Part 4

Though the perception of corruption itself is a negative outcome - it is so only when corruption does not constitute an acceptable and normative part of the playing field. When corruption becomes institutionalised - it also becomes predictable and is easily and seamlessly incorporated into decision making processes of all economic players and moral agents. They develop "by- passes" and "techniques" which allow them to restore an efficient market equilibrium. In a way, all-pervasive corruption is transparent and, thus, a form of taxation.

This is the most common form of corruption exercised by low and mid-ranking civil servants, party hacks and municipal politicians throughout the CEE.

More than avarice, the motivating force here is sheer survival. The acts of corruption are repetitive, structured and in strict accordance with an un-written tariff and code of conduct. (2) Acceleration Fees Corrupt practices whose sole outcome is to ACCELERATE decision making, the provision of goods and services or the divulging of information. None of the outcomes or the utility functions are altered. Only the speed of the economic dynamics is altered. This kind of corruption is actually economically BENEFICIAL. It is a limited transfer of wealth (or tax) which increases efficiency. This is not to say that bureaucracies and venal officialdoms, over-regulation and intrusive political involvement in the workings of the marketplace are good (efficient) things. They are not. But if the choice is between a slow, obstructive and passive-aggressive civil service and a more forthcoming and accommodating one (the result of bribery) - the latter is preferable.

Acceleration fees are collected mostly by mid-ranking bureaucrats and middle rung decision makers in both the political echelons and the civil service. (3) Decision Altering Fees This is where the line is crossed from the point of view of aggregate utility. When bribes and promises of bribes actually alter outcomes in the real world - a less than optimal allocation of resources and distribution of means of production is obtained. The result is a fall in the general level of production. The many is hurt by the few. The economy is skewed and economic outcomes are distorted.

This kind of corruption should be uprooted on utilitarian grounds as well as on moral ones. (4) Subversive Outcomes Some corrupt collusions lead to the subversion of the flow of information within a society or an economic unit.

Wrong information often leads to disastrous outcomes.

Consider a medical doctor or an civil engineer who bribed their way into obtaining a professional diploma.

Human lives are at stake. The wrong information, in this case is the professional validity of the diplomas granted and the scholarship (knowledge) that such certificates stand for. But the outcomes are lost lives. This kind of corruption, of course, is by far the most damaging.

Unfortunately, it is widespread in CEE. It is proof of the collapse of the social treaty, of social solidarity and of the fraying of the social fabric.

No Western country accepts CEE diplomas without further accreditation, studies and examinations. Many "medical doctors" and "engineers" who emigrated to Israel from Russia and the former republics of the USSR - were suspiciously deficient professionally. Israel was forced to re-educate them prior to granting them a licence to practice locally. (5) Reallocation Fees Benefits paid (mainly to politicians and political decision makers) in order to affect the allocation of economic resources and material wealth or the rights thereto.

Concessions, licences, permits, assets privatised, tenders awarded are all subject to reallocation fees. Here the damage is materially enormous (and visible) but, because it is widespread, it is "diluted" in individual terms. Still, it is often irreversible (like when a sold asset is purposefully under-valued) and pernicious. a factory sold to avaricious and criminally minded managers is likely to collapse and leave its workers unemployed.

Corruption pervades daily life even in the prim and often hectoring countries of the West. It is a win-win game (as far as Game Theory goes) - hence its attraction. We are all corrupt to varying degrees. But it is wrong and wasteful - really, counterproductive - to fight corruption in CEE in a wide front and indiscriminately. It is the kind of corruption whose evil outcomes outweigh its benefits that should be fought. This fine (and blurred) distinction is too often lost on decision makers and law enforcement agencies in both East and West.

ERADICATING CORRUPTION An effective program to eradicate corruption must include the following elements: 1. Egregiously corrupt, high-profile, public figures, multinationals, and institutions (domestic and foreign) must be singled out for harsh (legal) treatment and thus demonstrate that no one is above the law and that crime does not pay. 2. All international aid, credits, and investments must be conditioned upon a clear, performance-based, plan to reduce corruption levels and intensity.

