Corruption in Customs

The article analyzes the definitions of political corruption based on the following approaches used in political science to classify forms and manifestations of corruption: subject-oriented, actor-based and targeted. Within the framework of these approaches, we offer an updated definition of political corruption which can involve public officials of all levels. Political corruption is instrumentally defined as the unlawful use by a public official of various types of administrative resources of public authority to extract personal and (or) group political benefits (political enrichment), including in favor of third parties. The author singles out such form of corruption as state policy corruption, the essence of which is to skew the state policy in favor of private interests at the expense of public interests in order to unlawfully gain both tangible economic and intangible political benefits. The institutional mechanism of state policy corruption is the unlawful use by public officials of its legislative and regulatory administrative resources not to implement public policy in order to realize national interests and goals in various spheres of life of society and the state, but to create “rules of the game” that allow obtaining illegal advantage, to extract personal and (or) group benefit, which may have both tangible and intangible expression. Actors of such corruption can be senior public officials, whose competence includes adopting laws and regulations that determine state policy in various areas and mechanisms for its implementation. It is noted that state policy corruption is characterized by “autocorruption” – a situation where there is no external stimulation to commit a corruption act, it is not necessary, and its executor and final beneficiary are the same actor and (or) actors belonging to the same community. The author identifies the relationship between state policy corruption as a symbiosis of political and economic corruption at the highest levels of power and the peak of systemic corruption with corrupt state capture.

Creating a fair investment environment is crucial for economic growth and attracting domestic and foreign investors. The purpose of this study is to find out how the shadow economy, harshness of courts against corrupt officials, tax pressure, and restrictions on business affect the fair investment environment. Therefore, two economic-mathematical models are built using multiple least squares regression analysis, in which the outcome variables are: in model 1 ‒ control over corruption, which is a component of the Global Governance Index; in model 2 ‒ the European Business Association’s Investment Attractiveness Index. The composition of the factor attributes in both models is the same: Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International; level of shadow economy according to the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine; the number of criminal cases in courts under the article “Acceptance of an offer, promise or receipt of an undue benefit by an official” using open data from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions; total tax and fee rate, which reflects taxes and mandatory payments as a percentage of commercial profit, determined by the World Bank Group methodology; assessment of “Starting Business” by Doing Business, according to the methodology of the World Bank Group. The modeling is based on the example of Ukraine for 2012‒2022. Calculations based on Model 1 show that restrictions on business have the greatest impact on the corruption control indicator (a 10% reduction in restrictions leads to a 3-point reduction in the need to control corruption), the shadow economy and tax pressure have an average impact (a one-point increase in them will increase the level of corruption by 0.4 points). The harshness of the courts against corrupt officials has the least impact (most corruption cases in Ukraine do not reach the courts). Calculations based on Model 2 show that the complexity of starting a business exerts the greatest impact on investment attractiveness (if it decreases by 15%, investment attractiveness will increase by almost 1 unit). The average impact is exerted by the increase in the shadow economy (a 10% increase in the shadow economy leads to a rise in investment attractiveness by 0.4 units). The insignificant impact is exerted by the tax burden and judicial punishment of corrupt officials.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the significance of public/political corruption; trade tax revenue (import and export) on tax evasion in a group of 140 countries for the period 2008–2017. Sampled countries were subsequently grouped into four clusters for further testing. With the increase in globalization and technology, there is a potential of increased tax corruption on trade tariffs revenue activities.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical testing was carried out using the technical and more advanced dynamic two-step system-generalized moment method. The econometrical method solves the problem of autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity on cross-sectional data. This study used the data from World Bank, Transparency International, World Economic Forum and Kaufmann’s governance indicators.FindingsThere is statistical interaction between the corruption perception index (CPI) and international trade activities. Moreover, other results revealed that CPI and trade tax revenue activities are statistically insignificant to tax evasion in three groups; low corrupt countries, high corrupt and trade surplus countries although the coefficient signs remain consistent. This can be attributed by a low level of corruption in the low corrupt countries or concealment of corruption-related information in high corrupt countries and the low level of import evasion in trade surplus countries.Originality/valueBased on the theory and results, public and political officials should promote good corporate governance by strictly monitoring trade revenue activities because parties involved can use technical criminality to conceal illegal behavior. Additionally, all jurisdictions should apply the economic theory of crime, especially in high political corrupt countries and perennial trade deficit countries because key macroeconomic tax revenue activities such as imports invite numerous forms of dishonesty.

