Thumann, Jurgen R

Bribe the Cancer, can we decelerate its spread?

In my recent discussions with a few investors who came back from Ethiopia, I have sensed common frustrations, bribes. It is true that the Ethiopian economy is heading to the right direction. When it comes to investing and opening a business, the sky is the limit. As more business opportunities are opening for the public, the corruptions in private and governmental offices are taking different shapes.

One of the investors said that you must have enough money to bribe someone or must know somebody in a key position. If this is true, then a “fair playing field” is not created for public. Corruptions and bribes can affect the growth of the promising economic. People with the right skills and knowledge can be blocked from participating because of someone’s ability to influence officials with money and acquaintances. Are there any mechanisms that help us reduce corruptions and bribes? Before indulging too much, understanding the difference between corruptions and bribes is very important. A corrupt official does not necessarily mean, he is prune to bribes. It could mean that the person abuses his power unnecessarily and favors his relatives or the people that he likes. Bribe is a branch of corruption whereby an official gives preferential treatment to the briber. In this article, I will focus on bribe rather than on corruption as it is too broad in scope.

What is a bribe? Why are people easily tempted by it? What are the driving forces behind it? What governmental organizations are highly affected and possibly infected by it? Is it embedded in our culture? What actions should we take to reduce the impact of bribery?

According to the Oxford dictionary[1], a bribe is an “abuse of public office for private gain.” When an official accepts money, favor, or gifts, he/she is abusing the authority of his/her office for personal gain. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines bribe as

“[an] offering, promising or giving of something in order to influence a public official in the execution of his/her official duties. Bribes can take the form of money, other pecuniary advantages, such as a membership in an exclusive club or a promise of a scholarship for a child, or non-pecuniary advantages, such as favorable publicity.”[2]

Why are people easily tempted by it? It is an easy and illegal means of getting rich. The briber induces the receiver to commit a wrongful act. In return, the briber profits from illegal contract awards; circumvents the system to skip the waiting in line; gets free and unimpeded access to highly positioned officials; hangs with those officials to intimidate others; and so on. The ultimate motive of bribery is to get oneself rich; a short cut to an infamous financial success.

What are the driving forces to the act of bribery? Expectation of our society, low remunerations, and greedy businessmen and officials, and peer pressures are the driving forces. There is an Amharic adage, “Sishom yalbela sishar ykochewal.” In English, “If you fail to enrich yourself while in power, you shall regret later.” It can be implied from the adage that our society expects officials to abuse their power in order to enrich themselves; therefore, bribe is taken as a norm of doing business. Greedy businessmen know that bribing someone is illegal, but they do it because officials on the receiving end directly or indirectly demands it or they believe that bribing officials is OK to advance themselves ahead of the law abiding businessmen. At times, the receiver considers that accepting a bribe is a norm, especially, when there are no serious consequences to the act of bribery. As humans, we may have greedy nature in us. The amount of bribe can affect our judgment, integrity, ethical values, and self-pride. Once these values are broken, it becomes difficult to regain them. The receiver may become addicted to the bribe. The low monthly salaries paid to officials are the most common driving forces among low-ranking officials. Nowadays, salaries are not enough to cover the cost of living; therefore, some officials may resort to other illegal means to feed their families. The other driving force is a peer pressure. For example, let’s take two officials (“A” and “B”) with the same family compositions and the same salaries. “A” lives beyond his means: living in a villa and driving an expensive car. “B” barely survives. “B”s families and friends may exert too much pressure on him to do whatever “A” is doing no matter how illegal; that is peer pressure. If “B” losses his job for some reasons, I believe “B” becomes the laughing stock of the people that he loves because he has not lived to their expectations; therefore, they may sing to him “Sishom yalbela sishar ykochewal.”

Is bribery embedded in our culture? I believe it is becoming our culture. For instance, some of us believe that by promising a gift to an Angels, we ask something in return. Though this is sensitive religious matter, the fact is, we are bribing an Angel. If that is the case, then the message is what is wrong bribing a person? It is not only embedded in our culture but also in some of our religious beliefs, even though the Bible says the opposite otherwise. Please read Exodus 23:8, Proverb 15:17, and Isaiah 5:23.