Such a plan should be monitored and revised as needed. Corruption retards development and produces instability by undermining the credentials of democracy, state institutions, and the political class. Reduced corruption is, therefore, a major target of economic and institutional developmental. 3. Corruption cannot be reduced only by punitive measures. A system of incentives to avoid corruption must be established. Such incentives should include a higher pay, the fostering of civic pride, educational campaigns, "good behaviour" bonuses, alternative income and pension plans, and so on. 4. Opportunities to be corrupt should be minimized by liberalizing and deregulating the economy. Red tape should be minimized, licensing abolished, international trade freed, capital controls eliminated, competition introduced, monopolies broken, transparent public tendering be made mandatory, freedom of information enshrined, the media should be directly supported by the international community, and so on. Deregulation should be a developmental target integral to every program of international aid, investment, or credit provision. 5. Corruption is a symptom of systemic institutional failure. Corruption guarantees efficiency and favourable outcomes. The strengthening of institutions is of critical importance. The police, the customs, the courts, the government, its agencies, the tax authorities, the state owned media - all must be subjected to a massive overhaul. Such a process may require foreign management and supervision for a limited period of time. It most probably would entail the replacement of most of the current - irredeemably corrupt - personnel. It would need to be open to public scrutiny. 6. Corruption is a symptom of an all-pervasive sense of helplessness. The citizen (or investor, or firm) feels dwarfed by the overwhelming and capricious powers of the state. It is through corruption and venality that the balance is restored. To minimize this imbalance, potential participants in corrupt dealings must be made to feel that they are real and effective stakeholders in their societies. A process of public debate coupled with transparency and the establishment of just distributive mechanisms will go a long way towards rendering corruption obsolete.

VI. The Kleptocracies of the East

The process of transition from communism to capitalism was largely hijacked either by outright criminals in budding outfits of organized crime - or by pernicious and all-pervasive kleptocracies: politicians and political parties bent on looting the state and suppressing the opposition, sometimes fatally.

In the past 16 years, industrial production in the economies in transition tumbled in real terms by more than 60 percent. The monthly salary in the poorer bits equals the daily wage of a skilled German industrial worker, or one seventh the European Union's average.

Gross domestic product per capita is less than one third the EU's. Infrastructure, internal and export markets, state institutions - all crumbled with dizzying speed.

In some countries - not the least Russia - privatization amounted to a mass transfer of assets to cronies and insiders, often well-connected members of the communist nomenclature: managers, members of the security services and other penumbral figures. Laws were passed and institutions tweaked to reflect the special interests of these groupings. "Classical" forms of crime flourished throughout the benighted region. Prostitution, gambling, drugs, smuggling, kidnapping, organ trafficking and other varieties of delinquency yielded to their perpetrators billions of dollars annually. In the impoverished economies of the east, these fantastic revenues - laundered through off shore accounts - were leveraged by criminals to garner political favors, to buy into legitimate businesses and to infiltrate civil society.

None of this is new to Western publics. Rogues and "robber barons" have always doubled as entrepreneurs.

The oil, gaming and railways industries in America, for instance, owe their existence to dubious personas and questionable practices. Well into the 17th century, the British sovereign maintained a monopoly on chartering businesses and awarded the coveted licenses to loyal servants and obsequious sycophants.

Still, the ubiquity of crime in east Europe and its reach are unprecedented in European annals. In the void-like interregnum between centrally planned and free market economies only criminals, politicians, managers, and employees of the security services were positioned to benefit from the upheaval.

At the outset of transition, the underworld constituted an embryonic private sector, replete with international networks of contacts, cross-border experience, capital agglomeration and wealth formation, sources of venture (risk) capital, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a diversified portfolio of investments and revenue generating assets.

Criminals were used to private sector practices: price signals, competition, joint venturing, and third party dispute settlement.

Crime - alone among all economic activities in communist societies - obeyed the laws of the free market. Criminals had to be entrepreneurial and profitable to survive. Their instincts sharpened by - often lethal - competition, they were never corrupted by central planning.

