site.btaAdministrative Corruption Is Rampant in Bulgaria -Report

Administrative Corruption Is Rampant in Bulgaria - Report

Sofia, July 4 (BTA) - Administrative corruption in Bulgaria is rampant, a report of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) says. In the last five years it has been increasing, with a peak in 2014, Ruslan Stefanov, Director at CSD, said, adding that Bulgaria is at the same level as countries in the EU pre-accession phase. The statement was made at the Twelfth Anti-Corruption Policy Forum on Monday, presenting the CSD Corruption Assessment Report titled "State Capture Unplugged: Countering Administrative and Political Corruption in Bulgaria".

The level of corruption is so systematic that it is already being perceived as normal. Corruption is not a matter of "several bad eggs". According to CSD, there is no political will to deal with the problem and efforts should focus on restart of the control systems.

Rampant administrative corruption in the country is indicative not only of violations by public officials in their dealings with business and members of the public. Such a situation is exacerbated by high levels of political corruption - that is, high prevalence of corrupt transactions perpetrated by management level public officials and elected politicians. Typically, corrupt transactions occurring at the various levels of the institutions of public governance are generally congruous and precipitate each other. In the last decade, there has been increased attention to a type of bundles of corruption transactions commonly referred to as 'state capture'. This refers to the practice of powerful (mostly business) players capable of acquiring preferential treatment through complex corruption deals and other violations of the law. They achieve this by steering government policies towards furthering their private benefit rather than the public good.

Over 60 per cent of the respondents in a national representative survey of the results of anti-corruption measures for traffic police at the beginning of this year, however, said that they are already giving results, Stefanov pointed out.

In such a context, there are imperative - that is, both urgent and profound - reforms that need to be placed on the immediate anticorruption agenda of the country. These are intended to tackle simultaneously administrative corruption and 'state capture', the report says. Recurring problems in the work of regulatory, enforcement and inspections institutions indicate that they function highly ineffectively and are captured by political-business networks. Here comes the necessity of establishing an independent anticorruption prosecution. Such a specialized independent body would investigate and prosecute the most serious cases of corruption. The new entity should include prosecutors and - in order to ensure its independence from the executive and the judiciary - they should be recruited, employed and dismissed based on specific rules and procedures, different form the rules and procedures of the judiciary.

President Rosen Plevneliev, who attended the forum, said he supports the new anti-corruption law and appealed to the political forces to prove that anti-corruption is a priority. He also denounced the various forms of corruption.

Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva, in turn, said that anti-corruption legislation cannot resolve problems but it has to be applied with determination and the public considers it imperative. Of all anti-corruption authorities, the Bulgarian Criminal Asset Forfeiture Commission has achieved the best results and will make the functioning of the new law very effective, she added. In her opinion, the law is not wanted by Brussels but by the Bulgarian public.