The FINANCIAL — What is the link between corruption and democracy? How can corruption undermine the pillars of the rule of law? And how can those pillars be used to combat corruption? These were the questions posed by the rapporteur, Michele Nicoletti (Italy, SOC), as he opened yesterday’s hearing on “Corrupt elites as a threat to democracy”, organised jointly by the PACE’s committees on political affairs and rules of procedure.
Raffaele Cantone, President of the Italian Anti-Corruption Authority and one of the two experts invited to the meeting, stressed that corruption was taking on new forms in order to more easily subvert the rules of democracy,. After a number of criminal convictions in recent years, it was now not so much focused on the funding of political parties but rather on the direct acts of elected representatives, a kind of legal contract where the corrupter provided funds and helped a politician to progress in their career, in return for which the corrupt politician would award public tenders to the criminal organisation, according to PACE.
What should be done to combat this phenomenon? One of the highest-profile measures in Italy had been the passing of an anti-corruption law in 2012 hinging on the obligation of transparency at all levels in public dealings. This had been followed by the adoption of anti-corruption plans geared to awareness-raising and the identification of risks of corruption in all the phases of public tendering.
In short, the key element was transparency in the funding of political life. And as long as bodies patently involved in public activities but governed by private law had no obligation of transparency, corruption would have a rosy future ahead of it.
Sergei Guriev, Professor of economics at the Paris Institute of political studies (Sciences Po), stressed the benefits to be gained by his country, Russia, in belonging to international organisations like the Council of Europe, which provided a kind of “democratic guarantee”. Corruption in Russia had wrecked growth and, to avoid the spread of discontent, the authorities had resorted to annexing territories, while ensuring that the sanctions coming from Strasbourg, Brussels or Berlin were not too harsh.
It was common knowledge that the Russian authorities funded political parties in Europe, said Mr Guriev, but these arrangements were totally impenetrable. Accordingly, corruption’s biggest enemy was transparency, and in Russia every effort was made to undermine the work of people like Alexey Navalny in the fight against corruption: there were no fewer than five civil law cases opened against him.
The authorities feared transparency. Monitoring and identifying cash flows between Russian and western politicians would be a major step forward in combating corruption. And it would fall to the Council of Europe to propose rules that would pave the way for transparency and help to shed light on the funding of Europe’s political parties.
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