Finland's record of transparency blemished by increasing corruption cases

Finland,a Nordic country that has been a model in the world in combating corruption, has witnessed an increase of suspected business related crimes in the past few years. According to a fresh police report quoted by the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle, alleged economic crimes have more than doubled over the past six years, from 91 cases in 2009 to 204 in 2013. The increase was almost entirely due to a rise in cases involving the abuse of authority, which number has doubled since 2012. Erkki Laukkanen, chief of Transparency International Finland, said the public-private partnerships are "far from transparency, and much more open to corruption." "I think the reasons are the same in many developed countries. The new rules of the world economy have affected public procurement too," he told Xinhua on Tuesday. A report on corruption published by the European Commission last week also urged Finland to make more effort to tackle corruption, particularly in public procurement decisions and election funding. The European Commission pointed out that old-boy networks are spreading in the country, distorting the public procurement procedures. It also said that the Finnish laws on the openness of public activities failed to keep pace with the trend of local governments to transfer part of their services to private sectors, resulting in difficulties in monitoring public procurements. Laukkanen said public procurements are often decided by private companies that have no obligation to reveal details publicly. The above accusations were made in the context of the overall stagnant economic situation, which has haunted Finland in recent years and could be blamed for the chances of corruption. Due to the continuous recession, the debt burden has been increasing and the Finnish government has to slash public spending and reduce staff size. As a result, more and more public services have to be outsourced to private sectors, causing the rise of corruption risks. Moreover, Juuso Oilinki, an inspector specialized in corruption in Finnish police, said Finns have been naive when it comes to corruption. Long-established ways of operating are not perceived as illegal, and even officials often fail to recognize corruption, he elaborated. Despite of the rise of corruptive cases in recent years, Finland still remains one of the front-runners in the anti-corruption movements both in Europe and around the world, with its good social climate, well established anti-corruption system and transparent supervisory mechanisms. Compared to those nations with conspicuous problems of corruption, the circumstance in Finland is much better. Laukkanen admitted, "our ability to distinguish corruptive behavior is now much more better than it was - say - 10 years ago," he said, adding that there is very little so-called street-level corruption in Finland, which encompasses things like bribing officials. To prevent business related corruption, Jouni Hirvonen, Detective Chief Inspector of National Bureau of Investigation of Finland, suggested, "competitive bidding processes should be more sharply scrutinized and closer attention paid to transparency." In addition, some Finnish police officers have called for tougher punishments on economic criminal cases. Finland has been ranked the first place in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for eight times, although slipping from the top to the third place in the annual corruption ranking published in the end of 2013. Therefore, in the next government program, a separate chapter for anti-corruption work is needed, said Laukkanen, adding that "we also need a research program of corruption to find out corruption sensitive areas of Finnish society."