KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

• existence of certain rules of the game and norms which are known to the subjects
of corrupt activities;
• established terminology of corruptive actions; e.g. “to get things settled” means
to solve the issue through a bribe or a common friend;
• an established fee for services known to those involved in it. According to a
number of experts, there are set fees for not initiating a criminal case, for release
from custody, or for remission of a penalty. Normally, fees depend upon the
resolution and category of cases; e.g. in economic cases, the fee for settling the
issue depends on the cost of the specific action. However, other experts say there
are no fixed bribe rates, since every case is looked at individually.
Some authors talk about such corrupt actions as rule-based corruption, “when
judges ask for a bribe to fulfill their duties which they should fulfill by law”
[10, p. 111]. Such cases are very common in the judiciary (making a legal court decision
or announcing a legal sentence for a bribe), which involves no visible violation of the
law.
The issue of judicial corruption is common in all post-Soviet countries. For example,
in 2004 V. Zor’kin, Chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court, said that bribery in
the courts had become one of the most severe sites of corruption in Russia. Judicial
corruption is integrated into various corrupt networks functioning at different power
levels, e.g. in the network of destroying criminal cases and taking over someone’s
business [15]. Journalists from the newspaper 24, in a study of different court cases,
interviewed prominent Ukrainian lawyers and human rights activists, who helped
them reach almost the same conclusion: “Ukrainian courts are stuck in corruption.
There a certain scheme in the existing judicial system through which money reaches its
beneficiaries, with concrete rates for the services of judges” [12]. Many publications in
other CIS countries publish the same information.
Top-ranking officials also recognize the existence of corruption, although indirectly.
The president of Kyrgyzstan, K. Bakiev, speaking at a gathering of judges, said that the
community of judges should get rid of inappropriate staff who view the position of a
judge as a business, and thus severely damage the image of justice. We should part with
such judges, he said, with no regret [2, p. 11].
In 2000, a large sociological survey on corruption was conducted in Kyrgyzstan,
when 2,100 respondents were interviewed. According to the survey data, gathered
from the public, the courts and prosecutor’s offices are number two in the list of most
corrupt organizations (83 percent of the respondents said corruption is spread widely
there) [8, p. 28]. Most experts interviewed believe that the situation is not likely to have
changed drastically since that time, although in recent years (starting in 2005) the level
of public trust toward courts and law enforcement agencies has become somewhat
higher.
In 2000, those who researched corruption reached the conclusion that, when corruption
permeates uniformed services, and particularly law enforcement agencies (police and
prosecution), it is especially dangerous for society. In the long run, this may lead to the
merging of corrupt elements in the state with economic crime, and result in the following:
– launching “complex brigades” that making money from destroying criminal
cases;
– pressure of law enforcement agencies on business rivals in return for bribes;
– precedents of law enforcement officers who also join commercial structures and
embrace both roles [8, p. 32].
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