TI Latvia has supported and
advocated the necessity of establishing the Corruption Prevention and Combating
Bureau (KNAB) ever since this idea was first born. TI Latvia believes that KNAB
is its most significant public partner in the fight against corruption.
Therefore it has always been important for TI Latvia that KNAB is led by a
competent professional and that it is a strong and independent institution
capable of performing its statutory functions: prevention and combating of
corruption and raising public awareness. Consequently, all this time TI Latvia has
been actively monitoring the performance of KNAB and by means of critical
analysis attempting to promote more efficient performance of KNAB.
Although originally the
political elite seemed to be open for various anti-corruption initiatives and
ideas proposed by TI Latvia, the actual persuasion process on the necessity of
establishing a corruption prevention and combating agency generally proved to
be a highly difficult challenge, as evidenced by the fact that since the idea
of the establishment of KNAB first originated, five years had to pass before the
agency was actually established.
The notion of the necessity to
establish a corruption prevention and combating agency in Latvia was first proposed
by the World Bank in 1997, as it was confident that such institution would be
helpful for implementing the anti-corruption programme, which had already been
developed, and that it would also contribute to efficient anti-corruption
efforts being enforced in Latvia. As regards the adoption of the Law on KNAB, in
the drafting of which also TI Latvia took an active part, the gratitude largely
goes to the Western partners as both the European Union and NATO were actively
following the development of this issue in Latvia, so they also supported the
establishment of an anti-corruption agency and Latvia followed their advice. Then
again, it cannot be said that KNAB is something that has been copied and taken
over from abroad and then re-enacted here without any adjustments. The drafting
of the Law on KNAB was a lengthy endeavour involving in-depth discussions and
analysis on how to ensure that the agency would be effective and independent to
the extent possible. As result, KNAB was formed according to a model that was
adapted specifically for the existing situation in Latvia. Besides, in no other
country of the world anti-corruption agencies have the function of controlling
the political parties’ financing, but in Latvia the politicians themselves
proposed it as they did not want to delegate this function to the Central
Election Commission, which is the normal practice elsewhere in the world and
which, in fact, was recommended by experts also to Latvia.
TI Latvia has been following
all former selection procedures of the Heads of KNAB. As a matter of fact, the
Head of KNAB is essentially the guarantee of the institution’s independence,
therefore from the very start, already during the drafting of the Law on KNAB, TI
Latvia put an emphasis on the procedure for the selection and appointment of
the Head of KNAB. The fact that in the end the workgroup agreed that in order
to select the best candidate for the post of the Head of KNAB, an open
competition where TI Latvia is acting as an independent observer would be the
best option possible, is seen by TI Latvia as its accomplishment and
contribution to the development of KNAB also.
The quality of the legal
framework is an essential precondition for ensuring and defining an independent
institution, nevertheless, it is the leader of the institution who must be
capable of protecting this independence and staying true to its principles. The
Head of KNAB, just like the leaders of the State Audit or national mass media
and news agencies, to name a few, are the primary protectors of the
independence of their respective institutions and that’s the way they are
supposed to be. They cannot be influenced in an attempt to weaken the quality
of work of their institutions, unless they let it happen.
