Stan de SD
2006-09-11 19:44:35 UTC
A survey conducted in Mexico some time back reported that 80% of the
populace reported paying at least one bribe to a public official at one
time.
Got a cite for this?populace reported paying at least one bribe to a public official at one
time.
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Little bribes cost Mexico big money
Sergio Solache
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Aug. 31, 2006 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - As soon as English teacher Hugo Cerón saw the police lights
flashing in his rearview mirror, he knew what was about to happen. It was
the "bite."
The police officer walked up to the car window and coolly informed Cerón
that he was getting two tickets: for illegally talking on a cellphone while
driving and for not wearing a seat belt. Cerón would have to go down to the
police station, plead guilty and pay a fine. But there was a way out.
"The ticket was 500 pesos ($46), but he offered to let me be on my way for
100 pesos ($9.25)," Cerón said. "It was only because I looked like a good
person, according to him."
Like thousands of Mexicans every day, Cerón paid up.
In Mexico, they call these little bribes mordidas, or "bites," the little
payoffs and kickbacks that people give to cops, teachers and bureaucrats
just to get on with their lives.
It's a culture of corruption that many experts fear is eating away at
Mexico's efforts to modernize, strengthen the rule of law and democracy, and
attract foreign investment.
Alarmed by the millions of pesos disappearing annually in bribes, civic
groups have launched ad campaigns urging people to denounce corruption, some
Mexican states are overhauling their legal systems to eliminate the
bureaucracy that leads to bribery, and schools are trying to teach children
not to offer bribes.
Still, the "bite" continues because many prefer this deep-rooted,
traditional way of getting around and through the system. Mexicans start
paying bribes as children in order to get good grades from their teachers.
At 18, many pay a 200 peso ($19) bribe to be excused from their required
military service. By the time they die, 87 percent of Mexicans will have
paid some sort of bribe, according to a study by CEI Consulting and
Research.
Mexicans rationalize bribes with sayings like "El que no transa no avanza,"
or "he who doesn't sell out, doesn't get ahead." But when you add up all the
little payoffs, about 12 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product is lost
to corruption, CEI estimates. That's enough money to cover all Mexico's
health care needs.
"On the local, state and municipal level, there continues to be high rates
of corruption," President Vicente Fox told The Arizona Republic in a recent
interview. "As far as the mordida, the payoff to the policeman or to the
clerk at the counter, we have to continue creating a strong culture to end
that."
Symptom of bureaucracy
The mordida system dates back through centuries of weak colonial
governments. But it became more ingrained under the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which centralized the economy and governed
Mexico virtually unopposed from 1929 to 2000, according to Irma Sandoval, a
political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
"When the PRI was in government, it generated a lack of oversight of public
life," Sandoval said. "It created a kind of monopolistic network associated
with bad government and poor civic life."
Today, most Mexicans blame government bureaucracy for the country's
corruption, according to a poll by Mexico's Public Administration
Department.
Paying a speeding ticket, for example, is a time-consuming ordeal in most
parts of Mexico. Police officers accompany drivers to the police station,
where they must fill out paperwork and pay the fine before going on their
way.
Parking offenses are even worse. Mexican police don't leave parking tickets;
they just tow cars. To get a car out of the impound yard in Mexico City,
drivers must present copies of their registration certificates and driver's
licenses, then pay about $50 in fines and fees, a huge sum in a country
where the minimum wage is $4.30 a day.
In Mexico City, traffic fines have to be paid at a bank or office of the
city treasury. Sometimes, that can involve hours of waiting.
"I went to pay a fine for my father, and I was in the treasury office about
three hours, just to pay 250 pesos ($23)," said Claudia Medina, a university
student. "The bureaucracy is unbearable."
To avoid the wait, citizens give mordidas of $10 to $50 to traffic cops. The
code word is that the money is "for a soda."
Another problem, according to some experts, is Mexico's complicated,
secretive legal system. Trials are performed through an exchange of legal
briefs, a process that can take months or years.