Corruption is perceived to exist in local government in Australia. This article explores the disparity between reports of perceived corruption by the public and reports by councils. It notes that perceived corruption in local government is not always recognized by local government officials; when it is, it is often not reported, or if it is reported, it does not receive an adequate response. Research undertaken with 251 employees in 10 Australian Councils raises issues of whether the corruption is systemic, or a set of isolated transgressions. If transgressions are not addressed, they risk becoming normalized, resulting in systemic corruption, and an ethical demise—a death by a thousand cuts.

Corruption and Tax Evasion: Reflections on Greek Tragedy

Political corruption has become one of the most topical issues in the political discourse in Ghana. This stems from the fact that corruption has become so endemic and systemic in Ghanaian polity with its negative effects on the economy. Indeed, political corruption negatively affects job creation, investment potentials, infrastructural development and generally the standard of living of the people. It is within this context that anti-corruption institutions have been established in Ghana to address the menace of corruption. The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) is one of such institutions established under the 1992 Republican Constitution of Ghana tasked with the responsibility of addressing the problem of corruption in Ghanaian public administration system. This paper examines the extent to which the Commission has achieved this constitutional mandate of addressing the problem of corruption. The study finds that some drawbacks which inhibit the potency of CHRAJ in addressing the problem of corruption include lack of political will by the governing elite to support the institution, eroding confidence of the Commission, the trend of appointing the Head of the Commission in an acting capacity, constitutional weaknesses, poor capacity building support and low motivation. The paper therefore offers pragmatic policy suggestions to address the inherent deficiencies of the Commission with the objective of making it more functional.

Moderating effects of business-systems corruption on corruption in basic national institutions and electronic government maturity: Insights from a dynamic panel data analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the international community efforts through the OECD and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in confronting tax evasion and money laundering (ML). Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the confrontation of OECD's and FAFT's results with data produced by the World Bank and Transparency International. Findings The G20 has speeded up the fight against tax evasion. There is no dilemma between confronting tax evasion or organized crime/terrorist ML but a potential crowding out effect and a risk of facade compliance. Corruption and poor governance have regional aspects but generate money for global laundering. The OECD is impressive in countering tax evasion. Its listing is not universal and gives satisfaction to jurisdictions having bad corruption/governance indicators. The FATF's record is striking but governance remains an issue as well as fair cooperation, and the ML and terrorist financing (TF) threat is evolving. New risks include tax evasion know-how, facade compliance, rising bad banks and financial centres in poorly governed jurisdictions. There is a destabilizing effect in the competition and linkage between weakly and highly compliant institutions and jurisdictions. The misuse of the financial sector has a bright future as long as poor governance continues to affect jurisdictions. Practical implications The paper is a call to practitioners, professionals and policy makers for keeping the momentum on ML and taking into account governance indicators. Originality/value The paper puts a parallel between the actions of the international community on tax evasion and ML and confronts official results with relevant assessments on corruption and governance.

International organizations promote integrity policies as tools to control corruption, particularly in systems where corruption is widespread. However, these policies often fail to produce measurable changes in traditional corruption indices. This article explores the paradox of anti-corruption efforts in environments characterized by systemic corruption, developing a framework to assess changes in corruption risks. Using a comparative case study of four Latin American countries—Uruguay, Chile, Honduras, and Mexico—the study examines how countries with stronger regulatory frameworks for integrity policies—like freedom of information, political financing restrictions, financial disclosure, and conflict of interest and lobbying regulations—affect corruption risks. It specifically addresses political parties, which are central to promoting integrity policies but are often entrenched in corrupt systems. The findings suggest that countries with strong institutional capacities are more likely to cultivate a culture of integrity within political parties, prioritizing transparency and effective corruption risk management, even in systemic corruption contexts. In contrast, weaker institutional frameworks yield limited results from these policies, highlighting the persistent challenges in addressing systemic corruption. This article contributes to both theory and practice by offering insights into the specific conditions under which integrity policies can foster meaningful change, even when traditional corruption measures remain unchanged.

The concept of dependence is central both to the study of modern republicanism and to the study of systemic corruption. Recently, Lawrence Lessig has described American politics as suffering from “dependency corruption,” a type of institutional corruption about which eighteenth-century republican writers were extremely worried. This article examines the use of the concept “dependence” in the current “neo-roman” republican theory stemming from Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli, and particularly Philip Pettit. The article argues that the term dependence has two essentially distinct inflections, one relating to outright domination (subjection to arbitrary power) and the other relating to a condition of material subordinacy (dependency corruption). If liberty is the “the absence of dependence on the will of others,” it is extremely important to determine just what independence entails. This article suggests that dependency corruption was a dominant concern of the modern republican tradition, but it is a concern that is largely ignored in today’s new republicanism. By way of a foray into the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources employed by the new republicans, the article attempts to revive a manner of thinking about corruption that risks being lost to view.