Exodus 23:8, And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.

Proverbs 15:27,whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live

Further more, the Bible condumens authorities who do not prosecute the people guilty of accepting and giving bribes.

Isaiah 5:23, Who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!

Furthermore, “Sheria” the Islamic law prohibits bribery. According to Dr. Ahmed Refaat Khafagi, the Islamic law consists of three punishable crime acts[i]: ‘qisas’, ‘huddud’, and ‘ta’azir’. Bribery is a “ta’azir” crime punishable by the discretion of a judge. He added that

“Proof of the prohibition on bribery is taken from the Koran and the Sunna and the consensus of jurists. It has been related that the Prophet said "God curses the briber, the bribed and the intermediary between the two of them".[ii]

Even though the Bible and Koran curses bribery, no single country in the world is free from bribery but the extent and the prevalence of it is what makes one country worse than the others. I am not advocating that we should accept bribe as a norm of world culture but to reiterate that it is a cancer that is hard to cure. Realistically, in any shape or form bribe is here to stay. Then, if we cannot remove it, can we at least reduce it before it further contaminates our society?

In a country where the economic boom has no end in sight, bribery is prevalent in the area of IT expansions, infrastructure, and building constructions. The recent example is the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation where millions of dollars are wasted[iii]. I am not talking about the petty bribes such as a bribe given to a traffic officer but the one that could have significant impact in our economic development. Even though the petty bribes are not acceptable, they can easily be reducede if those officers are fairly compensated. Tax payers pay the government so that it can provide services such as security, education, roads, and others essential public services. Government contracts funded by tax payers should be awarded to bidders based on price, integrity, experience, quality, and capacity. Contracts that are granted to businesses who can afford to pay hefty bribes are unfair and are tantamount to breaking the public trust. Not only that but also awarding contracts to incompetent persons could increase the tax payers’ Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as a result of inferior quality of work or unable to complete the work on time.

A number of countries have attempted to fight bribery for centuries. At times the name “bribery” is replaced with “lobbying”, the other times, government bureaucrats failed to walk-the-walk once they are elected in office, and last but not least the very people who are selected to fight bribery become infected by it.

Actions to reduce the act of bribery, includes, but not limited to,

1. “If possible and economically feasible, staff should be rotated on a regular basis in corruption-susceptible operational areas.”[3]

2. Rotate high level ministerial positions every few years. Rotation of Ministerial position apart from reducing corruption, increases the aggregate knowledge capital of ministers.

3. Remunerate employees fairly to avoid petty bribes.

4. Monitor the wealth of officials. For instance, high level officials or officials who are in positions of awarding contracts must have their wealth registered at the time of starting their positions and every few years, for instance. The accumulation of wealth must be tracked and proved to be legal.

5. Officials or their immediate families must not accept any gifts from customers or contractors no matter how small the gifts are.

6. Establish an anti-corruption force that is empowered to detain and arrest suspected corrupt official. This force must be fully supported financially, logistically, and politically. This force is established and time will show its effectiveness.

7. Develop rules on ethical conduct for governmental departments.

8. Encourage and reward “whistle blowers”. Most of all “whistle blowers” must be provided a full protection from possible physical and psychological harassment. “Whistle blowers” can be awarded 10-20% of the confirmed bribe, for instance.

8. If the bribed and the briber are found to be guilty, the court must order them to relinquish any or all profits gained from the illegal activity.

9. The government must sign bilateral, trilateral, or other agreements with various foreign governments such as the USA, Canada, EU, and China to cooperate on disclosing the bank accounts of convicted criminals of bribery and misappropriation of tax payer’s money. Derg officials who embezzled millions of dollars from poor Ethiopians and living comfortably in the West are a few reasons why our government must sign an irrevocable agreement with foreign countries to assist Ethiopia in fighting corruptions.

