Corruption in Poland. Enough!

Date: 19/04/03

A parliamentary inquiry may lead to higher standards in public life

THREE years ago the World Bank's office in Warsaw issued a damning report on corruption in Poland and told Polish politicians to tackle graft as “a mainstream public concern”. It has belatedly got its wish. Since February Poles have been gripped by a parliamentary inquiry into allegations of high-level bribe-seeking, broadcast live on television. Might the revulsion provoked by the inquiry bring down corrupt politicians and businessmen and thus prompt a general clean-up of public life, as happened in Italy in the early 1990s? Maybe. But there is a long way to go.

The inquiry concerns allegations that Lew Rywin, a film producer, solicited a bribe of some $17.5m on behalf of the ruling (ex-communist) Democratic Left in return for amendments to a proposed media law that would have let Agora, publisher of Poland's best-selling daily newspaper, move into television. Though no big heads have yet rolled, the scandal has enfeebled Leszek Miller, the prime minister, who has been called to testify before the committee on April 26th. Poland's president, Alexander Kwasniewski, who is much more popular, may also be grilled. Both men deny any wrongdoing and no compelling evidence has been brought against them. Nonetheless, the inquiry is exposing murky ties between politicians, media bosses and regulatory officials. As a result, ordinary Poles are increasingly disgusted with, and cynical about, the post-communist establishment.

Nearly 70% of Poles now say that corruption is a huge problem, up from 46% in 2000 and 33% in the early 1990s, according to CBOS, a polling agency. “Everybody is mistrusted,” says Krzysztof Zagorski, its director. The mistrust may be growing in the current bleak economic climate, as contracts dry up and the bribes needed to win them get bigger. Indeed, Rafal Antczak of the Centre for Social and Economic Research in Warsaw thinks that Poland's politicians are making a last effort to have their palms greased while there is still some cash left in the till.

Judging by the most recent scorecard issued by Transparency International, an independent watchdog based in Berlin, the Poles are less corrupt than the Czechs and Latvians but more than the Hungarians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Slovenes and even Belarussians. In its latest progress report on Poland's fitness to join the European Union, which it hopes to do next year, the European Commission scolded Warsaw for not doing enough to tackle graft, especially in the police and border-guard services. The privatisation programme has stalled, and the senior civil servant in charge of one part of it resigned recently, apparently as a protest at the shenanigans that have stymied the sale of a stake in a state-controlled insurance company. Poland's chaotic health-care reforms, which have done little to curb the powers of dishonest hospital directors, have also drawn much criticism.

Poland's history is partly to blame. The country has been invaded, and indeed carved up, so often that the fragile flower of civic responsibility, rooted in respect for state institutions and their servants, has rarely had a chance to grow. “Poles lost their identification with the state in the 18th century,” sighs Grazyna Kopinska of Warsaw's Stefan Batory Foundation.

But more openness in business-cum-political dealings may be coming. The World Bank report of three years ago, listing a catalogue of malpractice, started a spate of anti-corruption initiatives. Poland's newspapers have pepped up their investigations. One, a couple of years ago, brought down a deputy defence minister in the previous government.

Some businessmen are beginning to speak out rather than pay up. The boss of a computer company, Optimus, recently came forward to complain about corruption among the tax authorities. Jan Maria Rokita, one of the more assertive members of the parliamentary committee investigating the scandal, has become quite a star, just as some of Italy's anti-corruption magistrates did in the early 1990s. So there is a chance that the inquiry may mark the start of something good.