Forms of corruption

A recent study has characterised some main forms or manifestations of corruption, according to a number of basic characteristics (Amundsen 1999). The main forms considered are bribery, embezzlement, fraud and extortion. Even when these concepts are partly overlapping and at times interchangeable with other concepts, they may identify some basic varieties of corruption.

“ Bribery ” is the payment (in money or kind) that is given or taken in a corrupt relationship. To pay or receive a bribe is corruption per se , and should be understood as the essence of corruption. A bribe is a fixed sum, a certain percentage of a contract, or any other favour in money of kind, usually paid to a state official who can make contracts on behalf of the state or otherwise distribute benefits to companies or individuals, businessmen and clients. There are many equivalent terms to bribery, like kickbacks gratuities , “ commercial arrangements ”, baksheesh , sweeteners , pay-offs, speed- and grease money , which are all notions of corruption in terms of the money or favours paid to employees in private enterprises, public officials, and politicians. These are payments or returns needed or demanded to make things pass swifter, smoother or more favourably through the state or government bureaucracies. By “greasing palms” corporations and business interests can for instance buy political favours and escape the full burden of taxation and environmental regulations, they can buy protected markets and

monopolies, import/export licences and quotas, and get access to large state contracts on capital goods, on-going supplies, major civil engineering projects, construction works, and so on.

“ Embezzlement ” is theft of resources by people who are put to administer it; it is when disloyal employees steal from their employers. This is a serious offence when public officials are misappropriating public resources, when state official steals from the public institution in which he or she is employed and from resources he is embezzled, but no individual property is stolen and individual citizens are bereft of legal rights to present themselves as forfeited. This points to one of the dangers of embezzlement. There will have to be a political will as well as an independent judiciary and a legal capacity to clamp down on embezzlement. Embezzlement is a form of corruption and power abuse that can develop in closed institutional and moral spheres, independently of the public moral and with few possibilities of public sanction. In many thoroughly corrupt countries, embezzlement is a fundamental part of the resource extractive capacity of a ruling elite, even more important than extraction through bribes. “Straddling”, the process by which some power-holders systematically use their political office to enter into, secure and expand their private business interests, should be regarded as another form of embezzlement. In some countries the political elite has nationalised foreign businesses, property and monopoly rights, and redistributed these to the members of the ruling families.