How do public bodies carry out corruption prevention?

For many years, the fight against corruption in the public sector has been identified as a priority task of the Government. Most public bodies have developed and have been implementing institutional anti-corruption programmes, however, despite the abundance of measures, the public opinion about the level of corruption in Lithuania is actually not changing. Corruption can be effectively minimised only by giving proper attention to its prevention, therefore the National Audit Office has conducted an audit to find out how public bodies carry out corruption prevention. The audit assessed whether ministries and subordinate bodies properly identify and evaluate their activity areas prone to corruption and take necessary measures to manage and reduce risk of corruption.

“Prevention of corruption in public bodies is usually carried out only formally. Not all areas prone to corruption are identified, and in case of the identification of such areas there is a lack of measures to curb corruption. Effectiveness of the ongoing measures is not assessed either, so it is unclear whether the implemented measures eliminate causes and conditions of corruption”, said Auditor General Giedrė Švedienė summarising the audit results.

Legislation requires that public bodies determine the probability of the occurrence of corruption every year, however, the risk of corruption in the areas of activity of the Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Energy, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not been assessed for several years. The annual assessments carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of the Interior, and Ministry of Health and most of institutions subordinate thereto covered not all areas of their activities, thus failing to identify the ones highly prone to corruption.

The National Audit Office found that public bodies have not always developed and implemented anti-corruption programmes in a proper manner, specific preventive measures to be taken have not always been identified, and a number of measures set out in the programmes have not been implemented in due time. Despite the information on the areas highly prone to corruption and on risk factors at hand, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of the Interior, and Ministry of Agriculture failed to ensure provision of respective prevention measures for the management of these factors.  

Also, none of the audited ministries has been evaluating the effectiveness of the implemented measures, so there is no information as to whether these measures eliminated the identified causes and conditions of corruption or reduced the likelihood of corruption in the activity of the institution, and, consequently, whether the risk is being managed and whether additional measures are required.

The National Audit Office has made recommendations to the Government and Special Investigation Service intended to improve corruption prevention in public bodies and to ensure  implementation of measures to prevent corruption in ministries and their subordinate institutions.