Panorama.am

20:31 06/12/2007

I DID NOT BRIBE BUT THERE IS CORRUPTION

The International Corruption Barometers conducted a survey about the
corruption in 60 countries to find out which institutes are considered
to be more corrupted and which ones take bribes and especially how it
is developing.

Today Varujhan Hoktanyan said in a meeting with the journalists that
2481 citizens of Armenia participated in the poll and 54% of them are
sure that the corruption will be increased in the nearest future in
Armenia and only 24% of them think that the corruption will be
decreased. Whereas the situation is quite different in the neighbor
country Georgia: here people seemed to have more optimistic views as
only 25% of them think that the corruption in their country will
increase and 44% says the opposite.

The next question was which institutes are more corrupted and the
scene is as following: 96.6% – justice, 96% – education field, and
95.5% – the police. 92% of the participants think that the customs
administration are corrupted, 90% says the media and 80% – the
army. The less corrupted body in Armenia is the church as 49%
mentioned about it. In fact 54% of the participants to the poll think
that the struggle against the corruption in Armenia is not effective.
These data are quite the same in Georgia, particularly the most
corrupted bodies are considered to be the political parties and the
parliament (94%) and justice system (95%).

The most exciting thing is that although the records are so high only
9.1% of the participants confessed that he/she gave bribe during the
last year. This record is even lower in Georgia: here 0.6% confessed
giving bribe. Most probably people are more careful when they talk
about themselves. In comparison note that 27% of people in Greece
participated in the poll admitted that they gave bribe during the last
year.

Source: Panorama.am