Corruption: Scourge of Europe

VALLETTA -- In Spain a top security chief is on the run from police, in Britain a senior civil servant has been jailed, in Italy an entire political class has been discredited, while in Moscow mafia-style warfare has hit the streets. Corruption of every shape and size has spewed across Western Europe, and is threatening to stunt nascent democracies in the east of the continent. "None of our countries is immune to the disease of corruption and the gangrene is spreading," says Peter Leuprecht, secretary general of the 32-nation Council of Europe, which aims to promote democracy and human rights. The council was so alarmed by the apparent rise in large-scale corruption that it organized a conference on the Mediterranean island of Malta for justice ministers from around Europe to study ways to combat the scourge. "Crime in Europe has changed," Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said while attending the meeting. "After the easing of travel restrictions, the easing of the restrictions on flows of goods and money, and after the collapse of communism, we now have a quite different reality, where organized crime and corruption can flourish," he said. Cimoszewicz said investigations into corruption by state officials doubled in Poland last year to some 600 cases.Ministers at the Council of Europe conference agreed to set up an international body to work out model laws for all European countries to adopt in their fight against crime. But some ministers warned that laws alone would be of little use, while lawyers admitted it might take years before effective legislation was introduced to tame corruption. "Merely thinking you can stick a law in place does not of itself solve matters," said David Maclean, a junior British minister with responsibility for criminal justice, Britain was shaken last month when a former top Ministry of Defense aide was jailed for four years for accepting bribes from foreign companies. The case coincided with government denials over allegations that it gave ?234 million ($355.4 million) to Malaysia in soft loans to secure lucrative defense contracts. "If there is an ethos of corruption among businessmen and politicians, no amount of law will change that. There has instead to be a will and a desire for change," Maclean added.A desire for change has swept Italy over the past two years with magistrates uncovering wrongdoing at the highest levels of society and the electorate shunning the disgraced political old-guard at the March general election. Italian Justice Minister Alfredo Biondi said the determination with which his country has sought to stamp out "the gangrene" was an example to the rest of the world. However he said that in Italy at least, the public's fervor to root out corruption might be going too far. "There is now a disequilibrium in favor of the prosecutor," he said. "People are crying out for the heads of those accused of corruption, perhaps they should have their heads...but maybe we need only clip their wings," he added. Spain was stunned in April by the disappearance of the former director of the Civil Guard, Luis Roldan, and the arrest of the one-time Central Bank governor Mariano Rubio, both accused of illicit enrichment. All agreed that while the West faced problems, the former communist countries of Eastern Europe faced a crisis.Leuprecht said he feared for the prospects of democracy if corruption was not rooted out. "Our organization is built on three fundamental principles: pluralist democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights," he said. "All three are threatened by corruption."