Director of the Center for the Education of Judges and Prosecutors of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arben Murtezić, said today in Sarajevo that measuring the actual level of corruption in a country or society is a big challenge for all experts and institutions that deal with it.
Speaking as the keynote speaker at the Circle 99 session on the topic “The fight against corruption and its political abuse”, Murtezić stated that a formally correct, but somewhat cynical, answer would be that there are as many corruption cases as there are legally binding verdicts for such acts.
“This is because it is clear that a small number of judgments can also mean the opposite. On the other hand, it is a common situation that the results of research on the perception of corruption are taken as a dominant indicator of the actual level of corruption in a country,” said Murtezić.
He added that such an approach is increasingly met with various, well-argued objections, and that research shows that the perception of corruption can be influenced by other factors such as the poor economic situation, the development of investigative journalism, and the focus of political discussions on the issue of corruption.
“Important factors are the general political situation and the inefficiency of state institutions, the root of which is often not in corruption,” Murtezić pointed out.
He said that it has also been observed that negative perception is common to countries with certain characteristics, post-communist or post-conflict, especially when viewed from an international perspective.
“Even at first glance, it is clear that almost all of the aforementioned factors are present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ultimately affects the extremely high level of perception of corruption. That is why it is important to discuss this in a public space in a professional, objective and understandable way,” said Murtezić.
