Corruption in Albania: BRIBERY AS EXPERIENCED BY THE POPULATION Co-fi nanced by the European Commission (cid:2) UNITED(cid:2)NATIONS(cid:2)OFFICE(cid:2)ON(cid:2)DRUGS(cid:2)AND(cid:2)CRIME(cid:2) Vienna(cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) CORRUPTION(cid:2)IN(cid:2)ALBANIA:(cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) BRIBERY(cid:2)AS(cid:2)EXPERIENCED(cid:2)BY(cid:2)THE(cid:2)POPULATION (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) Copyright © 2011, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Acknowledgments(cid:2) This report was prepared by UNODC Statistics and Surveys Section (SASS) and Institute of Statistics of Albania (INSTAT): Field research and data analysis: Ines Nurja (INSTAT) Ledia Thomo (INSTAT) Teranda Jahja (INSTAT) Anisa Omuri (INSTAT) Research supervision and report preparation: Enrico Bisogno (SASS) Felix Reiterer (SASS) Michael Jandl (SASS) Serena Favarin (SASS) Philip Davis (SASS) Design and layout: Suzanne Kunnen (STAS) Drafting and editing: Jonathan Gibbons Supervision: Sandeep Chawla (Director, Division of Policy Analysis and Public Affairs) Angela Me (Chief, SASS) The precious contribution of Milva Ekonomi for the development of survey methodology is gratefully acknowledged. This survey was conducted and this report prepared with the financial support of the European Commission and the Government of Norway. Sincere thanks are expressed to Roberta Cortese (European Commission) for her continued support. Disclaimers This report has not been formally edited. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNODC or contributory organizations and neither do they imply any endorsement. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion on the part of UNODC concerning the legal status of any country, territory or city or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Photos: The pictures are used for illustration only and were not taken in the context of corruption. © OSCE (cid:2) CONTENTS(cid:2) Contents.................................................................................................................1 Executive(cid:2)summary.................................................................................................3 Key(cid:2)findings............................................................................................................7 Introduction............................................................................................................9 International(cid:2)legal(cid:2)instruments(cid:2)and(cid:2)national(cid:2)policies......................................................9 The(cid:2)complexity(cid:2)of(cid:2)corruption..........................................................................................10 The(cid:2)importance(cid:2)of(cid:2)studying(cid:2)direct(cid:2)experience...............................................................10 Previous(cid:2)studies(cid:2)conducted(cid:2)in(cid:2)Albania...........................................................................10 The(cid:2)scope(cid:2)and(cid:2)methodology(cid:2)of(cid:2)this(cid:2)study......................................................................11 1.(cid:2)Prevalence(cid:2)of(cid:2)bribery........................................................................................ 13 2.(cid:2)Nature(cid:2)of(cid:2)bribes................................................................................................ 17 Forms(cid:2)of(cid:2)payment...........................................................................................................17 Bribe(cid:3)seeking(cid:2)modality(cid:2)and(cid:2)timing.................................................................................18 Purposes(cid:2)of(cid:2)bribes...........................................................................................................19 3.(cid:2)Public(cid:2)officials(cid:2)and(cid:2)bribery................................................................................ 21 4.(cid:2)Reporting(cid:2)of(cid:2)bribery.......................................................................................... 27 5.(cid:2)Other(cid:2)forms(cid:2)of(cid:2)corruption................................................................................. 29 6.(cid:2)Vulnerabilities(cid:2)to(cid:2)bribery.................................................................................. 31 7.(cid:2)Perceptions(cid:2)and(cid:2)opinions(cid:2)about(cid:2)corruption...................................................... 33 8.(cid:2)Prevalence(cid:2)and(cid:2)patterns(cid:2)of(cid:2)other(cid:2)forms(cid:2)of(cid:2)crime.............................................. 39 1 CORRUPTION(cid:2)IN(cid:2)ALBANIA:(cid:2)BRIBERY(cid:2)AS(cid:2)EXPERIENCED(cid:2)BY(cid:2)THE(cid:2)POPULATION(cid:2) Reporting(cid:2)of(cid:2)crime...........................................................................................................43 Perceptions(cid:2)of(cid:2)safety(cid:2)from(cid:2)crime....................................................................................43 9.(cid:2)Concluding(cid:2)remarks.......................................................................................... 47 10.(cid:2)Methodological(cid:2)annex..................................................................................... 49 11.(cid:2)Statistical(cid:2)annex.............................................................................................. 51 2(cid:2) (cid:2) EXECUTIVE(cid:2)SUMMARY(cid:2) Corruption is often reported in the international community to be an area of vulnerability for the countries of the western Balkans and it appears that the people of Albania would tend to agree. Results presented in this report show that Albanian citizens rank corruption as the second most important problem facing their country, after unemployment. Corruption comes in many guises and, in contrast to other surveys that look at people’s perceptions, this survey focuses on the actual experience of administrative corruption and provides information on the nature of bribery and its procedures. This is the kind of petty corruption that affects the daily lives of ordinary people in their dealings with the public administration, the service provider which plays such a huge a role in contemporary society that a remarkable eight out of ten adult Albanians interact with it at some point during the course of the year. Such dealings may be for anything from a medical visit or school enrolment to the issue of a new passport or driving licence but, according to the results of this survey, a significant amount of them are of a dubious variety. Although there are notable variations between the Albanian regions, on average, 28.3 per cent of Albanian citizens aged 18 to 64 have been exposed - either directly or through a household member - to a bribery experience with a public official