Fundacja im. Stefana Batorego

Anti-Corruption

The program's goal is to prevent corruption and increase transparency in public life. We monitor the government and political parties for compliance with anti-corruption legislation and transparency standards, evaluate how electoral campaign promises to prevent corruption made by political parties are kept and check the implementation of government anticorruption strategies. We investigate transparency of campaign financing and public expenditures. We observe the legislative process and support regulations that ensure transparency in decision-making and provide bulwarks against corrupt practices. We work with local civic groups that monitor transparency of public institutions at the local level. We also provide legal counseling to individuals who have reported or encountered corruption, especially whistleblowers facing harassment from employers and officials.

Monitoring of electoral promises

This project has been operated since 2001 by the NGO Anticorruption Coalition, which consists of Batory Foundation, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Foundation for Social Communication, Civic Education Center, School for Leaders Association and Association of Leaders of Local Civic Groups. Prior to each parliamentary election, the Coalition asks political parties to submit declarations on the anti-corruption measures they would advocate in the Parliament. The Coalition reviews later how political parties elected to the Parliament keep their election promises and whether party members observe transparency standards. The results of the monitoring are presented at the annual conferences and summed up in a report published at the end of the term of the Parliament.

On October 21, we organized the first review conference of the 6^th term of the Parliament. Materials presented at the conference indicated the governing parties are slow to implement their campaign promises concerning corruption. In the course of a year, only two out of seven promised bills had been adopted, and the promised government strategy to prevent corruption had not been developed. Conference experts, Prof. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński and Prof. Antoni Kamiński, criticized changes proposed by the government in the bill amending the Civil Service Act as insufficient. Representatives of political parties, Mieczysław Augustyn (Civic Platform), Elżbieta Jakubiak (Law and Justice) and Katarzyna Piekarska (Democratic Left Alliance) commented the experts' assessments.

The NGO Anticorruption Coalition also gives opinions on important corruption prevention issues. In March, it published a statement expressing concern with the government's failure to present corruption prevention policy priorities and criticized government's ambiguous position on the Central Anticorruption Office (CAO). In the electoral campaign in 2007, the Civic Platform accused the CAO of illegal activities and promised far-reaching changes in its functioning. Yet, while in the office, it has proposed no moves and made secret the report on the CAO operations. In May, in connection with the completion of the report on the effectiveness of Poland's anticorruption strategy drafted by German experts — Claus-Peter Wulff, Ph.D. and Marcus Ehbrecht — as part of the government Twinning Project, we called for dissemination of the report findings and declared the institutions responsible for preventing corruption should publicly respond to the evaluations and conclusions the report contains.

More information about the Coalition activities is available at www.akop.pl.

On March 17, we organized a conference entitled Anticorruption Strategies in Central and Eastern Europe. Is a long-term anti-corruption strategy possible in Poland? Participants included Prof. Rasma Karklins (Chicago University, Illinois), Drago Kos (head of Slovenia's Corruption Prevention Commission, current head of GRECO), Arkadiusz Mularczyk (MP, Law and Justice), Katarzyna Piekarska (MP, Democratic Left Alliance) and Julia Pitera (Secretary of State at the Prime Minister's Office, the Government Plenipotentiary for Elaborating the Programme of Combating Abuses In Public Institutions). Most discussion participants, especially the foreign experts, felt it impossible to resolve a national corruption problem without developing and then effectively implementing a strategy that details the current and desired anti-corruption regulations and anti-corruption practices, describes methods to achieve such and sets achievement benchmarks. Participants agreed an anti-corruption strategy should rest on three pillars: education, prevention, and execution of the law, while also clearly indicating the institution responsible for its implementation.

Monitoring of legislative procedure

In 2006-2008, pursuant to the Lobbying Act adopted in 2005, we conducted monitoring of the legislative process of selected laws important with respect to preventing corruption and increasing transparency of public life. We formulated our opinions and, following the procedure, submitted them to legislators, i.e. the government or the Parliament. Depending on the legislators' decisions, we took part in the parliamentary subcommittees and committees meetings or public hearings. We published annual reports on our findings, including violations in the process of adopting the relevant statutes. We strived to assure inclusion in the statutes such provisions that will protect the public interest and to verify the extent to which the Lobbying Act contributes to increased transparency of the legislative process and secures it against extralegal influence.

In 2008, we monitored legislative procedure of four bills: the Freedom of Economic Activity Act, the Act on the Office for Registration of Therapeutic, Medical and Biocidal Products, the Act on Lifetime Capital Retirement Funds, as well as the Public-Private Partnership Act. A grant from the EU Transition Facility Program 2005 allowed us to invite groups interested in increasing legislative transparency: journalists, parliamentary reporters, professional lobbyists, and NGOs — to cooperate in the project. We conducted quantitative surveys of one-fourth of all deputies and senators on lobbying as well as qualitative opinion surveys of journalists and professional lobbyists through open interviews. We also monitored contents of the Public Information Bulletins published by all ministries and the Parliament to assure these met the requirements of the Lobbying Act.

