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TI report: Corruption at new highs last year Corruption has spread significantly in the past year, in the context of fierce political battles which also involved institutions in charge of fighting the phenomenon. published in issue 3939 page 2 at 2007-05-25 BUCHAREST - "We can put it like this: in the last year, the patient with cancer lay on the operating table and around him, surgeons fought over methods and procedures of plastic surgery," the Executive Director of Transparency International Romania, Victor Alistar said yesterday at the launch of the institution's Global Report on Corruption. The chapter on Romania focuses on events that took place between April 2006 and March this year but also on law changes of other anti-corruption methods implemented in this period, Mediafax reported. The document shows that the level of corruption has increased in the past year, in the context of a troubled political stage. "Given the fact that anti-corruption institutions were involved in the political fight and that decision-makers left aside the implementation of extant laws, corruption in Romania remained at the same levels and even spread to new directions," the author of the report on Romania, Iuliana Cospanaru, added. The TI report was not designed to set up a ranking of most corrupt countries or of most corrupt fields of activities, but rather to set a "diagnostic" of the corruption in Romania. The representatives of the organisation analysed several surveys and press materials and reached the conclusion that Romanians basically perceive corruption the same as in previous years. The most vulnerable areas remain public administration and the legal system, the report says. IT also criticised the National Anti-corruption Department for failing to obtain relevant court sentences in high-level corruption cases. "There are two variants here: either the files are not investigated properly or the courts deliberately give extremely light sentences for high-level corruption, compared to the verdicts generally made for cases of forgery, for instance," said Alistar. Less corruption in the police force TI however underlines that some progress has been made in the monitored period. "We were surprised to find that in the police there is a lower degree of corruption than before," said the TI director. The report also welcomed the recent passage of the law for the creation of the National Integrity Agency (ANI) by Parliament, although this did not happen in the monitored period. "We are now waiting for the law to be enforced. We can say, as in previous years, that, leaving aside the legislative aberrations the Romanian Parliament commits, the legislation includes several provisions which could actually improve the situation, but they are not applied," said Alistar. The report urges Romanian authorities to unite criminal legislation. "We have three criminal codes at the moment: the one in force, the one that was adopted but which was not yet enforced and the one proposed by the Justice Ministry," said Alistar. He added that authorities should settle on one variant and that this new criminal code should be accompanied by a criminal procedure code in order to have a clear judiciary practice in this sector. Moreover, Alistar insisted on the adoption of a law that would establish the concept of ethics adviser and on the correct implementation of existing procedures. "If we apply the laws we have now correctly and non-discriminatively and if we avoid dragging state institutions into political battles which should not have anything to do with these institutions' activity, we would see that things would improve significantly and quickly," he said. The TI Global Report on Corruption 2007 is the sixth analysis of the kind that the organisation has put together and especially focuses on corruption among magistrates and in courts of justice. The document tries to put the finger on the phenomenon of corruption within the legal system and to analyse the political, economic and social pressures put on the system. The document also includes analyses of corruption cases in the legal system and their effects, along with evaluations of general efforts to combat the phenomenon and recommendations for a more efficient anti-corruption fight. Previously, TI reports focused on corruption in the health care system (2006), post-war reconstruction efforts (2005), politics (2004) and access to information (2003). The first report of the organisation, in 2001, was a global analysis of corruption everywhere in the world. by Alecs Iancu <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (C) 2000-2005 Nine o'Clock ---------------------------- Vali "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of greatness." (Carlo Goldoni) "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." (Jimi Hendrix)
