“Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it’s set a rolling it must increase” -Charles Caleb Colton.
LIYA THOMAS
Corruption comes in many shapes and sizes; and it occurs in every civilization, and in every country in the world. Corruption is an abuse of entrusted power or position for private gain. It involves bribery and dishonest behavior or use of one’s public office for personal benefit or benefit of a group of people rather than for public interest or common good. Corruption places private economic interest over public interest. Corruption no more shocks us: it is common to see public servants demanding or taking money or favors in exchange of services, politicians misusing public money or granting public jobs and contacts to their sponsors, friends and families, or corporations bribing officials to get lucrative deals.
Political or administrative corruption not only leads to the misallocation of resources, but it also affects the manner in which decisions are made. Political corruption is the manipulation of the political institutions and the rules of procedure, and therefore it influences the institutions of government and the political system, and it frequently leads to institutional decay. Political or administrative corruption is when laws and regulations are more or less systematically abused by the rulers, side-stepped, ignored, or even tailored to fit their interests.
Corruption affects societies and individuals politically, socially, environmentally, and economically. Politically, it refuses a nation its freedom and rule of law. Socially, it stops people’s participation and trust in government. Environmentally, it denies people’s chance for a healthy environment and sustainable future. Economically, it skews people’s opportunity to develop and grow wealth. There are different types of corruption.
Bribery
It is an act of dishonestly persuading someone to act in one’s favor by payment or other inducement. There are many equivalent terms to bribery, like kickbacks, gratuities, sweeteners, pay-offs, and grease money. These are payments needed or demanded to make things pass swifter, smoother or more favourably through the state bureaucracy. By greasing palms corporations and business interests can buy for instance political favours and escape the full burden of taxation and environmental regulations, or buy protected markets and monopolies.
Embezzlement
It is an act to steal, misdirect or misappropriate funds or assets placed in one’s trust or under one’s control. It is direct stealing of public fund. Embezzlement is when a state official steals from the public institution in which he his employed, and from resources he is supposed to administer on behalf of the state and the public. However, disloyal employees in private firms can also embezzle money and other resources from their employers.
The general public is deprived when public funds are embezzled, but no individual property is stolen, and thus individual citizens will have no legal right to present themselves as forfeited. This points to one of the dangers of embezzlement. There will have to be a political will as well as an independent judiciary and a legal capacity in order to clamp down on embezzlement. There have been cases of large numbers of former state enterprises have been handed over to friends and family of ministers and presidents, for symbolic sums of money and in the name of privatisation.
Fraud
It is an act of intentionally and dishonestly deceiving someone in order to gain unfair or illegal advantage. It is a broader legal and popular term that covers more than bribery and embezzlement. It is fraud for instance when state agencies and state representatives are engaged in illegal trade networks, counterfeit and racketing, and when forgery, smuggling and other organised economic crime is propped up by “official” sanction and involvement. It is fraud when ministers and top bureaucrats take a share for closing their eyes on this; it is serious fraud when they have an active role in it.
Favouritism
It is a mechanism of power abuse implying privatisation and a highly biased distribution of state resources. Favouritism or cronyism is to grant offices or benefits to friends and relatives, regardless of their merit. Favouritism is related to corruption insofar as it means power abuse in the form of an undemocratic and privatised distribution of resources. Favouritism favours friends, family and anybody close and trusted. In the political sphere, favouritism is the inclination of state officials and politicians, who have access to state resources and the power to decide upon the distribution of these, to give preferential treatment to certain people when distributing resources.
Collusion
Collusion involves a horizontal relationship between bidders in a public procurement, who conspire to remove the element of competition from the process. Bid rigging is the typical mechanism of collusion in public contracts: the bidders determine between themselves who should win the tender, and then arrange their bids – in such a way as to appear that the designated bidder is selected by the purportedly competitive process. It is an arrangement between two or more parties designed to achieve an improper purpose which includes influencing improperly the actions of a state or organisation.
Extortion
Corruption in the form of extortion is usually understood as a form of extraction. It is for instance when mafias are able to impose their influence upon individual state officials and entire state agencies through threats, intimidation and targeted assassinations. What they obtain in return may be preferential business opportunities and privileges, and freedom from taxation, regulations, and legal prosecution.
When a state or organisation is corrupt and strong, the ruling class benefits the most from corruption. The elite uses the state apparatus as its instrument to extract resources from society, and it does so for the benefit of the rulers. This applies where the state is not only the strongest force in society, but also where a ruling elite has developed into a dominant and ruling class in control of the powers of the state. That is, the more political power is concentrated exclusively in the hands of a few individuals, the greater the temptation for power abuse, selfish wealth-seeking and primitive extraction.
When a state or organisation is not only corrupt but also weak, the main beneficiaries of the resources extracted, privatised and consumed are not the political and state-based elite, but state resources are depleted and distributed to various powerful individuals and groups according to the power configurations in each country. Here, politically strong and organised groups will for instance be able to challenge state authority from below through corruption. When private citizens, commercial businesses and various interest groups are able to buy national and public resources cheaply, to buy exceptions, privileges, immunity and impunity through the use of kickbacks and mafia methods vis-à-vis public officials, the state or organisation will be eroded.
Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis.Transparency International a global civil society organisation which works in over a hundred countries and fights against corruption, says, “Corruption is one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world. It undermines good government, fundamentally distorts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector and private sector development and particularly hurts the poor”
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