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Corrupt Minds

“Nobody is born corrupt.

It‘s the circumstances that make people corrupt.“ Juergen Suhr By: Valentin Vasilev

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orruption is a cancer that suffocates entrepreneurial spirit, drains public budgets and reduces personal income.

In some countries corruption is everywhere: it pervades the health care system, the police, the judicial system, the government and the education system.

course, the mind. Corruption is man-made. It is a product of the brain. It is something one can decide not to engage in.

The fact that some countries are “cleaner” than others would come to suggest that some people are more corrupt than others.

Juergen Suhr (49), deputy head of

In eastern Europe, for example, it is Bonn’s auditing department, agrees with this part of daily life. From bribes paid for something suggestion. Some people are more susceptias simple as avoiding a note of illegal parking or ble to corruption than others, and it is a fact undergoing a routine medical check-up, to bigthat men are much more money scandals involving likely to get involved high-ranking government „Some people are more in corruption than officials. susceptible to corruption women, he says.

Several crimino Corruption has than others“ logical studies the distinction of being a conducted in Germany have shown that nasty drain on government budgets. It siphons 95% of the people implicated in corruption off billions out of public coffers, which in turn are men. Bribery is largely a men’s crime, with hits retirement payments, road maintenance women being less predisposed to law-breaking. and the country’s law enforcement capabilities, to name but a few.

However, corruption is not inborn, according to Suhr. It rather emerges as an option,

But since some countries are up to sometimes the only one, to people in trouble. their ears in corruption and others seem to do a This is not to suggest that wealthy people are good job of keeping it at bay, one may wonder: less corrupt, but rather that everyone resorting what’s the reason for this? Why do some counto corruption has an explanation as to why he or tries fare better than others? The reason is, of

Photo: digitalart

Photo: Valentin Vassilev

ernment officials for their work so they can be independent.

Juergen Suhr she is doing it.

“Pay is an important factor,” Suhr points out. “A worker who receives a low salary may be relying on bribes to make both ends meet. If, on the other hand, the same worker is properly paid, it may never occur to him to ask for a “baksheesh.””

Some societies, such as those in eastern Europe, are more vulnerable to corruption than western European nations.

A “The individual possible reason, according to the expert, may be that there are different traditions and notions prevalent in those countries. Different ideas as to how the state and the administration should be functioning. For example, in many countries state officials are still paid directly by clients, which is a metod that breeds graft.

Since corruption is conceived in the minds of people, it is there that it needs to be eliminated first. The basic requirement, Suhr points out, is to properly remunerate gov-

“In Germany, it has always been like that: if employees perceive they are not paid what they are due, the likelihood that they may resort to corruption increases,” he said. “Corruption is much more likely to emerge if employees have the feeling that they are compensating for their meager earnings by engaging in shady deals, and that they actually obtain what the state is unjustifiably depriving them of,” the expert added.

“The risk of corruption increases in direct proportion to the growth of labour dissatisfaction.”

Another major requirement for fighting corruption is that people report it whenever they spot it. Germany ranks 14th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which is the key“ grades countries by their perceived levels of corruption.

“The country’s favourable evaluation is a testament to the relatively strong aversion of the German population to corruption,” the expert states. Reporting wrongdoing serves to prevent illicit practices from taking root. And probably that is where societies such as eastern Europe have some catching up to do.

“Yet again, the individual is the key, and of course, the state officials,” he says. “They must be happy with what they earn.”

You can learn more about Bonn‘s auditing department at www.bonn.de

Photo: worradmu