Deprived of access to state largesse, criminals invested their own capital in efficiently-run small to medium size enterprises. Attuned to the needs and wishes of their customers, criminals engaged in primitive forms of market research, through neighborhood and grassroots "pollsters" and "activists". They responded with agility and in real time to changes in the patterns of supply and demand by altering their product mix and their pricing.

They have always been pioneers of bleeding-edge technologies.

Criminals are effective organizers and managers. They excel at enforcing workplace discipline with irresistible incentives and irreversible disincentives, at setting targets and at networking. The superior felonious echelons are upwardly mobile and have a clear career path. Every management fad - from territorially exclusive franchises to "stock" options - has been invented by criminals long before they triumphed in the boardroom.

In east Europe, criminals on all levels, from the organized to the petty, often substituted for the dysfunctional, or ideologically hidebound organs of the state. Consider the dispensation of justice. The criminal code of conduct and court system replaced the compromised and lethargic official judiciary. Debt collectors and enforcers stood in for venal and incompetent police forces.

Crime is a growth industry and sustains hordes of professionals: accountants and lawyers, forgers and cross border guides, weapons experts and bankers, mechanics and hit-men. Expertise, know-how and acumen, amassed over centuries of practice, are taught in the criminal universities known as penitentiaries: roads less traveled, countries more lenient, passports to be bought, sold, or forged, how-to manuals, goods and services on offer and demand.

Profit margins in crime are outlandish and lead to feverish wealth accumulation. The banking system is used both to stash the proceeds and to launder them. Tax havens, off shore financial institutions and money couriers - all form part of a global web. Thus cleansed and rendered untraceable, the money is invested in legitimate activities.

In some countries - especially on the drug path, or on the trail of white slavery - crime is a major engine of economic growth.

As opposed to the visible sectors of the east's demonetized economies, criminal enterprises never run out of liquidity and thus are always keen to invest. Moreover, crime is international and cosmopolitan. It is accustomed to sophisticated export-import transactions.

Many criminals - as opposed to the vast majority of their countrymen - are polyglottal, well-traveled, aware of world prices, the international financial system and demand and supply in various markets. They are experienced negotiators. In short: criminals are well- heeled international businessmen, well-connected both abroad and with the various indigenous elites.

The Wild East in Europe is often compared to the Wild West in America a century or so ago. The Russian oligarchs, goes the soothing analogy, are local versions of Morgan, Rockefeller, Pullman and Vanderbilt. But this affinity is spurious. the United States always had a civic culture with civic values and an aspiration to, ultimately, create a harmonious and benevolent civic society.

Criminality was regarded as a shameful stepping stone on the way to an orderly community of learned, civilized, law-abiding citizens.

This cannot be said about Russia, for instance. The criminal there is, if anything, admired and emulated. Even the language of legal business in countries in transition is suffused with underworld parlance. There is no - and never was - a civic tradition in the countries of eastern Europe, a Bill of Rights, a veritable Constitution, a modicum of self rule, a true abolition of classes and nomenclatures. These territories are accustomed to being governed by paranoiac and murderous tyrants akin to the current crop of delinquents. That some criminals are members of the new political, financial and industrial elites (and vice versa) - tends to support this long-rooted association.

In all the countries of the region, politicians and managers abuse the state and its simulacrum institutions in close symbiosis with felons. Patronage and sinecures extend to collaborating lawbreakers. Veritable villains gain access to state owned assets and resources in a cycle of money laundering. Law enforcement agencies and the courts are "encouraged" to turn a blind eye, or even to help criminals eliminate internal and external competition in their turf.

Criminals, in return, serve as the "long and anonymous arm" of politicians, obtaining for them illicit goods, or providing "black" services. Corruption often flows through criminal channels or via the mediation and conduit of delinquents. Within the shared sphere of the informal economy, assets are shifted among these economic players. Both players oppose attempts at reform and transparency and encourage - even engender - nationalism and racism, paranoias and grievances to recruit foot soldiers.

Fortunately, there is the irrepressible urge to become legitimate. Politicians, who grope for a new ideological cover for their opportunism, partner with legitimacy- seeking, established crime lords. Both groups benefit from a swelling economic pie. They fight against other, less successful, criminals, who wish to persist in their old ways and, thus, hamper economic growth. The battle is never won but at least it succeeds to firmly drive crime where it belongs: underground.

