A book was recently published about corruption in Hungary. The writers, István János Tóth from the Economic Sciences Institute (Közgazdagástudományi Intézet) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Corvinus University director Zoltán Szántó conducted anonymous interviews with ten top leaders in Hungarian economic life and found that corruption is an even more prevalent issue nowadays than earlier believed to be. According to the CEOs asked, corruption in Hungary is a “basic problem” and a “diverse and deep phenomenon which has reached a critical point”, reports index.hu.
CEOs, being corruptors themselves, are integral parts of this system. They say that most of the corruption exists within the field of local governments, public procurements and the distribution of EU subsidies. The main target group of corruption consists of underpaid civil servants, followed by politicians who accept money partly for themselves and partly for their parties.
In certain sectors, such as in the field of goods acquisitions at hypermarkets, corruption is an everyday phenomenon, although in the banking and insurance sector it is almost unheard of. This is due in part to the high salaries in this sector, and in part to its moral self-defense mechanism which means that those under suspicion of corruption are cast out and cannot find employment again in any companies within the sector.
Several companies employ a “public relations manager” whose task is to keep in contact with state institutes and bribe civil servants. Regarding the extent of corruption in Hungary, opinions differ as some say it is not worse than in the surrounding countries, including Austria, while others say the situation is much more akin to the one in Ukraine or the Balkans. The CEOs interviewed cited several examples when only about a third of a public investment was used for public purposes with the rest of the funds funneled away.
According to the researchers, corruption could be decreased by assessing its risk before every government decision, simplifying the overcomplicated regulations, radically reducing bureaucracy and one-person decisions, and using publicity and the internet: the opportunities offered by the e-government. One of the CEO’s asked mentioned Lithuania as an example of decreasing corruption by simplifying the laws regarding company establishment and tax credits.
In an apt coincidence, Caboodle (which glaringly lacks reader commentary) ran a news item highlighting the corruption among the parking fine companies – effectively where field staff have lists of cars / streets that they are not to fine for unpaid parking – as they’re paying bribes to be ignored (http://www.caboodle.hu/nc/news/news_archive/single_page/?tx_ttnewstt_news=5307 – the average take per parking person, it claimed, could be 70K HUF (tax free I assume) daily); further of interest was that the head of the main company “knows nothing” about it (Sgt Shultz of “Stalag 17″?) – and anybody who goes on record to rat out those involved run the risk of physical retribution.
However, who is culpable here? The “meter maids” or the policy makers who cannot see that the hourly prices are too steep; nor create a way for those who work or frequently park in a district with a legal, above board means to do so? Extend such to the flourishing trade in handicap parking. (Just for fun, count 1 day how many cars you see parked displaying not a parking fee, but a handicapped sticker – is it possible that so many drivers are physically challenged?)
To battle corruption, one shouldn’t just look at those that participate; rather one should seriously challenge those that create the need for such through ill-thought through policy.
In the meantime, I’m hanging up the day job to work the parking meters.
Thanks to the 50 years of Russian occupation, Hungarians have a forgiving attitude towards stealing. In the Kadar era it was part of life, almost everyone was doing it from the top to the bottom. Wages were pretty low, so people did whatever they could to make ends meet and maybe to get ahead a bit. People usually had a decent collection of things from the factory or office, and it was no big deal to buy a cheap truckload of building material, usually the first driver you stopped was willing to give you a deal.
Party officials were building nice villas and bank accounts and workers were getting by with whatever they could carry home from work. Gasoline was cheap if you bought it from your truck driver neighbor who cheated on his mileage log.
So stealing was no big deal. Now we still have some of that left over, unfortunately many people got very greedy. If we could give truth pills to our billionaires and ask them how they got rich, most of them would tell us about some illegal or at least unethical deals they were involved with. Still the second and third economy seem to many people as the natural way of living and making a living in Hungary.
Corruption has really gotten out of control in the past 20 or so years. It used to be a few thousand forints under the table to get that business license. Now it can be millions and the things that change hands are getting bigger and bigger. How do you ever stop this?
@Rolrox: “Caboodle (which glaringly lacks reader commentary)”
They are bound to do this to ensure a better Google Ranking, particularly on news. Google prefers news to come unadulterated without the risk of crappy and meaningless comments from plebs. So when they judge a source to have a certain weight they know that this will not be watered down by user input.
Other than that it could just be that that Caboodle is built Typo3 and all the other output of Szép Dolgok kft is based on WordPress.
They may just not have got round to addding a comment module to news items (see also the constantly changing access policy on the forums)
@Vándorló: Actually, the lack of comments on Caboodle is mostly because of reason #2, rather than Google ranking issues… but I haven’t pushed it because, despite the occasional hot-button story like the parking corruption one mentioned above, few pieces on the site are of the sort to draw any comments. Finally, the other sites are running not on WordPress but Movable Type. Not that anyone but you or I would ever care
@Vandorlo & @Erik… 1) @V – thanks, didn’t know about the “@” notation! 2) still @E, would be good to comment on stories as one of the biggest issues in this country is the lack of debate (or more so, the acceptance of status quo from a select minority) – though I do agree with V that some of the comments we get even here in RD, Politics, etc. are not “on topic” and sometimes, “lame” and/or “inflamatory” – and that we could benefit from some editorial assistance! So hope you guys get round to it…