CZECH CORRUPTION: BAD, AND UNLIKELY TO GET BETTER

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRAGUE 001329 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KCOR PGOV EINV KJUS EZ SUBJECT: CZECH CORRUPTION: BAD, AND UNLIKELY TO GET BETTER SOON REF: PRAGUE 1275 ¶1. SUMMARY. In light of several recent Czech corruption scandals, post offers the following snapshot of the issue. Internal statistics, as well as assessments from Transparency International and the World Bank show the number of cases is increasing, while the government's effectiveness in combating the problem is going down. Moreover, for political, administrative, and even cultural reasons, the problem of corruption could even get worse in the near future, though the public does not seem sufficiently enraged, particularly in light of favorable economic statistics, to vote against the parties responsible. END SUMMARY -------------- - -------------- -------------- PETTY CORRUPTION IS BEING DEALT WITH, SYSTEMIC MALFEASANCE IS NOT -------------- - -------------- -------------- ¶2. Oldrich Kulik of the Ministry of Interior broke the problem down into three types. The first he described as the type of petty corruption that was necessary before the velvet revolution of 1989. In the old days, the state distributed almost all goods and services and did so very inefficiently. Consumers had to pay bribes to get things the state couldn't provide in sufficient quantities, timeliness, etc. Nowadays, the market provides most goods and services. So, Krulik explained, this type of corruption is to a large extent gone. Exceptions are the health care sector, where the state is still the main provider. ¶3. The second type of corruption involves discrete acts by low-level employees of the state, who abuse their power for personal gain. Traffic police, and employees working at the commercial registry are two examples of this frequently mentioned. Krulik explained that the government is trying to use technology to limit this problem. He cited the example of the system which uses a camera to take a picture of a driver running a red light and then mails the violation to the driver, who can mail the fine back. In that case, there is no direct contact between the public and the public official, eliminating the possibility of a bribe. Making it possible to register a commercial firm on-line would have a similar effect. ¶4. Krulik explained that policemen make only half of what officers in the military earn. Moreover, because the Fire Brigade has 14 districts, compared to only 8 for the police, ;there are fewer opportunities for police officials to move up the regional ranks. Krulik also said that policeman must undergo lengthier training than their better paid counterparts in the Army and Fire Brigade, and are even required to learn foreign languages. He understood how those inequities could move some policemen to feel they deserve more money. In addition, the government has announced plans to cut police pensions, a move that could lead to as many as 5,000 experienced police officers leaving the force before the law takes effect. Inevitably, some will be tempted to make some extra money before they go into retirement with a reduced pension. ¶5. The third type of corruption cited by Krulik was malfeasance by high level officials, particularly with large public procurements. Whereas Krulik was hopeful about managing the first two types of corruption, he offered many reasons why it is unlikely that corruption in procurement, the judiciary, and the legislative process is going to be reduced in the near future. ¶6. There are many ways of avoiding honest tenders. The competition can be arranged so that only one firm can win. This was the case with the supersonic tender in 2002-3, from which all but one firm dropped out. Administrators can also reject all but one bid, on administrative or procedural grounds - missing a stamp, for example. Finally, Czech laws allow no competition bids. The Army, for example, needn't issue a public call for bids if strategic military equipment, vital for the country's defense, is at stake. However, this clause is used for nearly every purchase the Army makes. Between 1993 and 2003 the Army made more than 700 acquisitions and only nine were put out for public tenders. -------------- NO PATRIOT ACT HERE -------------- ¶7. The state seems reluctant to grant law enforcement authorities additional powers to strengthen their ability to fight corruption. Attorney General Marie Benesova has asked for an additional 50 prosecutors to go after corruption. Justice Minister Pavel Nemec, who is seeking her dismissal (Reftel) has so far refused her request. There is also great sensitivity about the potential for abuse of personal data, and the overuse of wiretaps. The senior opposition party, ODS, tried to rewrite the wiretap law saying that if no criminal case had been opened two months after the wiretaps began, then officials would have to notify the citizen of the wiretap and inform them that they could file a suit against the state for unfairly violating their rights. This proposal was voted down in parliament, but reflects a cultural bias against giving the state too many investigative tools. ¶8. In light of Czech history, in which citizens were under the supervision of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Nazis, and then the Soviets, it is perhaps understandable that many are reluctant to give authorities too much power. In the same vein, citizens feel fewer obligations when it comes to the state and public property. There is even a Czech saying that those who don't steal from the state, cheat their families. -------------- -------------- NO INTEREST IN CONFLICT OF INTEREST LAW EITHER -------------- -------------- ¶9. Czech officials have also dragged their feet on any progress towards passage and implementation of a