Corruption in the Balkans, 2011 report

[Professor]

The international study gives off interesting results. In regards to form of payment, for our countries/areas:

Albania
The Albanians seem to be all-money dudes. 99.4% of Albanians bribe in cash, and average Albanian bribe is the lowest in the region, just 103 Euros (just 14% of the average wage). The remaining 0.6% they pay in food & drinks.

Bosnia and Herzegovina
79.3% Bosnians and Herzegovinians pay in cash (a sum of 222 Euros average - 28% of the average wage), 14.5% pay in food & drinks, while 10.8% pay through other means. The remaining 2% do not recollect.

Croatia
The Croatians are more evened, just 43.9% pays in cash, 37.7% in food & drinks, and 17.8% in other means, while 6.8% do not recall. The average bribe is quite high, 410 Euros (27% of the average salary).

Kosovo
Kosovo is in a similar situation - 65.9% in cash, 28.4% in food & drinks, 8.5% in other means and 6.5% doesn't remember. What is interesting is that the average bribe is higher than in Albania, a total of 174 Euros.

Montenegro
cash - 69.9%, food & drinks - 16.9%, other - 14.5% and 4.2% have no memory. The average bribe is the second highest in the region, 480 Euros (and worryingly, about 50% of the average wage).

Serbia
Serbians are somewhere in the middle with everything - 52.2% in cash, 33.6% in food & drinks, 15.3% in other means and 2% do not remember. The average bribe is 349 Euros (35% of the average salary, meaning quite high).

FYROM
FYR Macedonia has it at first glance evenly matched just like Croatia - 45.4% in cash, 24.6% in food & drinks, while 23.1% in other means, with 9.1% having no memory. However, the Macedonians have a shocking surprise: their average bribe is no fewer than 1,212 Euros (144% of the average salary!)!

[Professor]

According to total calculation of all factors and to the corruption rates, the most corrupt nation in the Western Balkans is Bosnia and Herzegovina, with approximately 20.7% of the country corrupted.

The second place is taken by Albania with a corruption of 19.3%. Bosnia and Albania are characterized as countries seeded by corruption on a dangerously high level.

The third place is taken by Croatia, with a 11.2% corruption.

The similar position is taken by Kosovo, with a 11.1% corruption.

Montenegro has a surprisingly low level of corruption, just 9.7%.

Serbia stands at a 9.3% corruption.

The smallest corruption rate is in FYROM, with a meager 6.2% of the interactions between population and public administration resulting in corrupted activities.

[Invictus-NYC]

What Bosnia is first ??? They are freaking amateurs compared to us I request a new calculation and we want to be able to bribe them so we come on top this time


I have worked for NGOs who do these silly statistics man and I can tell you that they are all bullshit

They are the same as those drug statistics, the more the police catches of those drug smugglers the more they think drugs re cumming in to the country They have this twisted formulas that make no sense at all and was put together by guys who have a math degree but have never seen drugs with their own eyes or worked for law enforcement but somehow think they are qualified to give realistic projections of these criminal enterprises


In this case they don't even base it on any hard evidence but on peoples opinions of corruption (they usually send out questionnaires to companies and they fill out the stuff and send it back). I think the reason why Balkan nations rate so high in these "calculations" (yeah who are they kidding) is cultural in nature and does not necessary reflect how high or low the corruption really is in comparison to other countries. I am not saying that we in the Balkans are not corrupt but that A) The numbers are ridicules B) the rankings derived from those numbers are even more ridicules C) Balkans numbers are culturally inflated

If you ask someone from the Balkans he will always give you a bleak outlook on anything. It is in our nature we are pessimistic, cynical, conspiracy believers, yes even paranoid to a certain extent


Back in the day I and a bunch of other like minded "southern" colleagues did a relatively small test to prove how bullshit these NGOs are with their calculations. We calculated the believes/projections of how successful the Olympic teams would be of certain countries. We didn't have much funding and to be honest with you those "truth seeking" NGOs hated the project and only reluctantly allowed us to use their infrastructure.

So yeah we found out that countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Canada all showed that they would win tons of medals in the Olympics while questionnaires in nations like Greece, Checkrepublic, Spain showed that they would not win anything really.

This was ridicules as those countries who generally had such positive outlooks don't win any fucking medals on a consistent bases while the countries who had bleak outlooks did actually win much more then the people believed they won during all those years.

There is also another cultural bias in some countries to bad mouth the government and its organs. In the Balkans the only person who doesnt bad mouth the government is the prime minister In Asian countries like Kora or Japan its considered very bad an shameful to do so.


Presented with the findings to Transparency International which is a German based NGO (who we worked for) that does some of these statistics they looked at them and said ohh well this doesn't prove anything and made sure its findings are buried deep in to the ground and fired a bunch of people afterwords and refused to work together with my former university for future projects

Look I don't give a shit normally. However these statistics have become a problem in regards to getting loans and are often used to exert pressure on our countries.

Again I am not saying that we dont have corruption all i am saying is that these numbers dont tell us really anything about the reality of corruption in the countries we are talking about and ranking them is just a joke.

Plus I know that certain countries having realized the power of these numbers have started to game the system so they can score higher and with that get more foreign direct investment Unfortunately our governments haven't released that yet and have not started to game the system themselves but allow these data to be used against them in international forums and the credit rating agencies who rate them lower and in turn they have to borrow funding at a higher interest rate.

[WisdomSeeker]

Which NGO issued this report and under whose orders? It would be naive to accept and trust any NGO whatsoever,because none of them (worldwide) are independent. They are funded,thus their objectivity is highily dubbious.

[Professor]

Which NGO issued this report and under whose orders? It would be naive to accept and trust any NGO whatsoever,because none of them (worldwide) are independent. They are funded,thus their objectivity is highily dubbious.

It was not conducted by any NGO, but by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

[harvest]

They have forgotten big time players here: Romania and Bulgaria! Albania is little kid compared to these 2!

[Balozi]

yeah they or prof are keeping out EU countries cause, apparently, they are not in the balkans anymore

[Professor]

yeah they or prof are keeping out EU countries cause, apparently, they are not in the balkans anymore

This is the Western Balkans region.

[erix77]

There is no corruption in Albania at all,well at least we don't call it corruption but just simply "a coffee".In Albania is mostly a cultural thing,if somebody does help you somehow somewhere (for a example a doctor that heals you) you have to offer him a gift as a way to say thank you,everybody does it and nobody thinks that it might be wrong.