Bulgarians, increasingly fed up with corruption, have named the Customs Agency as the state institution they believe is the most corrupt of all.
This emerged from the 2001 Corruption Assessment Report released this week by the non-government organisation Coalition 2000.
According to the report, the Customs Agency received a corruption index of 9.06, with 10 being the maximum mark for corruption in state authorities. It was followed by the Privatisation Agency, the Foreign Investment Agency, the judiciary, the tax authorities and the police in the list of institutions prone to corruption.
The public believed that corruption was most widely spread in spheres connected with the distribution of large amounts of money, such as the customs, court and privatisation institutions.
According to the report, 77.3 per cent of Bulgarians consider customs officers the most corrupt professional group in the country, followed by judges (56.4 per cent), lawyers (55 per cent) and prosecutors (54.8 per cent). Least corrupt were journalists and teachers.
The document has been prepared for a third consecutive year and presents a general evaluation of the state and dynamics of corruption in Bulgarian society and of the efforts to counteract corruption in the year 2001. It was the centre of discussion of the Fourth Public Policy Anti-Corruption Forum on Tuesday.
Corruption ranks third among the major problems facing Bulgaria, preceded only by unemployment and poverty. Bulgarians, however, have become more intolerant towards the phenomenon.
While in February 1999, 38.5 per cent of Bulgarians considered corruption a major problem in Bulgaria, in October, this number rose to 45.6 per cent.
“Today we have the ground to say that corruption is really present in the political agenda,” President Georgi Purvanov said at the opening of the forum. “What has been done so far is necessary, but not enough for steady measures in fighting corruption.”
Purvanov said the incumbent Government and parliamentary majority could not be accused of encouraging corruption practices.
According to the report, for the six months of the current Government, the public has accounted for more evident will on the part of politicians to confront instances of corruption.
“Society expects that the Government of Simeon Saxe-Coburg will successfully deal with the corruption problem,” said Alexander Stoyanov from Vitosha Research polling agency, the group that carried out the surveys cited in the report. “The only difference from the time of the Kostov Government is in the level of hope.”
“Bulgaria is showing signs of success in the fight against corruption,” US Ambassador Richard Miles told the participants at the forum.
He cited the results of a survey conducted by Transparency Without Borders, which show that Bulgaria has moved from the 60th to the 47th place in its corruption perceptions index.
“We should not allow our foreign partners to get the impression that the Bulgarian state is totally corrupt,” Purvanov said in his speech to the forum.
“That would hurt not only the country’s chances for NATO and EU accession, but would also be an insult for the nation. We should not allow a handful of criminals to define the image of the state,” Purvanov said.
This emerged from the 2001 Corruption Assessment Report released this week by the non-government organisation Coalition 2000.
According to the report, the Customs Agency received a corruption index of 9.06, with 10 being the maximum mark for corruption in state authorities. It was followed by the Privatisation Agency, the Foreign Investment Agency, the judiciary, the tax authorities and the police in the list of institutions prone to corruption.
The public believed that corruption was most widely spread in spheres connected with the distribution of large amounts of money, such as the customs, court and privatisation institutions.
According to the report, 77.3 per cent of Bulgarians consider customs officers the most corrupt professional group in the country, followed by judges (56.4 per cent), lawyers (55 per cent) and prosecutors (54.8 per cent). Least corrupt were journalists and teachers.
The document has been prepared for a third consecutive year and presents a general evaluation of the state and dynamics of corruption in Bulgarian society and of the efforts to counteract corruption in the year 2001. It was the centre of discussion of the Fourth Public Policy Anti-Corruption Forum on Tuesday.
Corruption ranks third among the major problems facing Bulgaria, preceded only by unemployment and poverty. Bulgarians, however, have become more intolerant towards the phenomenon.
While in February 1999, 38.5 per cent of Bulgarians considered corruption a major problem in Bulgaria, in October, this number rose to 45.6 per cent.
“Today we have the ground to say that corruption is really present in the political agenda,” President Georgi Purvanov said at the opening of the forum. “What has been done so far is necessary, but not enough for steady measures in fighting corruption.”
Purvanov said the incumbent Government and parliamentary majority could not be accused of encouraging corruption practices.
According to the report, for the six months of the current Government, the public has accounted for more evident will on the part of politicians to confront instances of corruption.
“Society expects that the Government of Simeon Saxe-Coburg will successfully deal with the corruption problem,” said Alexander Stoyanov from Vitosha Research polling agency, the group that carried out the surveys cited in the report. “The only difference from the time of the Kostov Government is in the level of hope.”
“Bulgaria is showing signs of success in the fight against corruption,” US Ambassador Richard Miles told the participants at the forum.
He cited the results of a survey conducted by Transparency Without Borders, which show that Bulgaria has moved from the 60th to the 47th place in its corruption perceptions index.
“We should not allow our foreign partners to get the impression that the Bulgarian state is totally corrupt,” Purvanov said in his speech to the forum.
“That would hurt not only the country’s chances for NATO and EU accession, but would also be an insult for the nation. We should not allow a handful of criminals to define the image of the state,” Purvanov said.
