Flag of Romania
Flag of Bulgaria
With the Georgian-Russian War dominating this blog for the past week, I have neglected the topic of corruption.
Recall that in the middle of summer, the EU released a critical report on the performance of Romania and Bulgaria, its two newest members. It wasn’t just words though. Although both Bucharest and Sofia were chastised, Bulgaria received a concrete punishment (i.e. 500 million euros were frozen until evidence of reform against corruption), while Romania was merely admonished and urged to do the same.
And what method do you think worked better?
Well, a month after the report, Romania fired its anticorruption prosecutor (see a concise summary by Julien Frisch). That was bad, because the guy was apparently doing his job well. The president doesn’t want another prosecutor to be named until after the elections in the Fall - hmm…not very urgent are we? And then the person that is most likely to be nominated has much closer ties to the government than the prosecutor who got fired. So in conclusion, it seems that the EU monitoring report by simply admonishing Bucharest did the country and its people a big disfavor (oh and yeah, the EU taxpayers too).
Did Bulgaria fare any better? Just maybe, Southeast European Times reported the following story today (excerpts):
The Bulgarian government approved a series of measures Thursday (August 7th) to address problems and shortcomings in the management of EU funds and to fight organised crime and corruption…The 200-page action plan adopted by the Bulgarian cabinet last week details the specific measures the country will take by the end of this year.
These include compiling a list of people and companies proven to have violated EU rules or being investigated for fraud by September 15th and increasing the staff of key agencies handling European funds by the end of December. In addition, new independent audits of the two agencies that lost accreditation are due by September 10th and a report detailing all cases of irregularity and fraud in the management of EU funding is expected by September 23rd…
…a new specialised unit dealing with organised crime will operate within the interior ministry by September 15th. These and other steps listed in the document seek to improve the interaction among the ministry, the State Agency on National Security (SANC) and prosecutors.
Apparently all of this was done a fortnight after the EU funds were frozen. Now before we praise Bulgaria, we still need to see if these legal changes will be implemented and will have any effect on the state of corruption and for that matter organized crime, but Sofia’s actions are much more encouraging than those observed in Bucharest.
And further NORTH…
Flag of Ukraine
While the Caucasus was once again embroiled in war, Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVS) in concert with the Bureau Against Organized Crime (BzOZ) made two stunning arrests.
First, the MVS caught (ukr) a highly placed public official at the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MNS) when he was taking a bribe in the amount of over 465,000 hryvnias (UAH) or about 100,000 dollars (USD). The bribe was intended to secure the signature of the corrupt public servant.
Second, upon learning that some public officials demanded bribes for expedited and favorable ecology reports, the MVS documented (ukr) this abuse of public office on August 13th. An employee at the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Ukraine (MONPSU) was caught accepting a bribe in the amount of 70,000 hryvnias or about 15,135 dollars in return for conducting an ecological appraisal of an object located in Kyiv oblast.
I wonder if actions such as these will get much press time, but they should. In order to successfully combat corruption, not only actual practice, but perceptions of corruption reality must be altered. Hopefully the above are not singular examples, but part of a larger pattern upholding the rule of law.
