ÇOHU is the leading non-governmental organization campaigning against corruption in Kosovo. NKR spoke to its leader Avni Zogiani about the challenges Kosovo is facing in this regard.

NKR: Mr. Zogiani, how big is corruption in Kosovo?

Zogiani: Kosovo is completely specific in the way corruption has appeared. Because for all these years there was a serious lack of rule of law, because of the sharing of competencies and responsibilities between locals and internationals, an impunity was on place and especially so for the one that had political support. Thus the ordinary corruption in Kosovo might not be as big as the political corruption, but the latter is really a serious problem. For years we are witnessing blatant and severe violations of law by high officials and we have established factually all these violations but because there were no strong independent institutions no high official has faced the justice yet. Just take an example, misuse of millions of euros was clearly established by the reports of Office of General Audit and no one yet has been held accountable for that. Then we have cases of open violation of law in significant tenders such as the bid for the second mobile operator where Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) was flawed by severe violations and no measures were undertaken by anyone. In this way we assert that the ordinary corruption might not be bigger than in other countries in the region but the political corruption, which is involvement of institutions and high officials in the violation of law, is probably the biggest in the region.

 

NKR: It seems like the perception of corruption is higher than the people’s actual experiences. How do you explain this divergence?

Zogiani: Indeed there was a mitigation of corruption in small insignificant cases in Kosovo. There were disciplinary and legal measures against people who represented no political power such as police officers and judges and prosecutors who were involved on small bribes. Therefore polls don’t tell a lot about the corruption among high ranks of governance. The biggest cases of corruption occur far from the public’s eye. Political parties do not declare their finances and we argue that this is a violation of law, but the case is being ignored completely. This will not be shown on polls, but we know that the ones that financed parties during their campaigns now are getting their rewards in different ways. Significant cases of corruption in courts do not leave any perception on public at all. If a drug or human trafficking case is being treated so that the judge and prosecutor will take bribes to release a perpetrator that will occur far from the eye of the public and in this way no experience of people will be found by polls. This is what is called political corruption, which is probably the most serious problem in Kosovo that has been ignored by those who had the authority and the power to do something, namely UNMIK and EULEX now.

NKR: Where does Kosovo stand in comparison to the region?

Zogiani: I think the answer to this question is given above. I will just add that Kosovo is clearly not a country where one can talk about checks and balances because you do not have the necessary institutions to make sure central institutions and high officials will obey the law. For example, we have no institution that will interpret the constitution. Besides, we are not yet certain what kind of laws will be applied because we still have a great amount of confusion over who is going to do what. This practically makes Kosovo the worst case in the region because we cannot talk at all about institutional integrity whatsoever.  

NKR: What are the most problematic areas right now?

Zogiani: I believe the sector of energy is already becoming the forefront of corruption and involvement of organized crime. Until now the mobile telephony market was sort of the champion of political corruption. The process of privatization was also flawed due to political influences, but the corruption in education and especially so in the private sector has taken hilariously vast proportions.

NKR: Who is in charge of fighting corruption? Where does ÇOHU come in?

Zogiani: Well, corruption has to be defined in order to identify who will be in charge for what case. For example, if we deal with a clear-cut case of corruption then it is clear the judiciary has the main role. However, since I am reiterating that the real problem for Kosovo is the so-called political corruption, and because of the lack of political will to fight corruption, the most important role in practice now remains on civil society and the media. Of course, should there be a will in the Kosovo Parliament then that would be the main institution to address the political corruption, but unfortunately this is not the case. For example, for years we have been publicly denouncing the fact that the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority has not only violated the law permanently but as an institution it is illegal because its board was never established. One or two men who do not even go to the office regularly make decisions on behalf of TRA, and we have even pushed this issue through in two sessions of Parliament but the issue was over-voted by the political parties on power and by one opposition party because they were all suspected of taking bribes by the private companies that were bidding for the second mobile telephony license. These were all clearly established but there was no capacity within the actual institutions, none of them, to deal with this sort of anarchy that had happened on this sector for years. I think this explains where ÇOHU comes in. We do collect information about the violations and especially so related to the political corruption; we either denounce these cases publically or we try to address them through institutions. I must say that until now we did not have significant success, unless we ignore the build up of a public opinion conducive to punishment of the political parties on the polls.

