Georgia among developed countries in corruption tables

Transparency International research on Global Corruption Barometers of 2010 showed Georgia in 5th position with its low rate of corruption within the police. In a report released Monday by the Ministry of Interior Affairs of Georgia (MIA) only 3% of the population had paid a bribe to one of the nine state institutions. This figure put Georgia in the list of “the most uncorrupt states” together with the world’s developed countries. But 9% of respondents disagreed with the idea.

According to research carried out by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in September-October 2010 only 0.4% of respondents had to give bribe in return for services they needed, while the 98% denied experiencing any instances of corruptive deals with officials.

Considering the activities carried out against corruption in Georgia over the last several years,international organisations have shown that the 84% of the Georgian population have trust in the police while 10% believe the opposite. 70% of respondents of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) research in July 2010 also said that the situation has definitely improved in Georgia in terms of the fight against corruption over the last two years; 8% said the situation had worsened.

Analysing the results of the research published on the official web page of MIA analyst Irakli Sesiashvili spoke about the inconsistencies of the data to The Messenger. “Most Georgians point out that the MIA has been actively violating the supremacy of law,” Sesiashvili told us. Claiming the individual agencies used to manipulate the figures to make them beneficial the analyst said that “corruption doesn’t only refer to bribery but improper use of the state budget.”

“Look around and you will see how the number of new police buildings is increasing and compare it to the number of homeless people. Even the fines for particular violations are artificially high in Georgia – if before you had to pay GEL 2 for a tiny penalty this figure is now GEL 50 for the same crime. This all happens when the bonuses of the police staff are tens of thousands of GEL. Corruption can’t be solved only by establishing control over bribery but is a more wide scale problem,” Sesiashvili told us.