03. April 08
Today, on 3 April, the Government approved the anti-corruption strategy for 2008-2012 which concentrates on preventing corruption in private sector, healthcare and political party financing.
According to Mari-Liis Sööt, the Director of the Criminal Statistics and Analysis Division of the Ministry of Justice and the coordinator of the strategy development, the vastness of the problem of corruption in the private sector becomes evident in the fact that 34% of Estonian entrepreneurs would be filling to bribe a public official in order to win in a public procurement. “For example, if two entrepreneurs agree on prices with each other and thus distort competition, we have a case of private sector corruption. It is also a case of corruption when an employee in charge of buying raw materials agrees without the management board or the owners knowing of the price of the raw materials with the producer and both gain benefit,” explained Sööt.
“Until now informing and training activities have been mostly targeted at public servants, less attention has been targeted at private sector. Our objective is to inform entrepreneurs of the legislative amendments, relevant studies and to plan together the steps to be taken for the prevention of fraud and corruption in the private sector," Sööt explained.
Another major problem is corruption in healthcare where the main issues are the relations between the health care professionals and pharmaceuticals companies and the patients’ unofficial payments to the doctors for services which are supposed to be free of charge. “For example, there are problems with the waiting lists, and the overly lenient issue of certificates and sick leave certificates. The improvement of the awareness of the health care professionals and service recipients should decrease the number of such cases of corruption,” Sööt said.
The strategy also concentrates on the problem of political party financing. “At present, the competence of the Riigikogu select committee on application of the Anti-corruption Act has been defined in a very limited way in the Political Parties Act and the elections act. The committee has no jurisdiction to inspect the financing of political parties outside the context of the election campaign and the donation report. They also lack powers with the help of which to exercise efficient supervision, for example they have no administrative coercive measures to enforce their orders,” Sööt outlined the problems connected with the monitoring of political party financing.
“The cases existing in our everyday life which give rise to doubts as regards the existence of corruptive relations, but which have not been investigated at all or in case of which the investigation has been tangled because of the lack of efficient supervision possibilities, are an indication of the insufficient monitoring of political party financing. An effective course of action here would be the restructuring of the work of the select committee and the amendment of the existing work methods. Clearer rules and more effective monitoring of party financing will help to avoid the violation of financing rules and the problems related to the timely publication of donation reports and annual reports,” Mari-Liis Sööt added.
The anti-corruption strategy Honest State 2004-2007 ended with the year 2007 and the programme of the government programme for 2007-2011 prescribes that the government will renew its anti-corruption strategy in 2007. The study on corruption (2007) conducted by the Ministry of Finance points to several problems to which the strategy in question offers a solution.
The parties involved in preparing the strategy were the representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Finance, State Chancellery, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Social Affairs, Security Police Board, Police Board, Public Prosecutor's Office, Health Care Board, Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, University of Tartu, Estonian Motor Vehicle Registration Centre, Finnish Ministry of Justice, Competition Board, Riigikogu select committee on application of the Anti-corruption Act and non-profit association Transparency International Estonia. The implementation of the strategy was coordinated by the Ministry of Justice.
The new anti-corruption strategy and the report of the anti-corruption strategy Honest State for 2004-2007 are available here:
