17 Corporate Crime Reporter 33(11), September 1, 2003

INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES ADWAN, LEBANESE TRANSPARENCY ASSOCIATION, BEIRUT, LEBANON

In Lebanon, as in most of the developing world, corruption is rampant. But citizen forces are beginning to organize in Lebanon to bring attention to the problem, and create strategies to help contain it and defeat it.

Organizing public interest groups in developing countries is much more difficult than organizing them in the United States. And organizing against corruption can be a dangerous task anywhere in the world, but especially in the third world.

The corruption is not fueled of course just by the Lebanese, but by foreign multinationals who must also pay the bribes to do business in the country.

In Lebanon, a group of activists four years ago launched No Corruption – The Lebanese Transparency Association. Charles Adwan, the group’s executive director, believes that corruption in Lebanon is endemic – that at points the government looks like a kleptocracy – a government whose purpose is to steal from the public.

But he sees hope in the outpouring of support his group is getting from the Lebanese public.
We interviewed Adwan on August 24, 2003.

CCR: How did you get involved with anti-corruption work in Lebanon?

ADWAN: I was working at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. We had a project at one point involving research on corruption. In doing the research, most of the publications we were using were by an organization called Transparency International (TI).

TI is not a centralized organization, but a network of localized NGOs that have a common interest, or a common goal – fighting corruption.

On the other hand, the study we had conducted highlighted the alarming levels of corruption all around the public institutions in Lebanon, so we realized the need to do something about it.

This is how the idea came about. We started working toward establishing the organization here in Lebanon.

We got in contact with Transparency International in Berlin. And we found out that there were others here in Lebanon who had contacted them for the same purpose. We brought everyone together for a meeting in Beirut and we established No Corruption. It took over a year – maybe 15 months of two meetings a month to pull together the organization.

Finally, we decided to start the organization – the Lebanese Transparency Association – No Corruption. Which has recently been accredited as TI’s National Chapter in Lebanon. There were two camps among the founders. A camp that wanted to focus on the positive aspect of the struggle – enhancing transparency. The other camp wanted to be more direct in the fight and be clearer about the message – which is fighting corruption. We chose a name that would reflect both tendencies.

CCR: Which camp were you in?

ADWAN: I believed it would be much more productive if we focused on institutional development in a more constructive approach, focusing on institutional reform, institutional development, promoting transparency. Also fighting corruption, but from a technical point of view, and away from witch hunting, accusing people and naming names.

In the end, especially in the Lebanese political system, if you end up getting rid of one corrupt politician, he or she might be replaced by another corrupt politician.

As long as the system is full of loopholes and is open to abuse and exploitation for personal gains, it is bound to happen.

So, if you work on the positive approach, where you are non-confrontational, eventually, and it might take longer, but eventually, by taking firm but slow steps, you might get somewhere.

If you are a government organization or a government controlled organization, or the judiciary, then you would need the confrontational approach. Your job is to investigate and prosecute the guilty corrupt politicians or officials and get rid of them or put them in prison.

But when you are an NGO, and you don’t have any executive powers, or any enforcement mechanism, it is better to focus on the other aspects, which is lobbying, advocacy, raising awareness, research.

CCR: When you use the term witch-hunt, do you mean going after innocent people?

ADWAN: As an NGO, if you are accusing or attacking politicians that are suspected of being corrupt and not having the means or the capacity to prove they are corrupt or to prosecute them, then it might end up being counterproductive and it would be like a witch hunt.

CCR: What is the status of corruption in Lebanon?

ADWAN: It is endemic and systemic. The Lebanese system can be described at points as kleptocratic.

CCR: What is that?

ADWAN: That is where government officials are there to steal and fill up their own pockets. It is almost as bad as it can get, especially after the war.

CCR: What are the indicators that corruption is very bad in Lebanon?

ADWAN: Every time there is a crisis in the government, every time there is disagreement among public officials, the first thing they resort to is accusing others of corruption and pointing to corruption cases.

Once a minister accuses a minister of being corrupt, the accused doesn’t deny. He or she either tries to justify it, or accuses the accuser of being corrupt him/herself. That has been the case.
In 1996 and 1997, at the time when we were starting the organization, the President was accusing the Prime Minister; the Prime Minister was accusing another minister.

These accusations were being made at the highest positions. These are people with direct knowledge, who have access to the information required to know whether another person is corrupt or not.

CCR: And they are specific about the allegations?

ADWAN: Yes, they would be very specific.

CCR: Is there usually a criminal prosecution against the accused?

ADWAN: No, nothing happens. There would be accusations of criminal wrongdoing, but no prosecution or investigation.

CCR: Why not?

ADWAN: Because investigations and prosecutions are controlled by the executive, they would only be active when it serves the interests of some powerful official. But one good thing is that speaking out against corruption is not a taboo Lebanon.

