Igor Klyamkin: "On Ukrainian Corruption"

"The recently I asked Ukrainian colleagues to speak out about the effectiveness of counteracting corruption in their country. For several years I write about what laws are adopted in this subject and what specialized anti-corruption structures are created and continued to be created. And I almost did not write about the results, because too different information comes from Ukraine. Someone claims that there are less corruption, someone that its scale is the former, that its scale is the former, that its previous scale is, Domaid, that they even increase, which is insisting on Russian television .

"However ... However, no one argued that the scale of corruption in Ukraine remains significant. No one said that there were more corruptions. No one disputed the facts given during the discussion that indicate successes in the anti -corruption direction. Among the most significant achievements, the reforms of the Ukrainian gas company (" Naftogaz ") and the state procurement system most often appeared.

Naftogaz was stably unprofitable (from 4 to 10 billion dollars annually) and lived at the expense of massive budget injections, a significant part of which disappeared without a trace in corruption flows. And 2015 Naftogaz, disconnected from budget financing and transferred to a market regime of functioning, completed profit from one and a half million (also in dollars) and has become one of the main sources of replenishment of the treasury.

As for the reform of the public procurement system - another positive shift often mentioned by Ukrainian colleagues - it was carried out by creating a central electronic database (Prozorro) about all purchases available to everyone. Before that for information about tenders, and for the right to apply for participation in them, and for the participation itself had to be paid. Not to the state, but to officials. Therefore, the number of participants was measured by units, and the winner was determined in advance. Now this number began to be measured in dozens, tenders have become transparent, their winners are determined in the free competition of entrepreneurs, and not shadow transactions with officials. From what the income of the latter falls, and the financial and economic activity of the state, buying goods and services from business, becomes less wasteful and more effective.

Colleagues who told about success in combating corruption were usually stipulated that they have in mind some trends at the state level, that at the regional and local levels after the decentralization of the tendency can be very different in depth and in orientation. It was also said that the introduction of electronic management systems not only public procurement, but, for example, does not block corruption completely to the tax sphere - the same Proosorro learned to bypass the most inventive officials through updated corruption schemes. And they also said that most people do not feel positive shifts in everyday life, and therefore they are not noticed, remaining when he is convinced of the total corruption of power. Even if they themselves, like some of my interlocutors, do not encounter corruption. And this belief is so deep that no facts can be shaken.

One of the interlocutors, Kiev analyst Yuri Kostyuchenko, illustrated the effectiveness of Prozorro, who destroyed the clan-Kumov practice of procurement of vaccines and medicines by the Ministry of Health, his own experience. Namely, the dynamics of prices for the drug, which is constantly bought for many years. The same drug of the same manufacturer in the same dosage. Kostyuchenko calculated that, taking into account changes in the currency course, the price of a monthly dose of the drug since 2013 decreased by six times. But some other interlocutors did not even respond to such information, they do not fit into their picture of an unshakable universal authority.

Perhaps their assessments are affected by a general drop in the standard of living, caused, among other things, and raising prices not only to industrial, but also for household gas as a result of the termination of state funding of Naftogaz. Nobody felt corruption in it personally, and everyone feels the rise in prices.

Perhaps the anti -corruption rhetoric of the opposition and the media affects, also fueled by dissatisfaction with the pace and results of Ukrainian confrontation with corruption in the western capitals. And certainly it is affected by the fact that none of the high -ranking officials, against whom criminal cases have been initiated in recent years, has not yet been convicted. And the mentality dominant in Ukrainian society, as some participants in the discussion noted, is such that the only indicator, perceived convincing in assessing the success or failure of the authorities against thieves in power, is repression. There is no landing - it means that thieves are all. And this mindset cannot be shaken neither by the transformation of the unprofitable “naftogaz” into profitable, nor electronic control systems, nor open to all through the electronic system - information about the income of officials, nor the creation of specialized anti -corruption structures.

People get acquainted with the declared earnings and property acquisitions of the bosses, compare them with their earnings and acquisitions, sometimes see the difference, but why officials and deputies with modest official salaries are so rich, no one reports to society. People hear about the creation of independent anti -corruption structures in the country, hear about the arrests of high -ranking figures who are not accompanied by judicial sentences, and are further strengthened in the thought that there are no government councils. I do not write this from myself, Ukrainian colleagues told it. They, in most thoroughly, Yuri Khristenzen - wrote that in the dominant mentality, the installation on repression is associated with the hopes for the emergence of some miracle engineering, which will move all thieves from high rooms to prison chambers.

My interlocutors-of those who recognize the successes of the authorities on the anti-corruption front-believe that getting rid of corruption is naive to expect from a miracle executive, whether it be a miracle president or miracle engineering. They even in relation to the anti -corruption court, the creation of which the Society and Western Allies of Ukraine for a long time and which was recently established by the Verkhovna Rada for a long time, spoke skeptical. Not because they consider such a court, crowning the building of independent anti -corruption institutions, useless, but because they are not inclined to believe in its miraculousness. Because they consider corruption a derivative from the post -Soviet state and social system, from the behavioral motivations, formal and informal practices that are rooted on all its floors. Because, as a colleague Vladimir Dubrovsky noted, using the terminology of Douglas North and his co -authors, the corruption of this system does not stem from a deficiency of repression, but from what it is a state of limited (for society) access.

This is a strategically optimistic theoretical judgment, the meaning of which is that Ukraine has to advance from the state of limited access to the state of open access, and it, if it focuses on this its efforts, will solve its historical problem. In this case, I was only interested in the current anti -corruption dynamics. The said by the Ukrainian interlocutors leads to the conclusion that the post -war Ukraine, having inherited the corruption post -Soviet state system and the political and administrative elite formed by this system, squeezes corruption from its own skin under the strict pressure of the West. It squeezes out of aquisitively, but slowly and for most people it is not very noticeable that in a poor country it cannot ignore the disappointment and dissatisfaction of the authorities. These sentiments could be observed in the answers of Ukrainian colleagues to my questions, but at the same time they did not dispute the specific instructions of other discussion participants in positive anti -corruption dynamics.

This dynamics, although not very expressive, are also evidenced by international corruption indices, which the participants in the discussion also reminded. From 2014 to 2017, the indicator of Ukraine has improved slightly, but so far it, like Russia, in the second hundred countries. Nevertheless, Russia, in which in 2014, the index was higher, Ukraine has been ahead of the past years. In one case, the slow dynamics are negative, in the other - slow positive. And how stable this trend is, it turns out, obviously, in the coming years. "