meaningful conflict of interest law. The first conflict of interest law was passed in 1990. The first time all required individuals filed the mandatory disclosure documents was in 2004, fourteen years later. Nobody was punished or sanctioned for failing to file in all those years. Amendments to strengthen the 1990 law, drafted with the help of Transparency International, would have, among other improvements, altered local election rules. The constitutional court ruled this June that election rules can only be changed with the approval of both houses of parliament. Since the senate vetoed the amendment last year, the country has been left without an effective conflict of interest law. Petr Stepanek, a councilor with the Green Party, a member of the Prague city council anti-corruption commission, and a member of several NGOs promoting transparency and accountability in government, says the most recent proposal on conflict of interest is a bad law. But he also adds, a bad law is better than no law, and therefore he and others, such as Transparency International, will probably support it. ¶10. Stepanek pointed out some of the shortcomings of the proposed bill. First of all, the new bill, like the 1990 bill, doesn't require unpaid members of a city council to disclose anything. Stepanek estimated that in the past &100 percent8 of city officials have simultaneously held down paid positions with commercial firms, usually ones bidding on city contracts. (Stepanek said Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek had five paid positions while in an earlier job in charge of Prague's finances.) In many cities, particularly outside of Prague, a position on the city council is a part-time job. Stepanek argues that corrupt officials can simply make these part-time positions unpaid, and continue to draw handsome salaries and kickbacks from commercial firms doing business with the city governments, all without any obligation to disclose this income. ¶11. In addition, Stepanek explained that the new proposal removes the need for spouses of government officials to disclose their assets. The new proposal will also, in Stepanek,s opinion, not eliminate problems with deals between officials and &close persons,8 meaning relatives,former business contacts and the like. Finally, Stepanek argues that under the 1990 bill, the upper house of parliament kept an eye on the lower house of parliament and vice versa. Under the new bill, each house will police itself, an arrangement that Stepanek feels will lead to few investigations. ¶12. The new proposal passed its first reading in August, 2005, and has been set aside for 90 days of discussion before the second reading. This could take place late in November at the earliest. Stepanek predicted that all the parties in parliament will be against passage of the new proposal. But he felt the senior party in the ruling coalition, CSSD, might be able to score some political points by passing it in the lower house and then sending it to the ODS-led Senate just before the election. He predicted that ODS would then veto it, laying themselves open to criticism on one of the issues they are weakest at, corruption. -------------- -------------- --- A NEW ODS GOVERNMENT WOULD BE UNLIKELY TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM -------------- -------------- -------------- ¶13. When the latest proposal was first introduced, some of its proponents wanted to include members of local governments and family members. ODS, which is expected to garner the most votes in next year's parliamentary elections, reacted by posting on the party's official web site, a note saying ODS was always willing to discuss such a bill, and would be willing to support it, if it didn't ¶lyze the activities of local and regional representatives, or excessively limit personal freedom and the right to privacy, and that the circle of people touched by the bill is reasonable so that family members are not persecuted.8 ¶14. ODS' opponents generally argue that ODS is the party least likely to fight corruption. The argument that is made is that ODS is in charge of 13 of the country's 14 regional governments, and the majority of the country's municipal governments. Since most construction projects take place at the municipal or regional, rather than national level, ODS is in the best position to benefit from overpriced or unnecessary construction projects. ¶15. Further evidence of the ODS position on corruption can be seen in the party's reaction to a Transparency International questionnaire. In the fall of 2002, Transparency International sent six questions to 1025 candidates running for positions in the city councils across Prague. Roughly 30% of the candidates responded to the poll. Each of the five parties with current representation in parliament had 70 candidates running. The Christian Democrats had the most respondents, 28 of 70, followed by the Social Democrats with 22, the Communists with 12, Freedom Union with 10 and ODS with just 1. Three of the parties; The Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Communists, helped Transparency International distribute the questionnaires to their candidates. ODS refused to get involved. -------------- --- EXPOSED DOESN'T MEAN PROSECUTED -------------- -------------- ¶16. Cases of corruption are exposed. But almost without exception, headline grabbing stories quickly die down, or are replaced by the next sensational scandal, and nobody is ever held to account. The following are all stories that ran in the main Czech dailies between June 9 and June 16, 2005. In the three months since then, no arrests have been made or fines levied in connection with these cases. In addition, an internet search shows that no news articles on these scandals ran after the initial wave of publicity. - The Ministry of Defense is looking into a no-bid contract for more