"The backlogs that affect the justice system are enormous," Sen. Jorge
Zermeño Infante said in a report on legal reform in June.
Faced with fighting a charge in court, many citizens opt for the bribe,
instead. Bribes are also paid to speed paperwork at government offices.
"I went to get a driver's license, and they told me it would take three to
four hours," said Erika Martínez of Mexico City. "Then, a man who bribes the
employees came up to me and offered to get the license for me in 20 minutes
for 250 pesos ($23), plus the paperwork fee."
Bigger offenses
With thousands of little bribes exchanging hands every day, bigger
corruption is also a deep-seated problem.
In 2004 several Mexico City administrators were videotaped receiving
millions of pesos in exchange for helping a construction magnate get city
contracts.
Corruption became a major issue in the July 2 presidential election, with
leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador accusing President Vicente Fox
of creating an "empire of corruption and impunity in our country."
Part of the problem, experts say, are the low salaries paid to government
employees in Mexico. The average department head in a government agency
earns 4,576 pesos a month, or about $424, barely enough to support a family.
A police officer in Mexico state, just outside the capital, earns 3,500
pesos, or $324 a month.
The bribery in Mexico is so pervasive that many travel guides openly advise
foreigners on how to offer and negotiate mordidas.
Although these small bribes make Mexico go round, it is hardly the only
country where the custom is pervasive. Mexico ranks as the 93rd most corrupt
of 158 countries in the world, according to Transparency International, a
watchdog group.
Fighting back
In recent years, the federal government and civic groups have launched a
flurry of programs aimed at cutting down on corruption.
In 2000, the Mexican government passed a new open-records law and created
the Federal Institute of Information Access to enforce it. The law forced
all government agencies to make their contracts and bid processes public.
Some states are also moving to impose U.S.-style oral trials in the hope it
will speed up justice and encourage citizens to use the courts.
This year, Mexico's Public Administration Department launched Web sites
urging citizens to stop paying go-betweens and government employees to do
paperwork. The sites tell people to "Do it yourself" and say "goodbye to
cheating."
Several government agencies now have Web sites where citizens can denounce
acts of bribery. Civic groups and government agencies have also been trying
to attack the culture of corruption through several anti-corruption ad
campaigns in recent years.
"Don't be quiet! Speak up!" urge anti-bribery ads from the Communication
Council, which produces public service announcements. Radio spots urge
citizens to denounce any bribe-taker as a "sellout, a crook, dog and a
curse."
One of the ads shows a boy offering his soccer coach a bribe to put him in
the game. In another ad campaign, launched this year by Mexico's Public
Administration Department, sad music plays as a little boy smashes his piggy
bank for money to bribe his teacher.
The Mexican Education Department has also launched an anti-bribery program
called "Toward a Culture of Legality" and set up suggestion boxes in schools
where children can complain about corruption.
Still, the bribery problem has proved a tenacious foe. A poll by the Public
Administration Department in 2004 indicated 70 percent of Mexicans believe
the public remains as willing as ever to participate in corruption.
About 72 percent of Mexicans said they don't believe Mexico will ever be
able to eliminate the problem.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0831thebite.html
Bribery Is a Way of Life in Mexico
By Brian Carnell
Monday, November 5, 2001
As an example of just how corrupt many developing countries are, a recent
report by Transparency Mexico suggests that bribery to obtain government
services is endemic throughout Mexico.
In a survey of almost 14,000 Mexican households, Transparency Mexico
estimated that more than 200 million individual bribes occur in the country
annually, at a cost of $2.5 billion.
And these are just for normal everyday services. The average bribe measured
in the survey was only $12. Want to get married in Mexico? Give a civil
servant a $10 bribe to secure the date you want. Need to get a driver's
license? Don't forget to bribe the clerk administering the test. Everything
from enrolling children in schools to obtaining garbage collection and water
service in Mexico involves regular bribes to the authorities.
