"Tajikistan: Corruption is a key to everything" “Corruption accompanies a Tajik citizen from birth to the grave. Periodicals in Tajikistan are full of articles exposing corruption in hospitals, schools, universities, banks, courts, customs, tax authorities, etc.”, said Nurali Dawlat, journalist-analyst (Dushanbe, Tajikistan), in an article written for cabar.asia. Follow us on LinkedIn! Once in a company of friends, one government official asked me why I did not work in government agencies? I answered honestly that I could not take bribes. He smiled and said: “We could not either… in the beginning, but then we were taught…” Many representatives of the middle and older generation remember the Soviet era, when government officials lived almost like all the other residents. In contrast to today’s “servants of the people”, Tajik Soviet officials often did not take bribes. And not just because they firmly believed in the holy ideals of communism. The reason was extremely simple. They knew that if somebody sent a complaint against them to Moscow, they would definitely be punished. There were enough examples of that in our history. Many still remember the case of the so-called “cotton records” in 1961, when the first secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan Tursun Uldzhabaev was fired from his post. Knowledgeable people say that there were not any violations. Moscow simply made such “cleansings” from time to time to remind the red bosses in Muslim republics who was the principal boss. The most high-profile corruption criminal proceeding in the Tajik SSR was instigated in the second half of the 1970s against 15 teachers of today’s Pedagogical University named after Aini. All of them got various terms, and the rector of the university Kandil Juraev, a well known Tajik scientist, was dismissed. However, I should note that many teachers did not take bribes at that time. They thought it scorn to do it. Problems in the legislation We cannot say that the government is not fighting this phenomenon, but the situation is getting worse every year. "Tajikistan: Corruption is a key to everything" A well-known economist in Tajikistan, professor Hojimahmad Umarov, believes that the level of corruption has reached such proportions that it is now becoming a “threat to national security”. [1] Tajikistan has ratified all international legal instruments relating to the eradication of corruption. In 2005, it adopted a new Law on the fight against corruption, the Strategy for Combating Corruption, in 2007, there was established a separate department within the structure of presidential power – the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption of the Republic of Tajikistan. [2] In addition, a variety of structures are currently fighting against corruption in Tajikistan, including the bodies of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Interior Ministry, the Tax Committee, customs, military authorities and others. However, corruption is so much present in all spheres of the country, that all of these measures are not enough. Apparently, the process of improvement of national legislation will continue. In any case, the partners of the Tajik government are hoping for that. In recent years, the problem of improvement of the legislation was repeatedly discussed with representatives of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). At the end of November 2014, international experts of anti-corruption unit of this organization said that Tajikistan fully implemented only four of the 17 recommendations, partially – 12, and one was not implemented at all. This organization recommended that the Tajik government should conduct a thorough and comparative analysis of the Criminal Code, the Law “On Combating Corruption”, Code of Administrative Offences and other relevant legislation of the Republic of Tajikistan and harmonize criminal and administrative anti-corruption laws of the country according to its results. [3] But the official Dushanbe believes that the OECD guidelines require a fundamental change in the legislation of Tajikistan, since these requirements are not consistent with our legal system. According to the former head of the Anti-Corruption Agency Fattokh Saidov (after changing the name and surname – Abdufattoh Goib.- author’s note), the recommendations to criminalize all forms of bribery, i.e promises to pay a bribe and promise to accept it, or to bring legal persons to criminal responsibility, on the whole does not meet the basics of "Tajikistan: Corruption is a key to everything" criminal law and the Constitution of Tajikistan. At the same time, he believes that some of the recommendations of the OECD are controversial, i.e their implementation takes place both in practice and in the legislation of our country. [4] A few years ago, Abdufattoh Goib admitted that “the so-called small” errors do not lead to “criminal liability”, otherwise we would not find room for all criminals in prisons of the republic” [5]. Konstantin Bondarenko, an expert on economic issues, believes that the problem lies in the fact that, having inherited the Soviet system of