than US$80 million that went to an engineering firm run by a former MOD employee. The contract, to destroy old surplus ammunition, was let by the same department the former employee used to be the Director of. In addition, the engineering firm is controlled by Omnipol, the boss of which was for a time paying the rent on the house of the Deputy Defense Minister, who was the supervisor of the former MOD employee. - One of the main national dailies featured front-page photographs of the Justice Minister running a red light and driving the wrong way down the tram tracks to avoid traffic delays. The paper also ran a page two photo spread of the Defense Minister illegally driving on the tram tracks on his way to a vote in parliament. -The Agriculture Minister awarded a grant for $180,000 to help a very small village connect to sewer lines. The Minister's wife's family has owned a rundown spa in the village for years and has been trying to renovate, but can't do so until the facility is connected to the sewer lines. The Minister refused to acknowledge any conflict of interest. The Prime Minister only said that the Agriculture minister was "inexperienced, but not dishonest." - Three members of a committee at the Ministry of the Finance were turned in by a firm from which they requested a payment of US$ 2 million, in exchange for steering contracts towards the firm. - A policeman with responsibility for financial affairs at Prague City Hall resigned after it came to light that he had accepted a US$200,000 loan and an expensive vacation from a crooked soccer boss who had a criminal case pending in Prague. - 159 Czech soldiers serving in Kosovo were caught when they took delivery of two sets of new uniforms, but signed documents saying they only received one set. ¶17. In the late 1990's, the Klaus-led ODS government was brought down by the perceived excesses of a wild-west capitalism. 30 of the 60 existing banks went bankrupt, 700 of the 800 licensed securities dealers had their licenses revoked. This led to the creation of The Unit for Serious and Economic Crimes within the state prosecutor's office. That office takes on any case in which damage to the state is over 50 million Crowns (US$2.2 Million) or the combined damage to individuals is over 100 million Crowns (US$4.4 Million). But prosecution of run of the mill bribery, or abuse of power, is left to lower level district prosecutors, who typically have more than 200 cases to work on, must be in court three to four days a week, and have neither the time, the resources, nor the training to conduct investigations into allegations of corruption. ¶18. The EU,s DG for Legal Affairs published a report on corruption in the Czech republic at the end of 2002. In the conclusion, the report states that &There is an astonishing discrepancy between the generally accepted existence of an environment vulnerable to, and affected by corruption, and the absence of a high number of corruption prosecutions." Little has changed since that report was published. The World Bank publishes an assessment of Governance and Anticorruption every two years. The assessment is a compilation of indices provided by more than a dozen experts and NGOs in each country. The numbers for the Czech Republic reflect a consistent decline in the government's response to the problem over the last ten years. 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 Government Effectiveness 81.6 80.3 74.7 75.1 71.6 Rule of Law 73.5 73.5 72.2 72.4 69.9 Control of Corruption 77.3 72.7 73.1 66.8 66.0 ¶19. In a mature two-party system, such as the one found in the US, each party can keep an eye on the other. But in the Czech Republic, particularly over the last 2 election terms, parties have instead shielded each other. In the current coalition of 101 members in a 200 seat chamber, the coalition can not afford to alienate a single member. In the previous electoral term, the two main parties signed what became known as the opposition agreement and to a large extent split up the spoils. This has opened the door to alternative parties, and to a certain level of protest votes, the main beneficiary of which has so far been the Communist party. That party's web site ran a speech on June 9, 2005 by Karel Klimsa, deputy chair of the party's central committee. In the speech, Klimsa said, "We want to show the voters that we are different, that we have a different morality, that politics for us isn't just a business, that it isn't trafficking with the public interest." -------------- IRRITATED, NOT INCENSED -------------- ¶20. CONCLUSION: In the old days, everyone had to engage in some sort of fiddle just to get by. With the development of a robust market economy, corruption is increasingly becoming the reserve of the politically powerful and their businesscronies. The public resents that. A poll on September 6 found that the one thing that bothered Czechs most was corruption. 83% of respondents said corruption bothered them. A separate poll earlier this summer showed that the Czech public thinks political parties are the most corrupt institutions in the country. This helps explain the popularity of the unreformed communist party, which has not been a part of any post-89 government, and consequently benefits from a significant protest vote. It also offers some hope to the small parties such as the Greens, that couldn't make it over the 5% threshold needed for parliamentary representation in 2002. But the voters don't seem outraged enough to force the parties currently in power into taking meaningful steps to reduce corruption, punish wrongdoers, or throw crooked politicians out of office. In the September 6 poll, only 52% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the political status quo. The fact that corruption is widely acknowledged, yet tolerated, might be the most discouraging news of all. CABANISS