Usually, organizations such as ours around the world work a lot of time at the beginning to break the taboo. In Lebanon, it has never been a taboo. People speak out against corruption all the time in Lebanon.

However, the idea of corruption has been so elastic and so easily abused that it is only used for political leverage. And there is hardly any follow up.

CCR: No prosecution?

ADWAN: Very few, and they rarely lead anywhere.

The latest criminal prosecutions were in 1998 when Emile Lahoud was elected as President. He ran on an anti-corruption platform. He appointed a Prime Minister and launched a reform campaign.

They focused on high-ranking grade-one civil servants, ministers, and members of parliament. The highest official who was prosecuted was a minister, the former minister of oil and energy.

His name was Shahe Barsoumian. He was accused of buying fuel oil for the electricity companies and he would deliver a percentage of the shipment to the power plants, and then he would resell the remaining percent privately.

A local newspaper, An-Nahar, ran a series of articles about the scandal. Despite this series of articles, the prosecution never moved, until when President Lahoud was elected, he pushed the prosecution of Barsoumian. He was jailed for over a year without conviction.

Every time they would find an excuse, trials would be postponed, until the reform campaign was halted. Then, there were counter-campaigns in his defense. His proponents argued that he was the only politician who was jailed.

And this was not fair. There were other politicians who were corrupt. And how come he is the only one who was prosecuted? So, he was released. Now he is not in the government – he is not in politics anymore.

CCR: That was the last corruption prosecution.

ADWAN: Yes, and it was the prosecution that reached the highest level.

Prosecutions for corruption had never reached a minister before. It had always stopped at allegations. We have something called the Higher Council for Prosecuting Ministers and Presidents. It was formed after the war. It has never conducted investigations or prosecutions – it has been inactive until now.

Currently, there are two ministers who are being investigated for corruption charges by their successors, however this is an exception.

It is only being done vindictively, they got into some trouble with the head of their party who got them appointed as ministers, so he replaced them, and probably wants to make a lesson out of them.

They have faced corruption allegations throughout their terms, but no official investigations would be launched because they were still on good terms with the head of their party – they were protected.

CCR: Who heads that?

ADWAN: A judge – the head of the Higher Judicial Council.

CCR: Was Barsoumian the only prtdon prosecuted during the Lahoud anti-corruption initiative?

ADWAN: There were director generals who were either prosecuted or arrested. Several high-ranking civil servants were arrested, then released and now all the prosecutions are frozen.
Even worse, some director generals were not even prosecuted but were “placed at the disposal of the Prime Minister” until their situations were decided. It was back door to discharging them if there were no evidence against them, or if they were protected.

The result was having a couple of dozens of highly paid public officials getting paid without having to do their work. Those eventually got back to the administration, and sometimes in better positions.

Before that, there was an administrative reform campaign in 1993 after Hariri came to power. It mainly targeted administrators.

But at that point, it targeted only from grade-two and lower. It didn’t target higher-ranking officials. It was basically a purge.

The first move he made was quite a predictable one, an opportunity for employees to resign before the government conducts a comprehensive purge – the product was more than 3,000 resignations.

The next step was a wide purge dismissing some 600 corrupt civil servants, and 1800 for permanent abstention from their positions.

But these civil servants appealed the case, they won their case and they were all returned to their jobs.

They used the argument that it was not fair because there were corrupt higher-ranking civil servants who were not discharged, in addition to some employees who have been spared due to political protection. So, the Council of State cancelled the decisions.

The common feature between the two reform campaigns is that they both failed because they were selective and politicized. Any reform movement that does not ensure comprehensiveness and fairness is bound to fail.

CCR: You called this a kleptocracy.

ADWAN: Yes, it is a government where the purpose of some of its members is to steal from the public.

CCR: Is there a government in the world that is more corrupt?

ADWAN: Yes, there are worst systems. In Nigeria, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, in some Arab countries. In the Arab countries, it is even more confusing, because there is no sharp line between public and private. The ruling families behave as if they really own the country. It is almost justified in the minds of people that the ruling family uses the public monies interchangeably with their own.

So, no, Lebanon is not the worst system. But is a very corrupt system, and given Lebanon’s size, its economic weakness, lack of wealth and natural resources, it is more dangerous than in other countries. In the other Arab countries or in the African countries that are corrupt, they have natural resources, such as oil or gold or diamonds, which don’t exist in Lebanon.

CCR: Almost at every level in Lebanon, citizens are required to pay bribes to get things done.

ADWAN: Yes, the situation is so bad here that not paying a bribe or not asking for a bribe is an exception. It is looked at very suspiciously because that is how they are used to doing business.

CCR: You know this by talking to Lebanese or has it been documented?

