CORRUPTION ‘WIDESPREAD AND SERIOUS’

CORRUPTION in North Cyprus has reached alarming levels, according to a new study.

The claim was made in the latest annual “Corruption Perceptions in Northern Cyprus” report written by researchers

Gökçekuş Ömer and Sertaç Sonan and published by Friedrich-EbertStiftung, a non-profit German foundation funded by the German government and which has an office in South Nicosia.

The key finding of the 2021 report, based on a survey of 354 participants who hold managerial positions in companies that are members of the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce, is that corruption is “widespread and a serious problem”.

A staggering 96 per cent of those surveyed said they believe that there is “bribery and corruption” in the TRNC, while 76 per cent think that corruption is a “very serious problem”.

The report authors said corruption is “most common in the allocation of public” immovable property.

Around three quarters of respondents consider bribery to be “very common” in the “allocation and leasing of public land and buildings”.

This is followed by “public contracts and licences” (64 per cent), and “government incentives” (61 per cent).

In contrast up to one-third of respondents said that bribery “does not exist at all” in “obtaining favourable judicial decisions” and the rate of those who say there is no bribery “while receiving services such as electricity, water and telecommunications from the state” is 24 per cent.

Approximately four out of every 10 businesspeople who took part in the questionnaire admitted to having paid a bribe in the previous 12 months.

Asked if they had to give a “bribe, gift or do a favour to the official concerned in the last year to receive any of the above services”, 41 per cent of the participants answered “yes”.

‘CORRUPT’ POLITICIANS

Another finding of the report claimed that public resources are being “abused by politicians and senior public officials”, with 74 per cent of the survey respondents stating that misappropriation of public resources by ministers and officials for personal or party purposes is “very common”.

According to 78 per cent of the respondents corruption is “very common” among politicians, which is considered the “most corrupt” group, followed by senior civil servants (59 per cent), while 28 per cent of businesspeople surveyed think corruption is “very common” among lower-level civil servants.

The report also revealed a lack of faith among business leaders in institutions whose job is to fight or expose corruption.

The most effective institution according to the research is the Ombudsman, even though only one fifth of respondents described it as “very successful”.

Seventeen per cent of the survey participants said the courts and “social media” are “very successful” at tackling and exposing corruption.

At the opposite end of the list are Parliament and the Inspection Board, which comes under the Prime Minister’s Office, with 72 per cent and 69 per cent of respondents respectively describing the two institutions as “not successful at all”.

Asked specifically how successful the government is in the fight against corruption, an embarrassingly low figure of only two per cent of respondents said they found the government “very successful” in this regard, while 87 per cent stated that the government is “not successful at all”.

With local elections just two months away, the report also revealed that 77 per cent of the participants believe that “vote-buying” and offering “special favours in election time” is “common”.

The 2021 Corruption Perceptions in Northern Cyprus report also said that the relationship between business and politics “looks concerning”.

Around three in four respondents think that “companies use money or connections to secure profitable government contracts”.

The rate of those who say the TRNC government is “pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves” is 70 per cent, while two thirds of the respondents think that “big companies avoid paying their taxes”.

Eight out of 10 participants said they disagree with the statement “the TRNC government considers the opinions of people like me when making decisions”.

The report said the fight against corruption is “very inadequate” with 77 per cent of respondents saying that officials involved in corruption are not prosecuted.

While nine out of 10 business people do not tolerate corruption, they are “not sure if they can make a difference” the report authors noted.

The rate of those who believe that “ordinary citizens can make a difference in the fight against corruption and those who do not” is at the same level, 42 per cent.

‘DETERIORATION’

The researchers also sought the opinions of “experts” via an online survey at the beginning of 2022. The expert group comprised of “retired high-level officials who knew the functioning of the government very well”.

Based on the answers of the experts and businesspeople, the report authors calculated the TRNC’s “corruption perception score” as 28 out of 100, where zero indicates “very high corruption” and 100 “no corruption”.

This puts North Cyprus below the global average score of 43 among 180 countries included in the 2021 list published by Transparency International at the beginning of 2022, placing the TRNC in 140th position.

“Compared to the previous year, there is a decrease of eight points in our country’s score, and this resulted in a 36-place deterioration in the ranking,” report authors Gökçekuş

and Sonan noted. “This decrease is due to the drop in scores from both experts and businesspeople. While our country’s score was four points lower than our neighbour Turkey’s score last year, it has dropped 10 points behind Turkey’s this year.

“Our performance is also well behind our southern neighbour’s score of 53, which was down by four points compared to the year earlier.”

According to Transparency International, the least corrupt countries in the world are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, with scores of 88 out of 100, while the most corrupt are South Sudan (11 out of 100) and Syria and Somalia (13 out of 100).

The authors added that their report has five main purposes: “to measure the perception of corruption in our country using an internationally accepted method; to determine where our country stands compared to the rest of the world in the fight against corruption; to determine the changes in perception of corruption compared to the previous year; keeping the pulse of businesspeople on corruption in general; and to create public awareness about corruption based on the findings of the study.”