VII. FIMACO - Russia's Missing Billions

Russia's Audit Chamber - with the help of the Swiss authorities and their host of dedicated investigators - may be about to solve a long standing mystery. An announcement by the Prosecutor's General Office is said to be imminent. The highest echelons of the Yeltsin entourage - perhaps even Yeltsin himself - may be implicated - or exonerated. A Russian team has been spending the better part of the last two months poring over documents and interviewing witnesses in Switzerland, France, Italy, and other European countries.

About $4.8 billion of IMF funds are alleged to have gone amiss during the implosion of the Russian financial markets in August 1998. They were supposed to prop up the banking system (especially SBS-Agro) and the ailing and sharply devalued ruble. Instead, they ended up in the bank accounts of obscure corporations - and, then, incredibly, vanished into thin air.

The person in charge of the funds in 1998 was none other than Mikhail Kasyanov, Russia's current Prime Minister - at the time, Deputy Minister of Finance for External Debt.

His signature on all foreign exchange transactions - even those handled by the central bank - was mandatory. In July 2000, he was flatly accused by the Italian daily, La Reppublica, of authorizing the diversion of the disputed funds.

Following public charges made by US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as early as March 1999, both Russian and American media delved deeply over the years into the affair. Communist Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin jumped on the bandwagon citing an obscure "trustworthy foreign source" to substantiate his indictment of Kremlin cronies and oligarchs contained in an open letter to the Prosecutor General, Yuri Skuratov.

The money trail from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Swiss and German subsidiaries of the Russian central Bank was comprehensively reconstructed. Still, the former Chairman of the central bank, Sergei Dubinin, called Ilyukhin's allegations and the ensuing Swiss investigations - "a black PR campaign ... a lie".

Others pointed to an outlandish coincidence: the ruble collapsed twice in Russia's post-Communist annals. Once, in 1994, when Dubinin was Minister of Finance and was forced to resign. The second time was in 1998, when Dubinin was governor of the central bank and was, again, ousted.

Dubinin himself seems to be unable to make up his mind.

In one interview he says that IMF funds were used to prop up the ruble - in others, that they went into "the national pot" (i.e., the Ministry of Finance, to cover a budgetary shortfall).

The Chairman of the Federation Council at the time, Yegor Stroev, appointed an investigative committee in 1999. Its report remains classified but Stroev confirmed that IMF funds were embezzled in the wake of the 1998 forced devaluation of the ruble.

This conclusion was weakly disowned by Eleonora Mitrofanova, an auditor within the Duma's Audit Chamber who said that they discovered nothing "strictly illegal" - though, incongruously, she accused the central bank of suppressing the Chamber's damning report. The Chairman of the Chamber of Accounts, Khachim Karmokov, quoted by PwC, said that "the audits performed by the Chamber revealed no serious procedural breaches in the bank's performance".

But Nikolai Gonchar, a Duma Deputy and member of its Budget Committee, came close to branding both as liars when he said that he read a copy of the Audit Chamber report and that it found that central bank funds were siphoned off to commercial accounts in foreign banks.

The Moscow Times cited a second Audit Chamber report which revealed that the central bank was simultaneously selling dollars for rubles and extending ruble loans to a few well-connected commercial banks, thus subsidizing their dollar purchases. The central bank went as far as printing rubles to fuel this lucrative arbitrage. The dollars came from IMF disbursements.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based on its own sources and an article in the Russian weekly "Novaya Gazeta", claims that half the money was almost instantly diverted to shell companies in Sydney and London. The other half was mostly transferred to the Bank of New York and to Credit Suisse.

Why were additional IMF funds transferred to a chaotic Russia, despite warnings by many and a testimony by a Russian official that previous tranches were squandered? Moreover, why was the money sent to the Central Bank, then embroiled in a growing scandal over the manipulation of treasury bills, known as GKO's and other debt instruments, the OFZ's - and not to the Ministry of Finance, the beneficiary of all prior transfers? The central bank did act as MinFin's agent - but circumstances were unusual, to say the least.