From today’s perspective Ms. I.Voika
has concluded that the former leaders of KNAB have also been the guarantees of
KNAB’s quality of work, as they have let the institution work effectively and
thus have contributed to prevention and combating of corruption in Latvia. Another
vital element has been the civil society monitoring, as it has followed KNAB’s
work ever since the agency was established. Political support is also vital for
effective fight against corruption, but it has hardly been the case in Latvia,
especially during the last few years. Here we could name, as an example, the
long-drawn search for the new Head of KNAB as part of all the competitions
organized so far. We can also recall here the attempt of the government led by
then Prime Minister I. Emsis in 2004 to appoint a Head of KNAB without any
competition whatsoever. Owing to the pressure made then by TI Latvia and the
mass media, this government’s brain-child did not come to life in the end. We
can also recall here that as result of the eventual competition, the weakest of
the three candidates short-listed for the final evaluation, namely, Aleksejs
Loskutovs was appointed as the new Head of KNAB despite the fact that Juta
Strīķe had been previously recognized as the strongest contender by an
independent commission. It should also be mentioned here that A.Loskutovs turned
out to be an unpleasant surprise for the ruling coalition, and the government
fought back by launching an attack in 2006 against the leaders of law
enforcement bodies, which were seen as undesirable and troublesome by both the
government itself and the major sponsors of the political parties. Moreover, it
must also be noted that right after the national parliament elections of 2006
the Parliament’s Anti-corruption Commission was liquidated and in 2007 an illegal
attempt was made to discharge from office the Head of KNAB, which was prevented
from happening only by three public rallies organized by TI Latvia. We can also
recall that although in the spring of 2007 the government supported the
organization of the 13th international anti-corruption conference
(IACC) in Latvia, in September 2008, at the end of the same year the government
declined the proposal by using the fight against inflation as a pretext for
doing so. The above conference, in fact, is an anti-corruption event of a
global scale, usually attended by around 1200 participants representing
political, corporate, NGO, mass media and academic spheres. The government’s
decision was another step back in the enforcement of a national anti-corruption
policy as this conference would have been a great opportunity to show both the
Latvian people and the rest of the world that this state indeed cares about
fighting corruption. However, these developments only prove that the political
will to fight corruption and to promote a fair and lawful state has not been a
priority in Latvia during these years.
Still, despite the dangerous
attempts of the state authorities to impact the efficiency of KNAB’s work and
its possible achievements in the fight against corruption on a national level, in
2008, for the first time ever Latvia reached the benchmark of five points out
of 10 of the International Corruption Perception Index. All indices below five
points are seen as highly alarming. Then again, despite the positive trend for
Latvia, the overall result is still low and implies that we have failed to rise
above the other most corrupt countries of Europe. The International Corruption
Perception Index measures the perception of those professional resident groups
who are directly involved in the corruption risk areas.
On the overall, TI Latvia has
concluded that in the area of combating corruption, the performance of KNAB during
these years has been solid and it has earned also the public’s trust and
support. Yet, one of the weakest performances of KNAB is related to raising the
public awareness, which is the responsibility of both KNAB and the political
elite, as, on the one hand, it is a statutory function of KNAB, but, on the
other hand, the financial resources allocated to KNAB are insufficient to undertake
truly effective efforts for raising the public awareness. Unfortunately, KNAB has
also failed to be the role model of a public institution as it should have been
in the sense of good governance. The signs of a conflict of interests were
noticeable in the work of A.Loskutovs, which was unacceptable for this type of
institution, moreover, the scandal involving the lost cash of KNAB posed a
major threat for the institution’s reputation. Under the leadership of A. Loskutovs,
KNAB consistently avoided the need to evaluate ethical criteria in situations
of conflicts of interests, as it was evidenced by the screening of the legality
of the case when in 2004 the spouse of the then President of the State had
applied for the ownership of a land plot in Jūrmala; a failure outspokenly
criticized by TI Latvia.
As another accomplishment of TI
Latvia in the area of improving the efficiency of KNAB and the overall
anti-corruption climate in Latvia, the establishment of the Public Advisory
Board under KNAB can be mentioned; in 2004 Mr. Valts Kalniņš, Board Member of
TI Latvia and Researcher for the Centre for Public Policy Providus was elected
as the Chairman of this Board. Yet before KNAB had even established, TI Latvia had
carried out a study proving that the involvement and work of NGOs in the boards
and councils of public institutions would be of a great benefit and even necessary
for the state. The Public Advisory Board of KNAB was actually born from the
initiative of TI Latvia for cooperation between public administration bodies
and non-governmental organizations. Its goal was to ensure that the public is
engaged in the development and enforcement of the national anti-corruption
policies as well as in the raising of public awareness.
On the whole, it can be
concluded that during all these years TI Latvia has been proactive in
advocating the work of a strong and independent leading state anti-corruption
agency by closely following the development and performance of KNAB and by duly
responding whenever there have been concerns of a potential attempt to weaken
KNAB. Besides, in 2008 TI Latvia launched a project for monitoring the
performance of KNAB, which is an additional opportunity for a much more
comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the performance of KNAB during the next
two years to promote the independence and efficiency of KNAB.
