Organized Crime, Corruption and Politics

Sunday, October 9, 2011, 21.00–22.30, New Stage, National Theatre

In cooperation with Open Society Fund Prague

 

Monika Ladmanová, Chair of the Board, Open Society Fund, Czech Republic

 

Peter Eigen, Founder, Transparency International, Germany

Yakov Gilinsky, Professor of Criminology, Herzen State Pedagogical University, Russia

Norman L. Eisen, Ambassador to the Czech Republic, USA

José María Argueta, Former National Security Advisor, Guatemala

Karel Randák, Former Director General, Office for Foreign Relations and Information, Czech Republic

 

 

The panel discussed how corruption affects the state, and the effective ways of dealing with it. Monika Ladmanová noted that “corruption is a dangerous phenomenon for democracy today.”

 

Peter Eigen began the discussion by defining corruption as the abuse of public power for private gain, noting that Transparency International (TI) recently broadened the definition to also cover corruption in the private sector. He highlighted the role of TI in reframing corruption from a generally accepted social phenomenon into an issue to be addressed by governments and the international community.

 

Ambassador Eisen reflected on his experience in the White House and the Obama Administration by outlining a theory of anticorruption, which in his view should focus on six specific legislative instruments, including regulation of campaign finance, provisions for financial disclosure of public figures, and whistleblower protections.

 

Next, Professor Yakov Gilinsky provided another perspective on Mr. Eisen’s view by pointing out that in Russia legal provisions and transparency only have limited effect, as corruption is embedded in virtually all institutions, a situation he dubbed “total corruption”. Even when evidence of corruption is made public, “the power structures simply do not react.”

 

José María Argueta pointed out that the analysis of corruption is incomplete unless we “probe the connections between organized crime and economic elites”. When we attempt to build a democratic infrastructure on a flawed economic basis, the result is state capture by corrupted economic elites, as seen in the case of Guatemala.

 

Lastly, Karel Randák argued that “the personal and moral integrity of the elites is even more important” than institutional frameworks, concluding that “the level of corruption in the public sphere is directly connected to the moral standards of the elite of the country in question.”