Furthermore, we undertook activities to change parliamentary practice. We appealed to all parliamentary clubs to have their members reliably fill out questionnaire regarding professional experience and economic activity of their staff. There was a positive response to our appeal from all parliamentary clubs, and the Law and Justice adopted the changes we postulated. We also appealed to the Marshal of the Parliament to expand the questionnaire to include information on the MPs' offices staff education. We also appealed to the heads of five Parliament committees to begin using a questionnaire that would disclose the interests of informal lobbyists who take part in committee work on draft bills in the Parliament (where they are categorized as 'guests'). The chairs of the Justice and Human Rights Committee as well as the Public Finances Committee agreed to adopt our proposals. The Presidium of the Legislative Committee agreed to each time decide whether to ask a committee guest to fill out the questionnaire. The heads of the remaining two committees made their decision contingent upon the position of the Rules and Deputies' Affairs Committee which should be disclosed in February 2009.

At a November conference we presented a report on three years of monitoring which contained conclusions, proposed legislative amendments, and suggested changes to practice.

Electoral campaign financing

In 2005-2006, we monitored financing of presidential and local government election campaigns. Our observations identified gaps in current law that enable political parties to cover up improprieties in financial management and uncovered weaknesses in statutory supervision over electoral funds. This induced us to advocate electoral campaign finance reform, an initiative carried out together with the Institute of Public Affairs.

In 2008, we disseminated our proposed amendments to electoral law, especially regarding presidential campaign finance reform, by presenting them, amongst other, at the meeting of the Presidium of the Parliament Legislative Committee, as well as at its plenary meeting on September 18. As a result, we contributed to the appointment of the Subcommittee for Electoral Law Amendments. Representatives of our program are invited to participate in the subcommittee meetings as parliamentary guests. Near the end of the year, the Subcommittee submitted the draft bill amending the Act on the Election of the President of the Republic of Poland and other acts, which included the changes we postulated.

Moreover, at a meeting in the Parliament on April 24, we presented our comments to the project of the Electoral Code developed at the time by the Left and Democrats parliamentary club.

Monitoring public expenditures

Within this project, planned for 2007-2008, we checked for ties between public contract awards and prior donations made by managers or owners of winning companies to governing politicians at various levels of power, especially during the 2005-2007 electoral campaigns. We drafted a list of companies that received public contracts at select ministries and cities, and identified the companies' owners and directors. Subsequently, we crosschecked this data against donor lists of political parties and of electoral committees of their candidates in local and parliamentary elections, seeking any connections. We also searched for other improprieties in the public procurement process, not necessarily related to politicians “returning favors” for support in electoral campaigns. The improprieties may result, e.g., from the amendments of the Public Procurement Law implemented in 2006 and 2007. Adopted to facilitate the absorption of the EU funds, these changes deregulate tender procedures and limit appeals thus possibly create opportunities for abuse.

We selected two ministries and three cities to investigate possible ties between politics and business. Each has been controlled by different parties. Of the two ministries, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy was run through August 2007 by the Self-Defense party, then by the Law and Justice, and, as of December 2007, by the Civic Platform. The Ministry of Transport was controlled through December 2007 by the Law and Justice party and is currently controlled by the Civic Platform. With respect to the cities, we have chosen Warsaw (governed by the Civic Platform), Płock (Law and Justice) and O¶więcim (Self-governing O¶więcim Election Committee).

In our work, we mainly used data made available by the Public Information Bulletins, the National Court Register and the State Electoral Commission as well as information published in Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza dailies. The results of research and analyses as well as recommendations concerning necessary legal changes will be presented in the report to be published in 2009.

Legal counsel

Since 2000, we have provided legal aid to individuals reporting corruption. We advise in cases that deal with regulations concerning corruption offenses, conflicts of interest, access to public information, public hiring and public procurement. We inform clients and institutions on ways to move forward in specific situations. In appropriate cases, we offer assistance in appeals proceedings or petition supervisory and address control bodies and, sometimes, the prosecutor's office with requests to investigate the matter. In selected cases, we monitor court proceedings as a social representative.

In 2008, we received 105 cases and handled 38 of them. We submitted 19 legal briefs, intervened nine times with control institutions and courts, submitted four public information requests, and observed six court proceedings in the labor court where whistleblowers who had lost their jobs after disclosing irregularities in their workplace sued their former employers demanding justice for their unlawful dismissal.

A grant from the EU Transition Facility Program 2005 enabled us to expand our activities connected with legal protection for whistleblowers. In addition to legal aid, interventions and monitoring of select court proceedings, we published a manual Reporting fraud? A guide on whistleblowing.

Medical Task Force

The Medical Task Force has been operating at Batory Foundation since 2001. It deals with issues of ethics and preventing corruption in the health service.

In April 2008, members of the Task Force, in cooperation with the Polish Chamber of Physicians and Dentists, organized a conference on systemic solutions that prevent corruption in the health service. Three thematic sessions included discussions on the system for specialized physicians training, prescription drug refund system, as well as the health service contract system.

In 2008, the program was financed by funds from the Open Society Institute and a grant from EU Transition Facility Program 2005 (PLN 149,408.32).

Total program costs: PLN 538,707.64