A lot of money and a question: the billions of dollars that Western countries, including Canada, have begun to send to Ukraine, to help the former Soviet republic deal with Russian aggression, to maintain its democratic institutions in place and considering the beginning of its reconstruction, do they also risk fueling corruption in this country where, before the war, corruption was a scourge?
On Monday, 9.6 billion US dollars were granted to Ukraine by the 27 member countries of the European Union, meeting in an extraordinary summit in Brussels, to support the country in the face of the current crisis. A sum that is added to the 40 billion in aid from the United States announced in mid-May to enable kyiv to resist and not collapse in the face of the invader, and whose potential to serve as fuel for the practice of bribery and embezzlement of public funds is still high.
In its 2021 report, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 122e world ranking, out of 180, in terms of corruption. On the European continent, the country now at war was ranked third among the most corrupt before the conflict, just after Russia, in the lead, and Azerbaijan.
“Corruption is still present in Ukraine”, admits in an interview with the To have to the specialist of this country and of the problem Maria Popova, professor of political science at McGill University. “But in 2022, we have a lot of reason to be optimistic that the money coming in from abroad to help him will actually help rebuild the country rather than fuel this corruption. »
It is that, for eight years, Ukraine has embarked on a series of institutional reforms in order to clear its reputation in this area. One of the cornerstones of the project is the ProZorro system – which means “transparent” in Ukrainian -, which since 2014 has allowed the country’s public markets, their bids and especially their investments to be made far from the opacity of yesteryear. The new framework has been welcomed by the World Bank, as well as by the Canadian government.
Since that same year, all civil servants in the country have been required to declare all their income and assets, in a detail still little highlighted in other European countries. The list is even accessible online to allow people to assess whether the standard of living and possessions of these state employees are in line with their salary.
The judiciary, under the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, elected in 2019 with a clear mandate to fight corruption, has also begun its overhaul, including the launch of an anti-corruption judiciary which took off just months before. the outbreak of war. A judicial arm whose scope could however be limited in a country ruined by the armies and the determination of Vladimir Putin.
“The best comparator is certainly Afghanistan,” summarizes in an interview political scientist Denis Saint-Martin, professor at the University of Montreal and keen observer of corruption around the world. “The end of the war marked the beginning of an outbreak of corruption”, which today places the country at 174e world rank on 180, in this matter. Corruption fueled by the meeting of international aid money with weak public institutions, all in a country deeply divided, politically and socially.
“Ukraine has an economy that is still very entrenched with that of Russia,” adds the academic. And after the war, we can expect that the shadow of Russia will continue to hang over the country, and with it that of corruption, which has always been a way for the Kremlin to maintain its hold on countries that he judges in the lap of Russia. »
The scenario is not to be excluded, even if, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, it becomes less and less probable, estimates for her part Maria Popova. “The recent wars and their reconstructions were made after civil wars, different from the one that is played out in Ukraine, she says. They have left countries divided, while Ukraine risks emerging from this war of invasion with an even stronger desire for unity than before. “A unit to be made in the emergency elsewhere.
A vital issue
After the start of the fight against corruption to get closer to the West, its values and its markets, the clean-up and transparency project now takes on a security dimension that Russian aggression comes from, since February 24 , exacerbate.
“After the war, the main objective for Ukraine will be to integrate the European Union (EU) and NATO,” said Mr.me Popova. The country will then be under enormous pressure to achieve these goals. It will find itself under the magnifying glass of legislators from the EU, the United States, Canada. The conditions for integrating these institutions, of which the fight against corruption is a large part, will in this context become a matter of national security. The country knows that its security as an independent state depends on support from the EU and North America. Cleaning in its practices and in its institutions therefore becomes a vital issue. »
“The EU and NATO will certainly help Ukraine get out of the vicious circle of corruption, believes Denis Saint-Martin, but it’s a process that can take a long time. It could take 10 to 20 years. At the moment, it is easy for Ukraine to pass tough laws. But it is in the implementation of these laws that the real effect ultimately lies. »
In 2019, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank of German origin on international politics, pointed out in one of these reports the discrepancy between transparency, which is improving in Ukraine, and corruption, whose Eradication follows a slower pace. “There is a clear lack of consistency in the prosecution of corruption cases,” the organization wrote at the time, describing Ukraine “as a transparent but corrupt country.” “Prevention and transparency are only the first step, and now we need independent institutions for criminal prosecution and sentencing” to see the reforms through.
The brutality of the war is certainly changing things in Ukraine to continue on this path, believes Maria Popova.
“There have been many institutional reforms in recent years, but the political will to make them work properly was not so clear,” she says. What is happening now is that the war has blown another wind of these reforms and is spurring politicians to use them properly. Wars can also strengthen the cohesion of states. And this is what is happening in Ukraine. There is a strong solidarity which is now being expressed and which will contribute to strengthening the capacities of the State and its effectiveness, including in its fight against corruption. »
This is enough to reaffirm the “dignity revolution” launched in 2014, the need for which is becoming more and more glaring in the light of Russian aggression, and more and more risky, too, when we look at the needs for reconstruction. hardly begun in the west of the country and whose dizzying figures can make the most corrupt salivate.
More than three months after the outbreak of the invasion, the Kyiv School of Economics calculated that direct and indirect losses from the war ranged from $543 billion to $600 billion. A sum condemned to increase, as the conflict drags on.