Chapter 5. Case Study of Kosovo
5.1 Background: State Building Process and Corruption in Kosovo
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Chapter 5. Case Study of Kosovo
5.1 Background: State Building Process and Corruption in Kosovo
Kosovo is considered as one of the most controversial cases of state building in Europe and to this day continues to be a dividing issue for EU and UN member states as well. The intervention of NATO created way for its formation, and the action itself is considered controversial among states and scholars (Currie 1998, 332; Greenwood 2000, 930; Lischer 2007, 99). Kosovo played a great role in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, in the late 60s, Kosovo gained increasing autonomy as Serbian province within the Yugoslavian federation, and in 1981 a student protest at University of Pristina spread and escalated into more massive demonstrations, where students demanded Kosovo’s status to be upgraded and to gain
separate status in Yugoslav republic. The overall non-violent struggle strategy to gain independence did not attract the desired attention by the international community (Sörensen 2009, 205-6). Therefore, a military intervention was deemed, as necessary. And as a
consequence, the NATO military intervention followed. NATO went to its first war for Kosovo in June 1999. It was manifested by 78-day Arial bombing that ended Serbia’s violent repression for Kosovo Albanians. Furthermore, it was considered as first genuinely
humanitarian military intervention, as further serving as a foundation for the idea that protection of human rights can lead to sovereignty.
However, the military intervention of NATO was not approved by UN Security Council, at that time opposed by Russia and China. The stability of the Balkans has been considered a crucial strategic goal for the EU ever since the dissolvent of Yugoslavia. Capussela (2015, 3) further argues that Europe’s collective failure in Kosovo and Bosnia became a factor for generating common foreign policy by the EU in order to stabilize the peninsula. Kosovo being host of organized criminal activities and dangerous trades would target Europe’s market, therefore special interest in combating organized crime and strengthening the rule of law later becomes EU’s primary goal for Kosovo.
During the leadership of Ibrahim Rugova the Kosovo Albanians did not provoke serious instability by being active with peaceful civil resistance. However, the situation started to escalate and provoke instability when Kosovo Albanians started to get expelled from schools
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and public institutions, and soon their interest became independence rather the reshaping their regional autonomy under Serbia. In 1993, Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was formed as an ethnic Albanian Kosovar militant group that sought independence of Kosovo from Serbia.
Judah describes KLA as one of the most successful guerilla movements in modern history by subcontracting the most powerful military alliances in the world (Judah 2000, 61) In 1998 the international community intervened by proposing solution as restoring Kosovo’s autonomy under international supervision, which did not go well with Serbia’s intent to not
internationalize the problem. Later, in February 1999, the West decided to push both sides for settlement in what is known as Chateau de Rambouillet, and negotiations where held
consisting the threat of use of force by NATO (Capussela 2015, 4). The settlement agreement included high degree of autonomy for Kosovo, and interim international supervision under the protection of NATO (Weller 1999, 221). Milosevic rejected this settlement, which further led to NATO’s military intervention.
After the NATO intervention, Kosovo was set under UN protectorate. The conflict ended on June 9, 1999 and Belgrade accepted the terms of UN protectorate. In 1999, the UN Security Council formulated the 1244 resolution under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which stipulated that Kosovo will be under United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and all powers of governing, legislative, executive, and judicial were given to the mission (de Wet 2009, 83). The administration by UN was considered a difficult task, since it entailed institution building which would provide self-government, society reconstruction and promotion of political processes that would later define the status of Kosovo (Hehir 2007, 243-44). UNMIK was mandated to have international and civilian presence in order to maintain civil law and order in Kosovo, among other responsibilities included were the establishing of local police force and deploying international police to work in Kosovo, in later stage it was overseen for those competences to be transferred to Kosovo’s provisional institutions through political settlement (Hehir 2007, 245).
The talks for the status of Kosovo opened in 2005 between Kosovo and Serbia’s officials.
These negotiations ended in 2007 and were mediated by Martti Ahtisaari a special envoy sent by the United Nations. The negotiations failed because Serbia would not accept Kosovo’s independence and backed by Russia supported a high degree of autonomy but for Kosovo to still be under Serbia. Whereas Albanians backed by Washington would not accept any other solution rather than independence. Ahtisaari had proposed for Kosovo to become
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independent with certain principles that would include minority protection and would to be temporarily supervised by international officials (Beha 2014, 85-6). Kosovo established stable institutions after financial investments from international community. UNMIK was an ambitious mission from UN, and first of its kind for responsibility of governing. With the assistance from EU, Organization of the Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), IMF and World Bank, during the protectorate of UNMIK, Kosovo consolidated institutions of maintaining pluralistic democracy and open market economy (Capussela 2015,12).