There isn't enough to connect the IMF funds with the money laundering affair that engulfed the Bank of New York a year later to the day, in August 1999 - though several of the personalities straddled the divide between the bank and its clients. Swiss efforts to establish a firm linkage failed as did their attempt to implicate several banks in the Italian canton of Ticino. The Swiss - in collaboration with half a dozen national investigation bureaus, including the FBI - were more successful in Italy proper, where they were able to apprehend a few dozen suspects in an elaborate undercover operation.

FIMACO's name emerged rather early in the swirl of rumors and denials. At the IMF's behest, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was commissioned by Russia's central bank to investigate the relationship between the Russian central bank and its Channel Islands offshoot, Financial Management Company Limited, immediately when the accusations surfaced.

Skuratov unearthed $50 billion in transfers of the nation's hard currency reserves from the central bank to FIMACO, which was majority-owned by Eurobank, the central bank's Paris-based daughter company. According to PwC, Eurobank was 23 percent owned by "Russian companies and private individuals".

Dubinin and his successor, Gerashchenko, admit that FIMACO was used to conceal Russia's assets from its unrelenting creditors, notably the Geneva-based Mr.

Nessim Gaon, whose companies sued Russia for $600 million. Gaon succeeded to freeze Russian accounts in Switzerland and Luxemburg in 1993. PwC alerted the IMF to this pernicious practice, but to no avail.

Moreover, FIMACO paid exorbitant management fees to self-liquidating entities, used funds to fuel the speculative GKO market, disbursed non-reported profits from its activities, through "trust companies", to Russian subjects, such as schools, hospitals, and charities - and, in general, transformed itself into a mammoth slush fund and source of patronage. Russia admitted to lying to the IMF in 1996.

It misstated its reserves by $1 billion.

Some of the money probably financed the fantastic salaries of Dubinin and his senior functionaries. He earned $240,000 in 1997 - when the average annual salary in Russia was less than $2000 and when Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the USA, earned barely half as much.

Former Minister of Finance, Boris Fedorov, asked the governor of the central bank and the prime minister in 1993 to disclose how were the country's foreign exchange reserves being invested. He was told to mind his own business. To Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty he said, six years later, that various central bank schemes were set up to "allow friends to earn handsome profits ... They allowed friends to make profits because when companies are created without any risk, and billions of dollars are transferred, somebody takes a (quite big) commission ... a minimum of tens of millions of dollars. The question is: Who received these commissions? Was this money repatriated to the country in the form of dividends?" Dubinin's vehement denials of FIMACO's involvement in the GKO market are disingenuous. Close to half of all foreign investment in the money-spinning market for Russian domestic bonds were placed through FIMACO's nominal parent company, Eurobank and, possibly, through its subsidiary, co-owned with FIMACO, Eurofinance Bank.

Nor is Dubinin more credible when he denies that profits and commissions were accrued in FIMACO and then drained off. FIMACO's investment management agreement with Eurobank, signed in 1993, entitled it to 0.06 percent of the managed funds per quarter.

Even accepting the central banker's ludicrous insistence that the balance never exceeded $1.4 billion - FIMACO would have earned $3.5 million per annum from management fees alone - investment profits and brokerage fees notwithstanding. Even Eurobank's president at the time, Andrei Movchan, conceded that FIMACO earned $1.7 million in management fees.

The IMF insisted that the PwC reports exonerated all the participants. It is, therefore, surprising and alarming to find that the online copies of these documents, previously made available on the IMF's Web site, were "Removed September 30, 1999 at the request of PricewaterhouseCoopers".

The cover of the main report carried a disclaimer that it was based on procedures dictated by the central bank and "...consequently, we (PwC) make no representation regarding the sufficiency of the procedures described below ... The report is based solely on financial and other information provided by, and discussions with, the persons set out in the report. The accuracy and completeness of the information on which the report is based is the sole responsibility of those persons. ...

PricewaterhouseCoopers have not carried out any verification work which may be construed to represent audit procedures ... We have not been provided access to Ost West Handelsbank (the recipient of a large part of the $4.8 IMF tranche)".