ADWAN: There have been surveys showing that in 80 or 90 percent of the cases they pay bribes. It is also common knowledge. You go to any public administration and find that people can’t get their work done unless they pay bribes.

I also conducted research in 1997. I was doing research on the real estate and construction sector. In some cases, the bribes are more than the actual fees that a citizen has to pay to the government. In addition, corruption drives away investment – people avoid doing business in more corrupt areas.

CCR: How do you break down a kleptocracy?
ADWAN: Breaking down a kleptocracy or a corrupt regime, or fighting corruption, is very difficult. The farther you are from the actual system, the more it looks like a dragon, like a monster, and the weaker you are in front of this dragon.

The closer you are, the more you find weak points in this system, and the more you find the Achilles heal. If you stay away from the very institutions that are accused of corruption, and you launch verbal attacks, you will not achieve anything. With no investigation, research or even interaction with the system, the battle remains sterile.

If you break the corrupt system down into components, it becomes much easier to
deal with. Fighting corruption by going head on with the dragon is a losing battle. But if you break down the dragon to its component parts, you have a chance.

CCR: What are some strategies that work?
ADWAN: The main one is enhancing access to information. This not only helps watchdogs that are fighting corruption, but it also empowers all citizens to fight corruption, or to hold their officials accountable. That is one approach, one strategy.

Another one is getting into each and every institution, one by one, and trying to find solutions or raising awareness about them.

After we finished our research on the construction sector, we published a booklet on the construction permit in Lebanon. The construction permit not only is very corruption ridden, but there are over 25 steps, departments, documents and agencies, stamps and signatures.
It is a recipe for corruption. At every step of the line, you are faced by a person who has his or her own interests, who would stall, who wants to benefit from you.

And the whole delay process might cause you to become restless and to want your business done quickly, which encourages you to offer bribes sometimes.

Ignorance in the end would also lead to corruption. If you don’t know how many steps or whatever it takes, you would just pay someone there to do it for you. They would say – I will handle all of this, you will get it quickly – in return, I’ll get my share. We published this booklet with all of the information any citizen might need when they are getting a construction permit.

CCR: What impact did the publication of the booklet have?

ADWAN: We targeted the booklet to citizens in general. For a few weeks, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. And most people who ordered the booklet were the lawyers, the engineers and the architects involved in the industry who are supposed to be the experts on this. They seemed to need it the most. No matter how much of an expert you are, it is so complicated that you cannot know it. You need a guide.

That is a micro approach. A macro approach is getting into an institution, establishing an integrity pact with the institution. Integrity pacts are agreements with an institution, between an NGO and the institution, where the institution agrees not to resort to corruption, to clean up their own house, and that gives the NGO access to the institution to monitor the way it is functioning and to expose it if there ever was corruption.

CCR: How many of these integrity pacts have you entered into?

ADWAN: Not any yet. We have been approached by an agency – the Ministry of Finance, which was trying to broker a deal between us and one of the departments of the Ministry of Finance. We have been working on it. It would be a breakthrough and it would be difficult. We don’t necessarily have the capacity to get into monitoring a department. It would be quite complicated. And you would need experts and funding. We have been looking for funding.

CCR: Mahmoud Batlouni is running a US AID funded project where he is computerizing the municipalities. He believes that by just computerizing the municipal government records, you will lessen corruption. Do you agree?

ADWAN: Computerization will increase transparency. It will make information more accessible. And it will eventually lead to less corruption. Yet, humans run computers. And whatever is on the computer could be as inaccessible as any document in a drawer, if the person running the computer refuses to show you what is in it.

In the end, if the people are not convinced, if the administrators and civil servants are not convinced of the necessity for transparency and for reducing corruption, they will never cooperate with you, they will say yes but never implement.

In one of those real estate agencies, a public department of the central government, they introduced computerization three or four years ago. They used them for a couple of months, but then for some reason, the computers didn’t work. The employees there would not let the technicians get into the department to fix them. It did not serve their interests. It was much more difficult to justify delays to a citizen when you have a computer.

With a computer, the files are just a click away, and it makes it harder to justify bribes.
A director general of a ministry refers to a situation where his minister was complaining about his efficient administration – “how would I help people if their transactions are running smoothly” the minister said. He ended up asking the Director General to delay the work and refer thewitness to him.

Computerization is important, a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

CCR: There is a culture of acceptance of bribery. What are you doing to change the culture?
ADWAN: We don’t believe that corruption is in the culture. We believe that being corrupt or being honest is part of human nature. Humans all over the world have tendencies to be corrupt or to be honest. The systems either encourage one or the other. The systems, the political, judicial and social systems encourage corruption, they make it much easier. Once it is much easier, people accept it. When everyone is doing it, it becomes the general norm.

