COMMENTARY: By Volodymyr Hrytsutenko, Lviv, Ukraine
Published by the "UKRAINE REPORT" 2004, Number 22
Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, February 9, 2004, Article Two

The fact that Ukraine's national soccer team takes 61st place down the UEFA football association's world ratings list has had no traceable impact on the lives of its residents. The fact that, according to Transparency International, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world backlashes every day at millions of its nationals.

It seems logical to assume that petty corruption is a by-product of grand corruption, and that the saying 'a fish becomes to rot at its head' properly describes its genesis. Even in poverty-ridden Ukraine, where the temptation to make money easily is so enticing to underpaid and impoverished Ukrainians, many an official would definitely keep his greed in check if he knew that his superiors are honest and dedicated civil servants.

Unsurprisingly, knowing about so many millions of bucks that former premier Pavlo Lazarenko walked away with or seeing posh homes of officials that pale their wildest dreams, official small-fry hurry to make up for lost time, squeezing Ukrainians dry of their meagre salaries and savings.

Similar to the rust that immobilizes a machine, widespread petty corruption has taken a mortal grip on the lives of salary-supported employees, students and pensioners. Given the downtrodden and servile nature of Ukrainians who would rather take it down than protest any wrongdoing, many of the victims of corruption would sooner indulge, in an effort to survive, in the same corrupt practices than decry deliberately criminal running of the country by the incumbent regime.

BREEDING GROUNDS OF PETTY CORRUPTION

Petty corruption accompanies Ukrainians along the whole span of their lives, and its main areas are public housing and utility maintenance companies [zhecks], hospitals, education, law enforcement, courts, registration offices, inspections and, finally, cemeteries.

ZHEKS: All those working in public housing maintenance and utility companies, managers, technicians, propyska (residence) registrars, plumbers, electricians, etc. thrive on corruption. Sometimes extortion of bribes borders on blackmail - pay if you want a leaking roof or pipe fixed. Many senior Ukrainians were driven to take tranquilizer drugs after visits to zheks. A way-out can be suing zheks in court, but only the bravest will risk a multi-month and nerve-racking litigation.

HOSPITALS: You have better pay your way in community hospitals, unless you want to be met with open neglect. In case of a surgery, money changes hands typically after an operation. Only the most corrupt doctors charge their patients before. But the emergence of private clinics and commercial wards in state-subsidized hospitals, where doctors and nurses are better paid, gradually curbs this kind of malfeasance.

In this context, preserving the existing free but low-funded health care system generates more corruption and is a clear disservice to the populace. The government has to chose between the alternative of having stinking and disgracefully rundown communal hospitals or budgeting more money to treat the poorest.

EDUCATION: Here, petty corruption takes various forms, with bribes for giving higher grades at entrance exams enabling applicants to enroll in universities predominating. Such bribes are typically given to high-ranking university officials prior to exams. In the course of studies, many undedicated students, instead of hitting the books, can pay their way through the university by oiling the palms of their professors. Only rarely are there honest and non-corrupt academics that can give lazy students a really rough ride.

Interestingly, students are pretty fair in their anonymous assessments of professors, giving the demanding ones, not the corrupt, the highest ratings. Another form of petty corruption is exorbitant fees charged by members of examination boards for tutoring would-be applicants. It is a thriving business, with fees ranging from $10 to $30 per lesson, depending on tutor's position on the examination board and access to exam test papers.

However, with the spread of commercial universities, this kind of corruption is giving way to a more transparent, although definitely discriminatory as regards poorer Ukrainians, way of getting education. To level the chances for the young, the government must implement a system of free-interest credits accessible to all, possibly, writing them off to grade A students after graduation.

Numerous registration bodies and gas, electricity, water, fire, sanitary, tax, land, forest inspections, provide a fertile grazing ground for corrupt officials. One of the shenanigans used by officials is to create their own procedures (that in many cases run counter to the law!) - with the sole purpose of piling up additional roadblocks for customers to extort money.

It took me three weeks of endless waiting lines in tax administration offices to register as a one-man business. It took me six weeks to cancel my registration. I even had to visit a police unit that keeps registrar of company seals and stamps for a clearance, although it was written in black and white in my patent that I am not a legal entity and cannot bear a stamp or seal.

ROAD POLICE: Road police are among the champions of corruption, probably, because their victims are more or less well-heeled Ukrainians and the deserted road, unlike the crowded office, is a safer place for extorting or passing a bribe, with rates of pay-offs depending on a car's make and price as well as gravity of the offense. This is a story I would not have believed, had it not been told me by my neighbor, a serious businessman, who is not given to kidding.

He got into a car accident driving his brand-new $18,000 Opel in the countryside. He was sure he had the right-of-way, but when two days later he went to the place of the accident with his lawyer, he found the traffic signs and road markings changed! Needless to say that this swindle must have required a huge bribe - to make the road police look the other way.

CEMETERY: A 50-dollar payola will buy a better burial place for bereaved families at the cemetery. A $10 one will speed things up (digging a grave in winter may take from several hours to several days plus a lot of nerve-racking - if the bribe has not been paid ). Burials at elite cemeteries cost a fortune and involve paying-off high-ranking city council officials.