in the 12 months prior to the survey. But when focusing on bribes actually paid, the percentage of Albanian citizens who pay at least one bribe in the same period – among those who have contacts with the public administration– is 19.3 per cent, and those who pay at least one bribe in that period actually do so once every three months. The highest prevalence of bribery is observed in the Central region, while in the Mountain region it is significantly lower. The face of corruption in Albania has slightly different features than in other parts of the western Balkans region. For example, bribery in Albania is more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas (20.9% vs. 17.7%) and, unexpectedly, more Albanian women pay bribes than Albanian men (21.3% vs. 17%). Moreover, bribes are almost exclusively given in the form of 3 CORRUPTION(cid:2)IN(cid:2)ALBANIA:(cid:2)BRIBERY(cid:2)AS(cid:2)EXPERIENCED(cid:2)BY(cid:2)THE(cid:2)POPULATION(cid:2) cash payments, while payments in kind are not used. On average, each bribe paid was worth 5,710 Albanian Leks, or the equivalent of approximately 43 Euro1. Such cash payments are not trivial, bearing in mind the per capita incomes in Albania, and it would be wrong to assume that people are always coerced into paying them. Almost 30 per cent of bribes paid are actually offered by citizens themselves, while in more than half of cases they are paid in response to an indirect request by a public official and for almost 15 per cent they refer to an explicit request by a public official or a third party. In many cases bribes are paid to facilitate bureaucratic procedures and the existence of deficiencies and bottlenecks in the public sector is confirmed by the fact that the 70 per cent of citizens who participate in a bribery act do so to receive better treatment, while 9 per cent does so to speed up a procedure or to avoid the payment of a fine. Such a need for better treatment no doubt explains why the public officials paid most kickbacks in Albania are doctors. Some 71 per cent of citizens who pay bribes pay them to doctors, almost a half to nurses (47%) while 14 per cent pay police officers2. The picture painted in this survey is sometimes a troubling one, but data indicate that there is some resistance to bribery and Albanian citizens do not always consent to the payment of bribes in order to facilitate or benefit from a particular administrative procedure: for every three who do so there is one who refuses, turning down the request made by a public official. On the other hand, only a negligible amount of bribe-payers (less than 1%) report their experience to the authorities. There are numerous reasons for this: some citizens do not deem bribery to be of the same gravity as “real” crimes, in part because there is a sense of acceptance that bribery is simply a common practice (45%) and also, when constituting an expression of gratitude for services rendered, actually a positive practice (13%). Citizens also fail to report bribery events because bribe payment can, of course, be of direct benefit to the bribe-payer (9%), and because they believe reporting to be a futile exercise as nothing would be done, nor would anyone care (29%). Interestingly, for 44 per cent of bribe-payers this survey interview was the first time they had admitted to the payment of a bribe, having never previously shared the experience with anybody, even close friends or relatives. It seems that when it comes to bribery a well- established and selective code of silence still exists in many cases. Bribery not only affects the services provided to citizens by public officials. The public administration is the largest employer in Albania and its associated job security and accompanying benefits are highly coveted. Some 16 per cent of Albanian citizens, or members of their households, applied for a job in the public sector in the three years prior to the survey, but of those whose application was successful some 9 per cent admit to paying some money, giving a gift or doing a favour to help secure their position. Among those who failed, there is a widespread perception that factors such as cronyism, nepotism or bribery played a decisive role in the recruitment process, while only 15 per cent believe that the selection was made on merit. While Albanian women in their thirties are those most exposed to bribery, characteristics such as income, education level or employment status do not appear to have a clear effect on the probability of experiencing bribery. For instance, although the prevalence of bribery increases slightly with middle income level, its frequency follows another pattern and the average number of bribes paid is actually higher among lower income groups than wealthier citizens, with no social group being exempt from bribery. 1 Amounts in Albanian Lek (ALL) are converted into Euro by using the annual average exchange rate published by Eurostat. For international comparisons, amounts in national currency should be converted by using Purchasing Power Parities (PPP): when using conversion rates in PPP, as published by Eurostat, 5,710 Lek are equivalent to approximately 103 EUR-PPP. 2 The sum is higher than 100 per cent since bribe-payers have often made payments to more than one public official in the 12 months prior to the survey 4(cid:2) CORRUPTION(cid:2)IN(cid:2)ALBANIA:(cid:2)BRIBERY(cid:2)AS(cid:2)EXPERIENCED(cid:2)BY(cid:2)THE(cid:2)POPULATION(cid:2)(cid:2) (cid:2) Nor, of course, is any social group exempt from the possibility of falling victim to the other five crime types examined in this survey. While the one-year prevalence rates for personal theft, burglary, assault/threat, car theft, and robbery in Albania are considerably lower than for bribery (2.9%, 1.5%, 0.6%, 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively), These are quite modest levels, on a par with those evidenced in other European countries, which probably explains why citizens of Albania feel rather safe in relation to crime: more than eight out of ten feel safe when walking alone after dark in their neighbourhoods, and an even larger majority of citizens feel fairly secure in their homes. But perceptions about corruption in Albania are not so positive. More than half of the population believe that corrupt practices occur often or very often in local or central government. Furthermore, one third of Albanian citizens believe that corruption is actually on the rise in their country, while 41 per cent believe it to be stable and 26 per cent think it is decreasing. Perceptions, it should be underlined, are nothing more than opinions and are not to be confused with the actual experience of corruption that provides the main focus of this report. Nevertheless, such a perception can be interpreted as an expression of citizens’ awareness of one of the principal challenges facing Albania, both now and in the years to come. 5