territory of CIS countries appreciatedhis assistance to businessmen, who wanted to acquire shares of the capital companies, in 46 million US dollars.
You can see that the corrupt appetites and incomes on the top level of corruption are very high, that’s why today this sphere is the most attractive and most opaque. The real picture is probably not known by anybody. True scale of corruption cannot be accurately determined because of its high latency; it’s evaluated only at the level of sociological studies and expert opinion. However, practice has shown that today there is a clear separation between people who have been allowed to corruptsinecure, who is already built into the corrupt system, and people that there will not be admitted to this system under no circumstances, and any attempt to do it would be severely punished. Only limited range of tested “peculiar” persons have an access to such high shadow revenue. Corruption becomes the exclusive privilegeof bureaucratic elite. Specifically for this reason corruption in Russia has system nature, all branches and levels of authority are pierced by it.
At present, in addition to the package of anti-corruption legislative documents adopted in 2008, the President of Russia appeared with the new legislation initiatives. In particular, it is proposed to punish dishonest officials by ruble; moreover, all the persons involved in the case will be punished as well. Those, who give, who receive or who plays a mediator role while bribing- all of them will pay to the state to the state the sum 100 times exceeding the size of bribe itself. The responsibility of officials for the unreliability of the represented income statements is hardly toughened. Each candidate for government official position should provide fully transparent information about his own accounts and property. New proposals were introduced concerning the limitation of anumber of chargeable public procedures.The representatives of IDA International Company (Singapore) support the development of Program for e-government creation in Russia.
The political will of the President, the package of laws and programs are not enough to defeat the corruption. There is high demand for strong public support, but the trouble of Russia is that society is divided. Therefore, at this stage, it’s very difficult to make significant changes in the fight against corruption. If the fight against corruption at the local level continues, even with some exaggerations the top corruption, at the same time, becomes increasingly closed, untouchable zone. From one side the bureaucratic elite will never refuse to get its high corruption income voluntary; and on the other handit just can't do it, if only because corruption is systemic in nature. In order to obtain a stable and high incomes, corrupt officials at the highest level not only will not renounce corruption schemes, but will also seek to take control of the most lucrative and promising businesses. The schemes used by corruptors to control the businessare almost identical to the methods used by criminals to carry out their criminal plans. They go hand in hand, and, at some point merge into a single technology. The fundamental technological sameness of criminal and corrupted merging of the economic entities leads to the appearance of so-called organized economic crime.
Thus, corruption increasingly becomes a particular criminal mechanism of redistribution of the national wealth for the bureaucratic elite.
Reference:
[1]. Novak B.V. Bribe and kickback. SPb.: Piter，2008.
[2].Pimenov N.A. Corruption threat to economic security of the enterprises and state.M.:“Rossiyskaya gazeta”library，issue № 9.2009.
[3] Chashin A.N. Corruption in Russia: strategy, tactics and methods of control.M.:Delo i servis，2009.