Mexican President Vincente Fox was elected on promises to reform Mexico's
corrupt bureaucracy, but so far Fox's anti-corruption campaign doesn't seem
to have had much of an effect on business-as-usual.
http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2001/000102.html
This OECD Working Group on Bribery report evaluates Mexico's
application of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the 1997 Revised
Recommendation. Specifically the report evaluates and recommends measures to
improve Mexico's awareness, prevention, detection and prosecution of the
foreign bribery offence. Promoting anti-bribery awareness campaigns for
Mexican companies operating abroad, facilitating reporting, increasing
pro-activity of law enforcement authorities, and revising certain provisions
on legal persons are among the recommendations.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/31/33746033.pdf
Bribery At Border Worries Officials
Mexican Smugglers Intensify Efforts to Entice U.S. Agents
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page A01
SAN DIEGO -- Federal law enforcement officials are investigating a series of
bribery and smuggling cases in what they fear is a sign of increased
corruption among officers who patrol the Mexican border.
Two brothers who worked for the U.S. Border Patrol disappeared in June while
under investigation for smuggling drugs and immigrants, and are believed to
have fled to Mexico. In the past month, two agents from Customs and Border
Protection, which guards border checkpoints, were indicted for taking bribes
to allow illegal immigrants to enter the United States. And earlier this
month, two Border Patrol supervisory agents pleaded guilty to accepting
nearly $200,000 in payoffs to release smugglers and illegal immigrants who
had been detained.
Authorities say two factors are causing concern that larger problems may
develop: The massive buildup of Border Patrol agents in recent years has led
to worries that hiring standards have been lowered; and, as smugglers demand
higher and higher fees to bring illegal immigrants into the United States,
their efforts to bribe those guarding the border have intensified.
The investigations come at a time when the United States is focused on the
security of its borders. Congress is mulling legislation that would pour
billions of additional dollars into securing the border, including the
construction of hundreds more miles of barriers. The Border Patrol, which
has tripled in size in the past decade, is due to grow 50 percent in the
next six years.
"There is more pressure than ever on smuggling networks to find agents who
will work with them," said Andrew Black, an FBI special agent with the
multiagency Border Corruption Task Force in San Diego. "As a result, there's
tremendous temptation for someone who is less than honest to work with them.
Someone who is working on the border can make their salary in a couple of
nights."
While the main corruption problem along the border is still among Mexican
law enforcement officials, there have been numerous arrests of U.S.
officers, too.
Last year in Texas, for example, 10 federal agents were charged with or
convicted of taking bribes from drug dealers or human smugglers. Also last
year, a U.S. Justice Department operation arrested 17 current or former
military and law enforcement officers who were paid $220,000 by undercover
agents to allow counterfeit drugs to cross into Arizona. In 2004 and 2005,
federal authorities in Arizona uncovered numerous relationships, including
marriages, between Border Patrol agents and Latina women illegally in the
United States.
"The smugglers have binoculars and spotters, you name it," said James Wong,
who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Professional
Responsibility in San Diego, which investigates corruption allegations.
"They scan the line looking for a weak inspector, someone, for example, who
likes to flirt with women. And then they will send a test person, a chatty
female. She shows up and says, 'My friend needs to visit a doctor, but she
doesn't have papers, can you help?' They will get friendly, and before you
know it, they own the employee."
Despite the recent spate of cases around San Diego, the number of federal
corruption cases against agents from Customs and Border Protection and the
Border Patrol has not increased since the 2004 fiscal year, according to
Kristi Clemens, assistant commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection in Washington. So far in fiscal 2006, there have been nine cases.
There were 21 the year before and 22 in 2004.
"The bottom line is: If corruption happens anywhere, we're concerned about
it, but it's not an upward trend," Clemens said in a telephone interview.
But interviews with other federal law enforcement officials, security
experts and a Border Patrol union official paint a less rosy picture.
They note that the Department of Homeland Security can provide only two
years of full statistics. There are no data before 2004, because Customs and
Border Protection was formed in 2003, when the Customs Bureau and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service were merged and divided into several
new parts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401525.html
No? I didn't think so. You're just a racist pig.
Making accusations with no facts to back you up? Typical ignorant LeftyLiberal asshole.