Bribes.

Bribing is an interesting topic. Will you have to hand the doctor your golden watch in exchange for your appendectomy? No, that is very unlikely. But corruption is still somewhat of a problem in the Czech Republic, though not predominantly so, compared to many other eastern European countries.

Transparency International, an international organization fighting corruption, publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) asking the countries of the world about "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians" in their parts of the world. Herein corruption is defined as "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain".

The survey uses a scale from 0 to 10; a score of 10 means highly clean, whilst 0 means highly corrupt.

In 2007, the Czech Republic had a score of 5.2 in comparison to the UK with 8.4 and Russia 2.3 on the index. In the years before their score was below 5.0. Again, this index is based on perception. Individual experiences may vary.

Additional data from their Global Corruption Barometer of 2007 reveals that the main source of corruption is the police. The report is based on a scale from 1 to 5, defining 5 as extremely corrupt and 1 as not all corrupt. Accordingly, the category ‘Police’ gets a 3.8 on the scale.

Further, Prague’s City Hall published an article stating that every seventh driver has come across police officials who put them before the choice of either being fined for a traffic offence committed or giving a bribe in order to have the affair dropped.

Finally, also the World Bank conducted surveys about corruption rates in the world. According to their analyses – the data was collected via The Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) interviewing 4000 firms in 22 transition countries between 1999 and 2000 – bribery on the business sector in the Czech Republic is quite uncommon.

Link: Transparency International…

Link: BEEPS…


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