11. Thumann, Jurgen R. recommends that a “[d]ecisive action in support of anticorruption measures must begin with senior management.”[4] This action sends a strong signal to lower ranking officials.

12. There should not be any tolerance to bribery. A bribe is a bribe whether it is one or a million dollar. We must however distinguish between a bribe and tips for people who work in service industries such us hotels, restaurants, and tourism. The focus, for now, should be on government awarded contracts and services.

13. The government must take the initiative to educate the public the illegal act of bribery and its consequences. People who are convicted of bribery (giving or receiving) should be exposed to the public through various medium. These would make others think twice before committing an act of bribery. The public must be educated that they have equal right under the law to participate on any governmental contracts and they should not encourage bribe to win the bid.

14. Our government should stop awarding contracts to foreign companies that consider bribes as “tax deductible expenses” in their countries. An OECD acknowledged in its policy brief on fighting bribes and corruptions that,

“the bribery of foreign public officials has been accepted as a normal cost of doing business by many OECD countries. Companies doing business with foreign countries often claim that they must pay bribes in order to be favorably considered for the awarding of contracts.”[5]

Therefore, if there are any foreign companies that believe on bribing someone to win governmental contracts, they should be considered illegal players of the game and barred from engaging in any future bids. These would discourage other foreign contractors from committing similar illegal deeds.

Moreover, the Anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) listed countries who are least and most prepared to pay bribes to win contracts in developing countries. For instance, India, China, Russia, Turkey, and Taiwan are the most prepared while Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Austria, and Canada are the least prepared to pay bribes[iv]. With all due respect to Chinese and Indian foreign investors, our government must pay due attention on contracts awarded to the countries that are most prepared to pay bribes.

15. The decisive commitment of the government and the full genuine participation of the public are essential in stopping the spread of “BRIBE”.

16. Businesses should be encouraged to secretly expose officials who are addicted to bribe. Those businesses should also be protected from any possible systematic reprisal by other officials.

17. The government should device a means to monitor the anti-corruption force’s activity to ensure that the force is performing its expected duty. In highly bribe sensitive areas, it is expected of the anti-corruption force to produce something unless the force itself is corrupted.

18. Illegal political contributions or deferred bribe that will be due after a politician is out of the office should be followed.

19. Systematic bribes through a third party or through a relative oversees must be scrutinized. I believe that systematic bribes are widely practiced in the Western world. The allegation of the ex-PM of Canada, Brian Mulroney, accepting a kickback from armored vehicle deals[6] is one example.

20. Our great Christian and Islam religious leaders have God given religious obligations to teach the word of God that the Bible and the Koran prohibits the act of bribery.

As citizens, we must assist our public officials to relief their duties with high integrity and professionalism by participating in the fight to reduce corruption and bribery. We have citizenry obligation to expose any corrupt official by cooperating with anti-corruption forces. We should open our eyes and ears for a fair and equal opportunity that our country is providing us. No one is above any other citizen because of his/her ability to bribe someone. Most of all, it is the duty of our government to pay due attention to this cancer and allocate sufficient budget to fight it. Citizens must be given easy phone, mail/email, or other access to facilitate and accelerate the fight against corruption. Bribery is not something that we can eradicate in a few years, it is a long term project that requires undivided attention of the public and the government. For now, to remove the potential roadblocks to our economic development, we must strengthen the anti-corruption fighting forces. A western adage says, “shit rolls downhill”; that means change starts from the top. The ruling party, to its credit, showed its commitment to fight corruptions by prosecuting the most powerful member of its party such as the ex-PM of Ethiopia, Tamirat Layne[v]. I believe that educating the public and taking decisive actions against people who participate in bribery are essentail, particularly, in this booming Ethiopian economic.

Haile B.

04/07/08

[2] Policy Brief: The fight against bribe and corruption. Retrieved on April 3, 2008 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/1918235.pdf.

[5] Policy Brief: The fight against bribe and corruption. Retrieved on April 3, 2008 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/1918235.pdf.

[6]CBS News: Mulroney deal wasn't Airbus kickback, says Schreiber http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/12/04/schreiber-arrival.html