NKR: Most of the corruption is happening at the most profitable public companies. What about those barely making a living such as teachers and public administration?

Zogiani: The primary administration should I call so, such as the public officials on municipalities, teachers, police, etc., are not immune from corruption. For example, the phenomena of teachers giving additional paid courses to the children they teach on public schools without any measures to address the conflict of interest is widespread throughout Kosovo. Further one can see what has happened with the private educational institutions. There have been cases where one person was teaching in four-five of the ridiculously disproportional large number of private universities that at a point in time reached 36. Most of the actual ministers, including the minister of education, were on these situations as well. Of course one cannot expect to have any ethics on the lower levels of administration when we see the ministers doing all these things.   

NKR: How can international players help Kosovo overcome these challenges?

Zogiani: I would say they do not overcome these challenges at all, because they simply do not even contemplate dealing with these problems. We have to bear in mind that international players in Kosovo have two priorities which do not even overlap with corruption and that is protection of minorities and mitigation of war crimes. There were efforts to build some institutions such as special prosecutor’s office, but these efforts stopped half way. They established these institutions but never made sure the people who work there will be professional and immune from political influence.

NKR: Corruption is a reason given for the push to privatize the public companies. Would privatization solve corruption?

Zogiani: Privatization until now was the very reason not only for the failure of public companies, but for the increase of corruption as well. What is happening now in relation to the public mobile operator is a flaw of conflict of interests on the eve of announcement of PTK privatization. In fact the very process is often essentially corrupted. Let us take just one point of view. According to the law on public companies the boards of these companies are to be comprised by the people that bear no political or industrial influence, further more the law requires the decision for privatization of public companies, the so-called central public companies, to be enacted by the Kosovo Parliament. The current government respected none of these principles. The boards of public companies are filled with proven politically affiliated individuals and the Government without any consultation with the Parliament took the decision to privatize PTK. Last year it was reported that the income of Vala [PTK’s mobile operator] has fallen by at least 10%. It is being assessed that the value of Vala can decrease by half within these two years, 2008/09. To a large extent we did foresee a decrease of the value of Vala and we tried to alarm the Parliament and the Government about this throughout 2008. No measures were undertaken; in contrary, PTK was left without a managing director and the newly elected director will barely be in office because he lives in the UK. In this way, what is happening right now is a "preparation" of public companies for privatization which practically means a downsizing of the value of these companies through political influence of the public sector. In this way the privatization instead of adding to the value of the public companies is leading to their very end.

NKR: One would think that the poverty of Kosovo is partly to blame for the level of corruption. Are you hopeful about this issue when considering that relatively richer neighbors such as Bulgaria and Romania are still dealing with it?

Zogiani: Indeed, it is the opposite case. The poor can rarely have the power to conduct corruption. The very people who wanted to become richer carried out the most significant cases of corruption. The poverty is connected more with the ordinary bribe, but as I said earlier this is not the main problem in Kosovo. Besides, we have cases for example when a judge drives a car worth €60,000. There is no salary that Kosovo can offer to afford the luxury life that is pursued very often by public officials or politicians. Kosovo leaders just a few years after the war managed to have houses worth millions of euro. In general I think that the richer the people are the more corrupted they tend to be, but this can be constrained only by strengthening the institutions. As for Bulgaria I think Kosovo is going off the same path. In Bulgaria, in the same manner as in Kosovo, there was this zeal for meeting the institutional objectives quantitatively but little attention was paid to real reforms that will in a way represent a sort of physical change. To a large extent, due to the eagerness of the EU to include Bulgaria in, it has ignored the political corruption, organized crime, and the mixture of politics and the organized crime. Kosovo is also going through a process of international community closing an eye because they still need the corrupted but loyal politicians to achieve the political objectives that do not necessarily meet the democratic will of the people they represent.