Corruption

CORRUPTION

CONTENTS

DEFINITION 2

TYPES OF CORRUPTION 3

CORRUPTION METHODS 5

ENVIRONMENT THAT FACILITATES CORRUPTION 7

ADDRESSING & PREVENTING CORRUPTION 8

DEFINITION

In philosophical, theological, or moral discussions, corruption is spiritual or moral impurity or deviation from an ideal. Corruption may include many activities including bribery and embezzlement.

Corruption is a global ethical and legal issue and is defined by Transparency International as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.

This article deals with the commonplace use of the term corruption to mean dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power.

Corruption is derived from the Latin verb rumpere, to break. According to this approach, corruption is where the law is clearly broken. This requires that all laws must be precisely stated, leaving no doubts about their meaning and no discretion to the public officials. A legal interpretation of corruption provides a clearly demarcated boundary between what is a corrupt activity and what is not. ‘If an official’s act is prohibited by laws established by the government, it is corrupt; if it is not prohibited, it is not corrupt even if it is abusive or unethical’.

TYPES OF CORRUPTION

Corruption can occur on many different scales. There is corruption that occurs as small favours between a small number of people (petty corruption), while there is the corruption that affects the government on a large scale (grand corruption), and corruption that is so prevalent that it is part of the everyday structure of society.

Petty corruption

Small scale, bureaucratic or petty corruption is the everyday corruption that takes place at the implementation end of politics, where the public officials meet the public. Petty corruption is bribery in connection with the implementation of existing laws, rules and regulations, and thus different from “grand” or political corruption. Petty corruption refers to the modest sums of...