News

Laws forbidding companies from bribing abroad to win contracts or dodge local regulations have resulted in rising prosecutions, anti-corruption group Transparency International said in a new report today.
The report, Exporting Corruption? Country Enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Progress Report 2012, shows that bribery charges increasingly lead to fines, jail time and reputational damage. With 144 new cases in 2011, the total number of cases prosecuted by 37 major exporters rose from 564 at the end of 2010 to 708 at the end of 2011, with a further 286 investigations ongoing.

Transparency International is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Jeremy Pope, a founding member and strategic thinker who in many ways symbolized our movement’s enthusiastic commitment to fight corruption.

Prijavi Korupcija, the most innovative tool helping the citizens in the fight against corruption in Republic of Macedonia, has published its mobile app for Android phones on Macedonian language.
This application allows users to report cases of corruption, which are checked afterwards by the TI-Macedonia team and, as validated, published online at www.prijavikorupcija.org. Users can also view reported cases, categorized by reported case type, and by geographic area. This application is the first of its kind in the Balkans, and Europe as well.  All private information supplied by the reporting party is not available to the public.

Following the announced reports from the State Audit Office and reticence of the Government regarding the publishing of the GRECO report for compliance with the recommendations for Republic of Macedonia adopted on the 56th Plenary Assembly held in March this year, it becomes obvious that there is no necessary political will for effective control over the political financing.
The institutions which have the function to monitor and control, and by their nature should be independent, such as the State Audit Office (SAO), the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption, are engaging in the practice of selective and conscious misinterpretation of the laws.

Anti-corruption group Transparency International today warned in a new report that the close relationship between business and government has enabled corruption and undermined economic stability in Europe.
The report highlights the gaps in governance that contributed to the financial and political scandals that dogged nearly every European country in the last year. Transparency International called on lawmakers to make lobbying and campaign finance more transparent.

Europe’s thirst for energy remains high as regulations in the Eurozone tighten and the focus on energy efficiency grows. At the same time, an energy infrastructure that allows EU countries to quickly shift power to where it is most needed when shortages occur still needs to be built. With this in mind, the drive to build new power plants and facilities to carry power across borders is in full force. Energy companies are looking for options across the region to fill the gaps and make additional profits. Unfortunately, Italian, French and other companies are looking for the easiest way to make quick profits by reaching into countries around southeast Europe where environmental regulations are lax to build new energy production.

European nations are not doing enough to fight corruption and bribery, according to an annual report released on Wednesday (9 May) by the Council of Europe (CoE). In the EU alone, corruption costs an estimated €120 billion annually.
The CoE’s group of states against corruption (Greco), which acts as a peer review system producing reports and recommendations on different aspects of each member’s efforts to fight corruption, says members need to increase transparency of political funding.

The institutions for persecution are not interested in resolving the bribery affair with Telekom, said Slagjana Taseva, the President of “Transparency International – Macedonia” on the round table that was held in Skopje.  Few weeks ago, this nongovernmental organization has offered analyses of the affair and discovered that the Greek multimillionaire Dimitris Kontominas was involved in the bribery of the Macedonian politicians from the coalition between SDSM and DUI. 
 – We expected that what we offered would be developed and used for deeper research about what happened from 2000 onwards, from the privatization of one monopoly, which after its transformation continued to be a monopoly. That means that someone was having a concern for everything but not for the interests of the citizens. The institutions are not having pressure by anyone so they can seek the culprits of the affair and the question is will we agree that it should stay like this? – said Taseva and emphasized the situation is interesting because after the published findings, neither one political party declared to discredit them, as it is usually the case. 

The Greek billionaire Dimitris Kontominas, which “Transparency International – Macedonia” claims to be involved in major corruption scandal of “Deutsche Telekom”, one year ago has re-directed his business arrows towards our country. First his involvement was with the project “Skopje 2014” by buying land on the square Macedonia baroque for building a baroque hotel and “officer’s home”, a project for which the firm Kontominas “DEMKO” was the only bidder and got an area of 6308 square meters for about 630,000 euros.Kontominas then tried, unsuccessfully, to involve in the energy business by participating in tenders for the construction of hydroelectric plants in Macedonia.