CCR: There is no culture of corruption?

ADWAN: I wouldn’t call it a culture. It is a mentality, but not a culture. A culture is much more deep-rooted in society. But I don’t think it is that deep. It’s not a cultural thing. Transparency is just like human rights – it is a universal value, and a basic right.

CCR: Was there a culture of corruption in Sicily?

ADWAN: I’m sure there are many honest people in Sicily. The fact that most of the mafia organizations come from Sicily doesn’t make the place a crime oriented culture.

CCR: You have a project to teach children about corruption and fighting corruption. That is a cultural approach, no?

ADWAN: It is trying to get to the youth early, before they are exposed to corruption directly, and before they start viewing it as normal behavior.

Young people have a tendency to be idealistic. We want to capitalize on this before they are told that corruption is part of being realistic or reasonable.

If it were in the culture, we wouldn’t be able to influence it.

CCR: Cultures can be changed.

ADWAN: It is interrelated. Values are part of the culture. And they are part of human behavior as well. But when you say culture, you are saying that there are cultures that are more corrupt than others. There are frameworks, systems, social structures, that facilitate corruption more than others. Corruption is often traced back to colonization and to imperialism. The fact that a foreign power controls a country creates alienation between the private and the public, which justifies corruption, the abuse of authority, and embezzlement.

Whenever citizens are bribing, they are corrupting the system. The more developed a country is, the more advanced the values of citizenship are, the less corruption there is.
That takes time and a lot of hard work.

CCR: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prohibits U.S. citizens from paying bribes overseas. Do you believe that U.S. companies are paying bribes in the United States?

ADWAN: Probably yes.

CCR: Why aren’t they being criminally prosecuted in the United States?

ADWAN: Not many Lebanese know about this act and not many report it. And the cmopanies can account for the bribes in different ways.

If an American company paid bribes in France, there is a greater chance of getting the information back to prosecutors in the United States. But here, very few people would know about it.

In addition, there is the fact that the FCPA is weakly enforced.

CCR: Would an independent prosecutor in Lebanon not be able to make headway in the fight against corruption?

ADWAN: A prosecutor doesn’t have enough independence. He is part of the executive. The entire judiciary sector is not independent. Prosecutors are quite politicized. They only become prosecutor general if they are on good terms with the executive. The executive doesn’t only include the President and the Prime Minister, but all the strong politicians in the country. In addition, if a prosecutor has political ambitions, he or she would not go after politicians in order not to make too many enemies, they would just try please the power brokers in order to eventually reach power.

CCR: We used to have an independent counsel law. The judiciary would appoint an independent prosecutor to look at corruption in government. Why couldn’t something similar work here?

ADWAN: Something like that would have to be stimulated by the political system. And it is not in the interest of those who are in power to let something like that happen. It is too much risk. And then you have the interests not only of the Lebanese politicians, such as the President and Prime Minister – you have the interests of the Syrians.

The Syrians have allies in Lebanon, and these people can’t be removed from power just because they are corrupt.

To the Syrians, there are much more important strategic considerations. Corruption is a minor thing to them.

CCR: This is quite a pessimistic picture you are painting. You are saying it hasn’t changed and it is not going to change.

ADWAN: No. I’m saying it has not changed yet – this is the reality. It will change, but it will take a lot of time.

CCR: What is your rosy scenario?

ADWAN: If we didn’t see the possibility for change, we wouldn’t exist. And the mere fact that not only do we exist, but also we are growing, means that we have been getting support from the public.

Our main achievement so far, and we have been very active for over two years, is that people are not laughing at us anymore. It doesn’t sound as Don Quixotic as much as when we started. This means that people are not feeling as helpless as before.

In the end, we are only one NGO. And there is only one NGO fighting corruption in Lebanon. A small group of people will not be able to stand against a current of very powerful politicians who have their own systems and their own networks of corruption, favoritism, corruption, and nepotism.

So, what we are trying to do is not fight the battles ourselves, but to empower citizens, empower institutions, empower other NGOs, and even public agencies, to do the work we want to be done and that we cannot do on our own.

CCR: Are there any members of parliament that are supportive?

ADWAN: There are some MPs who are known to be enlightened, not only on this issue, but in general. They are ready to help us in any way possible.

Now, you have another category of politician, who, whenever they hear about us, they just want to grab us to benefit from our name, to be associated with an anti-corruption NGO, because in the end, it serves their purposes.

But those who actually do the work, who follow commitment by action, are a few.

[Contact: Charles D. Adwan, Executive Director, No Corruption, The Lebanese
Transparency Association, P. O. Box 55-215, Sin el-Fil, Beirut, Lebanon. Telephone: (961) 1 293-045 Fax: (961) 1 490-375. E-mail: [email protected]. Web: www.transparency-lebanon.org]