Tax publishing reveals corrupt deals with public money

Days ago, ten of the country's municipalities made a decision to publish procurement contracts on the website, a practice which has now been required by NGOs, the media of numerous citizens.

Now, any citizen can download an online contract to these municipalities' websites: Gjakova, Peja, Vushtrri, Gjilan, Pristina, Ferizaj, Skenderaj, Istog, Hani of Elez, Klina.

Isuf Zamena from “Democrey Plus”, says the effects of contract publishing will be direct as in reducing the area for corruption, increasing officials' responsibility and effective monitoring of procurement.

“Corruption finds place where there is no transparency, there is no control, where people who need and want to benefit from corruption find the opportunity. So far the procurement due to poor control has been green space and very fertile for corruption and poor funding management. Public control is blocked in any case by not offering access to official documents. And once overseers have no documents, all they have to do is speculate. Now in Gjakova, Peja and Gjilan no one depends on the will of officials for offering access to documents and restrictions on various forms. So far, in many cases payments or taxes have been applied for photocopying documents, extended deadlines for access delivery have been applied, limited access provided by offering only document viewing and not even receiving a copy.”, Zeynep said in a proposal for Ideksoline.

According to him, the situation is very different with the online publishing of contracts, since it gives us the opportunity to judge whether the municipality has procured directly or not.

“Sheml, Pec and Gjilan municipality do not seek guarantees in the purchase of products, or that Gjakova pays the most expensive to send municipality cars to Prizren to repair. All of this raises questions about public officials, why such contracts occurred and how they should be avoided in the future. If we are dealing with corruption cases, the community itself will be able to denounce officials for abuse. Access to public contracts offers us the opportunity to see who won the contract, what conditions, what deadlines, what qualities, and what the contractor's obligations are. These then give us the opportunity to judge for ourselves whether the municipality has procured well or not, and they also give us the opportunity to see if good contracts on paper are being implemented in practice. “, he stressed.

Zeynep considers that this publication will serve procurement monitors who are currently mostly NGOs and media, but in the future it may be the community itself.

On the other hand, Diana Metushi- Krasniqi of KDI also considers public contracts to be one of the world's greatest dangers of corruption, fraud and misuse until he has commended the first five municipalities to open contracts.

“The opening of contracts is one of the key elements in the fight against corruption, so we require the opening of contracts from all institutions in Kosovo. The publishing of contracts enables journalists and civil society to discover corrupt agreements and identify cases of mismanagement with public money. At the same time, it enables the citizen to take an active role in good governance, giving him an opportunity to monitor investments in his neighborhood, city and institution, and raising a voice for irregularities, especially when we are aware that the citizen is the one who pays and exploits these investments.”, Metushi said in a conversation about Indexline.

Metushi- Krasniqi shows that only the publishing of contracts in this case is enough.

“To have a transparent public procurement process, we ask the institutions to open the following documents, complete contract opening, 1) Procuration Planning (from all contracting authorities), 2) Market Exploration (at least in central procurements, high- and high-value contracts, and capital investments), 3) Fund delivery; 4) Report of the Appropriation Commission, 5) Ankeses and Landings (first level), Accounting Management 6) Reports, Accounting Management, 7th, Funding Managements, 8th, Funding Reports, and Accession Reports. Given the continued investments in the establishment of digital platforms in Kosovo, and the gradual increase of the governing will for transparency and accountability, we believe that these documents will be made public in the near future, and defined forms by the Open contract partner, and the Partnership for Open Government, where Kosovo applied for membership in 2014.”, she added.

We remember that the first contract release was initiated by the municipality of Gjakova. While closed contracts continue to operate many more municipalities.