GENE OF CORRUPTION

A way of life for Ukrainians, corruption has worked its way into our genetic system. A medical professor, to whom I sold my garage, came to negotiate a sale, bringing along a bottle of cognac and a box of chocolates, a briber's kit, with champagne as a variation for women. When I tried to skip the bribe, he accused me, believe it or not, of defying international etiquette!

My life-long buddy from high-school days, another medical professor of international renown, for whom I sometimes translate brief letters never comes to me without the proverbial kit. The procedure of giving, or, to be more precise, forcing the kit upon me typically takes place in the hall before he leaves. Many years I put up resistance but my buddy is so pushing that I am afraid our relationship will be spoiled if I do not accept his "friendly" gifts. Incidentally, when I go to him for his advice, I never bring the kit - and he does not mind!

Once I learned about a high-profile corruption case in the United States when a sheriff was charged (and eventually dismissed from the force) for replacing the new wheels of an impounded automobile for his son's old ones.

I bet, many a policeman in Ukraine would laugh after hearing about such a "trifle" violation of the law. Many here get away with much more flagrant crimes - because their seniors in government offices escape the rap easily, even in the face of expository articles in the media.

Corrupt officials readily resort to lies to mislead customers, trying to confuse things for them in order to extort a larger bribe. When I went to a local zhek to register my wife and myself at our new address, the official told me they could not and would not do it as the condo I moved to had not been registered with a local zhek. Unruffled, I took a sheet of paper, wrote an application for registration and gave it to the official, asking him to put down precisely why he couldn't register me, saying I would go to superior offices. You should have seen his reaction - he refused to put what he just said in writing and sign. A week later he called to ask me angrily why I had been taking time with registration.

When I once came to the army registration office, vijskkomat, to get a transcript of my service file to upscale my pension 25 minutes before closing time, a disgruntled official told me she had to leave as she had been summoned by her chief. Later on I saw her put on her coat and leave the office. Had I paid a 5-hryvnia bribe, she would have been all honey and smiles, and I would have had the document in my pocket.

Ukrainians have become so much corrupt that bribe-extortion is no longer perceived as a crime against society. Moreover, many are led to believe by the regime that it is the only possible way of life. Result: company of corrupt states down on the Transparency International list.

WAYS-OUT

There is no denying that even the most advanced democracies are susceptible to corruption, as the lure to make quick money easily finds its culprits among the weak. Still, the maxim that every man has his price has been successfully challenged by numerous representatives in democratic and far from democratic societies.

Like the virus always ready to attack the weak, corruption must be tackled with reliable cleansing procedures. International practice has worked out such cleansing kit, with transparency of official procedures, accountability of officials and decent pay at the backdrop of political will of the country's rulers, strong civil society, independent judiciary and free press being the cornerstones of all successful campaigns to fight malfeasance of government officials.

Unfortunately, Ukraine has a long way to go - at least to qualify for a state where something is done to curb corruption. Our hypocritical regime, on the one hand, engages in anti-corruption rhetoric and launches innumerable anti-corruption committees and campaigns, while doing everything to preserve the good old murky waters, with the other.

There are many in the present leadership structure in Ukraine who are trying to corrupt the population to the extreme in an effort to make us believe that there is no option but to go corrupt and run with the pack. As law enforcement has become a feeding trough for corrupt officials, small wonder enrollments in police academies beat once-prestigious applied sciences or humanities.

The result of such a purposefully malicious practice of running the country is too obvious - more dishonest and servile Ukrainians, who fear the authorities, hate anyone richer than themselves and perceive life as the process of wresting money from their compatriots by ignoble means.

Some leaders in the present administration axed the proposal to raise ministerial salaries from their alleged mind-blowing monthly average of UAH380 ($71), a gesture which, in fact, qualifies for nothing but a mere crowd pleaser: no one, let alone a minister, can live decently on a meager $70 salary, unless one has alternative revenue. Instead of paying lip-service to the needs of the have-nots, leaders could do better by switching to effective ways of running the country to raise meager salaries and pensions of grassroots Ukrainians. Has anyone ever counted how much of the public money has been spent on posh limos, offices, dachas, foreign trips of Ukrainian officials?

The virus of corruption whose existence has been admitted for the umpteenth time by the country's chief executive when he launched yet another anti-corruption campaign on Jan. 29, is no longer just a virus. The virus has led to a full-sized cancer tumor which requires radical (revolutionary) surgery. It would be stupid to assume that most of those in the present leadership can do the job: does a dragon kill itself?

There is possibly a more plausible reason behind the administrations new anti-corruption campaign. Using the pretext of a crusade against malfeasance and organized crime, they wants to unleash armies of pocket tax inspectors and police headed this time by the security service on the opposition politicians and businessmen and journalists who support them.

The first ominous signs of the master plan are already here - snubbing PACE protests about the unlawful approval of dubious constitutional changes opening the way for a third term, the proposed censorship of the Internet and the closure on the opposition Silski Visti newspaper, to name a few.

Beating their breasts at international forums, Ukrainian leaders boast about the country's exemplary anti-corruption laws, naively suggesting that no one will ever ask why they do not work.