law, Tajikistan was trying to adapt it to modern conditions. But as a result of this synthesis, the republic has not developed a legal culture, which is called “the rule of law” in the developed countries. Reasons for systemic corruption The fact that corruption in Tajikistan has become a system was first recognized 10 years ago in a special research made by the employees of the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS) under the President of Tajikistan. Subsequently, the CSS conducted two other studies that have shown that corruption in Tajikistan is gaining momentum. Experts believe that the main reason is that there is no public control and accountability of officials in the country because of the weakness of civil society. Lawyer Shokirjon Khakimov, deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party, claims that Tajikistan has ratified an international convention to combat corruption, implemented its main provisions in the legislation, but because of the lack of parliamentary and public control, wrong personnel policies and weakness of democratic institutions, Tajikistan failed to reduce corruption relations in the country. According to him, contrary to the requirements of the Convention, citizens have no way of knowing about the income and property of public servants. Strong local authorities, weak accountability even to the closest management team and low salaries of the bureaucracy contribute to the widespread corruption. Khakimov believes that officials are given too much freedom, and too many people are dependent on their work. Normative legal acts regulating the activities of state bodies on the issue of certificates, licenses and various registration procedures create favorable "Tajikistan: Corruption is a key to everything" conditions for corruption relations, he said. Corruption is traditionally strong in a poor country, where the government has extensive powers, said Bondarenko. “If an official has the right to solve a large range of issues, a lot of officials are needed to solve them. At the same time, the low level of their official earnings naturally transform into the need to use corruption to improve their living standards”, said Bondarenko. Another Tajik expert Ali Mastov is convinced that the main reason for the spread of corruption in Tajikistan is the lack of political competition, free elections at all levels, independent courts and media, as well as the lack of fiscal transparency and the state apparatus swollen to epic proportions. “All of the above gives rise to a sense of impunity, and impunity, in turn, generates all- permissiveness that unfortunately, has become a normal thing in our lives”, says Ali Mastov. Corruption is everywhere Corruption accompanies Tajik citizen from birth to the grave. It is very easy to verify this. Periodicals in Tajikistan are full of articles exposing corruption in hospitals, schools, universities, banks, courts, customs, tax authorities, etc. This is probably one of the few topics when journalists are not accused that they execute someone’s order from abroad. During the past report press conference for journalists on July 27 of this year, Deputy Naimӣ Alamhon Kodiriyon said that 1,041 of corruption offenses were detected during six months. According to the tradition established in the last decade, the Tajik media annually rank the most corrupt ministries and agencies on the results of the work of the Anti-corruption agency. In the first half of 2015, the most corrupt organizations were the banking system (100 facts of corruption), the Ministry of Education and Science (53), the Ministry of health and social protection (45), the Ministry of the Interior (37), the Ministry of Justice (26), and the Ministry of agriculture (26). It should be noted that the Ministries of Education and Science and Health and Social Protection are leaders in this ranking over the last few years. In all other public institutions, there were also identified violations. "Tajikistan: Corruption is a key to everything" On July 23, the Chairman of the Customs Committee Abdufattokh Goib said that some entrepreneurs reduce twice the cost of imported goods through forgery. He says that, according to the statistics from China Customs, during six months, there were imported goods for $ 257 million to Tajikistan it, but according to Tajik data, this sum is 132 million dollars total. On July 24, the news agency “Ozodagon” reported that it was not clear what happened to the 500,000 of grant funds in the Committee for Women’s Affairs, which were allocated by the government for women-entrepreneurs. Employees of the Agency for Fight against corruption and the Audit Chamber are now involved in the investigation of this case. The scandal, which happened in May this year in the Committee of Youth, Tourism and Sports, included this agency in the “black list” of the Global Fund to Fight HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Representatives of this international organization reported the missing $116,726 of $300,000 dollar grant allocated to the Committee on Youth through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).