Bribery as a rule assumes shared responsibility

RIGA - Last week Latvia's Constitution Protection Bureau detained a prosecutor for bribery. He was taken into custody in his office right after taking $2,000 as a bribe.

The bribery was determined as a result of a sting operation planned and prepared by the CPB employees and sanctioned by the prosecutor general.

According to statistics of the Corruption Prevention Board, 283 cases of bribery were registered from 1994 through 1999. However, only in 147 cases were officials convicted of bribery.

Uldis Dzenitis, a deputy of the CPB, explained that the CPB obtained information about a prosecutor taking the bribes long in advance of the operation. He said that "the provocative element is essential to arrest the bribe taker. The CPB had a lot of initial detailed information on how how this person solicits the bribe."

The prosecutor of the Riga Kurzemes district court, whose name is not revealed yet, did not deny taking bribes. He admitted he has sought and received money, though Dzenitis said that the prosecutor tried to soften his wrongdoing.

The name of the person, following whose personal initiative the case was investigated, is also not disclosed yet. Since the person asked for a bribe by the prosecutor revealed and paid it under the full control of law enforcement, the bribe giver is protected by the law against being charged.

The same applies to all persons voluntarily disclosing cases of bribery. According to the director of the Center of the Judicial Practice and Help, lawyer Jautrite Briede, people often do not know they are protected against bribery, although she believes there are also other reasons for bribery.

Briede explained that for some persons, it is more profitable to give a bribe, than to pay more in taxes to the state. She says that some people seeking assistance in her center said that giving the bribe you can close the investigation as well as launch it against an unwelcome person or competitor.

Dzenitis agreed that "both sides seem to be satisfied with the outcomes, which makes revealing bribery cases more complicated and problematic."

But Briede said that giving bribes is a very common thing.

"People take giving bribes for granted. They say, when I need to get this document, I have to give a big bribe. This might be a kind of an old settled tradition. It is inside people," she said.

The Transparency International Latvian directory's 1999 research on corruption shows that first reason for refusing to give bribes to officials is that one cannot afford it. If they would be more well off, they would pay. The other reasons are connected with the respondents' individual moral responsibility and the stable belief that the officials' wages are large enough for clerks not to require bribes.

Concerning this particular case, she said, "I understand our poor prosecutors. The wages are small, the amount of work is huge, the temptation is large. With this, I don't want to say that being a prosecutor, I would take the bribes. No. But knowing the price, I apparently would never become a prosecutor."

Meanwhile, the prosecutor general of the Riga Kurzemes district had no comments on the issue.