Introduction

Introduction

The story on corruption in the countries of South-Eastern Europe could begin with the famous aphorism that 'each state has its mafia, only the mafia in these countries has its states'. That the aphorist followed the reality can be confirmed by the examples from which it is not difficult to conclude that the invisible tentacles of the mafia in all these states lead to the very top of state authorities.

The executive director of Bulgarian Institute of Regional and International Studies, Ognjan Mincev, warned a year ago that the economies of the countries of South-Eastern Europe were not led according to the principle of the invisible hand we were accustomed to see in highly developed countries, but by the steel hand of the mafia that controls them. It is very difficult to contest this diagnosis after an insight into the investigation of AIM's journalists.

Connected by mafia interests, leaders of these states increasingly turn towards illegal or half-illegal parasite deals, from smuggling excise goods to smuggling narcotics and people. That is the reason why customs officials are considered to belong to the most corrupt profession. In mafia deals cleptocratic circles are easily established in the form of economic, political and police clans which constitute or control power.

In the states of former Yugoslavia that have experienced war, ethnic elites have used the war to get rich. Big scandals in Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that are linked to the state leadership and families of their presidents, confirmed that corruption was part of state projects.

Corruptibility spread in the countries of South-Eastern Europe even to fields in which so far there have been just individual cases. The judiciary and media do not seem to be isolated spheres any more. Corruption is threatening to completely destroy the whole social organism.

The explosion of corruptness is followed by increasing recession - drastic decline of production and increase of unemployment. The governments cannot cope with economic collapse and the new economic reality, which paves the road for even more ruthless plunder. The attempts to uproot corruption end up with unconvincing rhetoric of politicians and laws that are not implemented. To put it briefly, the societies of South-Eastern Europe, with the exception of Slovenia, stretched between debts and plunder, are hurling headlong towards parasitic ethnic capitalism of a vague type.

Branko Perić