We investigate if macro-level social capital, which captures the notions of trust and honesty, has any effects on corporate payout policy. We find that firms situated in U.S. states (or counties) with higher levels of social capital (SC) have higher dividend payouts (DP). These results survive a battery of robustness tests dealing with inference and various forms of endogeneity. We find that the positive SC-DP association is more prominent when monitoring is weak. We also find that the positive SC-DP association remains when we account for internal social capital, political corruption, federal and state income taxes, and other possible dividend clienteles such as in-state pension funds and pension-age populations. Our study contributes to the literatures that regional locations and social considerations constitute clienteles who affect important corporate strategic decisions such as corporate payouts.

If corruption is rife and tolerated by society, prohibiting the production of a good with negative social costs may be more efficient at limiting quantity than legalizing and taxing producers. It becomes incentive-compatible for a corrupt government to enforce prohibition and credibly limit supply in order to extract bribes from illegal producers. In equilibrium, total quantity is low. In contrast, when the good is legal and taxed, a corrupt government can extract rents only by expropriating the tax revenues. Thus, it prefers a larger market in order to generate more taxes, and quantity is higher.

This paper explores Stafford Beer’s lesser-known journeys and collaborations in Latin America beyond the well-known Chilean project Cybersyn. It traces Beer’s involvement in the region back to the 1960s through his company SIGMA and its projects in Chile, as well as its attempts to expand into other Latin American countries. The paper also sheds light on a relatively unknown project in the 1970s in Peru, the Centre for the Study of People’s Participation (CENTRO), which was influenced by Beer’s ideas on real-time enterprise information and control systems. Furthermore, it explores Beer’s involvement in various projects across Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s, as the region gradually returned to democracy, including cases in Mexico, Uruguay (URUCIB), Venezuela (Cybervenez), and Colombia. While some implementations, particularly in Uruguay and Colombia, demonstrated the Viable System Model’s (VSM) potential for fostering genuine organizational democracy and social transformation, others in Mexico and Venezuela failed due to political instability or systemic corruption. The paper argues that though Beer’s VSM is often characterized as purely technocratic, its implementation in Latin America reveals that while sometimes appropriated by neoliberal reforms, it also aligned with regional aspirations for social transformation and creative liberation through the use of technology, challenging persistent biases about where technological innovation can originate.

As the guardians of the EU-Schengen Area’s external frontier, European states stand at the intersection of escalating security expectations and intensifying geopolitical pressures. They must simultaneously prevent unauthorized crossings of people and goods while countering increasingly complex transnational organized crime groups, some strengthened by state-backed networks that exploit institutional vulnerabilities. Following its full Schengen integration in 2025, Romania assumed responsibility for the Union’s largest external land border, adjoining Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine, regions marked by political instability, systemic corruption, or active conflict. These conditions elevate security risks and demand coordinated, strategic responses at both national and EU levels. This article argues that the real strength of the EU-Schengen Area’s border regime lies not solely in physical infrastructure or technological surveillance but in the institutional resilience of the states that manage it. Romania’s capacity to absorb operational pressures, implement sustained reforms, combat corruption, and disrupt sophisticated transnational criminal networks is now centrally contributing to safeguarding the credibility and stability of Schengen governance itself. Using a mixed-methods approach, this article analyses Romania’s evolving role and proposes a transferable civil society-driven framework for assessing and enhancing security across all EU-Schengen states with external border, positioning resilience as the decisive factor in Europe’s frontline defence.

Purpose: This study examines the role of national vigilance in addressing threats and ensuring the successful consolidation of democracy in Indonesia, focusing on internal and external challenges. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative descriptive approach is applied, integrating theoretical frameworks, geopolitical analysis, and data from the National Resilience Laboratory (Labkurtannas). The study analyses the synergy of democratic elements, including political institutions, civil society, and national values, supported by programmes such as the National Values Strengthening Programme by Lemhannas RI. Findings: The study indicates that national vigilance is indispensable in countering asymmetric threats such as radicalism, ideological infiltration, and social polarisation. While challenges remain, including weak political ethics and systemic corruption, leveraging democratic elements and strengthening national values can enhance resilience. Programmes promoting Bhinneka Tunggal Ika significantly contribute to fostering nationalism and addressing modern challenges. The research also highlights the need for integrated strategies to anticipate digital-era threats. Originality/Value: This study underscores the strategic role of national vigilance as a unifying framework for consolidating democracy in Indonesia. It provides actionable recommendations for policymakers and identifies areas for future research on national resilience in the context of digital and asymmetric threats.