Independence and the accountability of the judiciary often entails tensions; accountability can lead to judicial corruption and negligence and previous studies show these occur when
accountability is lacking. The consequences of a weak juridical system produce economic repercussions and affects the efficiency of political institutions. Previous studies argue that anti-corruption and state-building should entail an integrated approach, since political
corruption hinders development and undermines the function of public institutions. UN report stresses the main issues that are considered as biggest threats to Kosovo’s stability; organized crime and corruption. Further on, the report suggests that EU should play prominent role in stabilizing Kosovo, since EU holds strong leverage for Kosovo’s perspective EU accession (Capussela 2015, 91).
Armed conflict in Kosovo in the past have opened space for criminal syndicates to operate and cooperate with the political leadership. Political leaders whose legitimacy derived from violence rather than democratic means were given way to power due to the weak formal structure after the war (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 857). Similarly to the case of Croatia, in Kosovo as well, during the post-conflict election nationalist rhetoric dominated political campaigns and further granted political and administrative positions for those leaders to establish clientelism and supporters, these occurrences opened more way for corruption to meddle in Kosovo’s political arena. In this kind of political environment, corruption become structural rather than isolated in few corrupt public officials (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 857). Clientelistic politics followed by nationalism created disproportionate numbers of recruitment and institutions became instruments for political parties to gain further support by establishing clientelism through public administration (Nenadović 2010).
Another problematic issue regarding corruption that loomed Kosovo is the management of tenders for public procurements. After the transition of power from international to local
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authorities, bribery, irregularities, politicization became part of procurement processes (Danielsson 2014). Money spend for questionable massive infrastructure projects such as highways Pristina-Tirana and Pristina-Skopje were accompanied by several administrative irregularities and anomalies. After years of silence regarding corruption in Kosovo,
corruption scandals started to appear involving political elite of the country. In February 2014, students from major public university “University of Pristina” publicly exposed Academic fraud of professors who were politically sponsored, thus forcing government to declare formal initiative on the matter (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 863).
Another aspect that gave way for corruption is the privatization process in Kosovo, a policy which often gives way for manipulation and abuse of public assets. Kosovo has surrounded itself in numerous controversies regarding the privatization process, arising questions on who control and benefits from the particular privatized public assets. The lack of intervention from UNMIK to intervene in challenge of power structures such as KLA clientelist and rivaling Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) political party, has opened way for
manipulation of the process (Beha and Selaci 2018, 104). Former director of Kosovo Energy Corporation, German national Jo Trutschler was arrested on corruption charges, creating more doubt on international lead on corruption. Riots swept Kosovo in 2003 and Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA) was formed, the KTA controlled under EU, activities of which were followed by concerns that it was not held accountable for selling assets in low price and dubious tenders related to corruption (Knudsen 2013, 298-99). Furthermore, KTA records were destroyed before being handed to local authorities in a mysterious fashion (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 866). Corruption became a relevant topic only few years after UNMIK was put in charge of administration of Kosovo. Due to pressure that came from reports from intelligence, media, and various studies, Kosovo adopted a anti-corruption strategy in 2003 and established the Kosovo Anti-Corruption Agency (KACA) in 2006 (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 866).
Major catalyst on exposing corruption as a problem in Kosovo was played by civil society organizations that were more differentiated and avoided relations with political parties, such organizations such as Fol’08 and Çohu! Started to play important role in bringing attention to corruption and revealing the nature of the problem (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 865-66).
Progress was thought to have been made after the declaration of independence in 2008.
International pressure increased on Kosovo institution with the establishment of European
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Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which lead to formation of anti-corruption task force that among local personal also included official from EU countries, under the
Directorate against Economic Crime and Corruption. In 2012, National Anti-Corruption Council was set up by Kosovo’s president, the council aimed to coordinate policy in fighting corruption. Moreover, Kosovo adopted several laws regarding declaration of assets,
protection of whistle-blowers, conflict of interest, public procurement and the political parties financing, aspects which the EU heavily insist on improving and implementing in order to have successful results in fight against corruption (Belloni and Strazzari 2014, 885-87).
Another aspect of corruption in Kosovo is clientelism, the political stability is maintained through patron-client lines. Clientelism in Kosovo is characterized with nepotism, informal and corruptive relationship between political party members and private companies. Political elites get their support from their clientele, mainly businesses and partisan voters. By using power of authority and public resources they reward this clientele in exchange for political support. Clientelism in Kosovo is strongly connected to political parties, and it is
characterized by client-patron relations. Political parties are the main source of this phenomenon, since they lack fundamental ideological orientations that would win voters (Beha and Selaci 2018, 111).
Transparency International reports that Western Balkan region overall has a poor track record when it comes to prosecuting corruption. When it comes to prosecuting high level corruption of public officials, Kosovo also faces administrative struggles, Transparency international reports that indictments often lack adequate investigations and are not written well. When it comes to complex corruption cases prosecutors and judges often have difficulties in
understanding (Transparency International 2016, 4). Transparency International reports that Kosovo’s corruption problem has also to do with institution overlapping when it comes to prevention and fighting corruption. Moreover, it is reported that this institutional
fragmentation undermines the effectiveness of State Prosecutor’s office, which already suffers from lack of resources, integrity and initiative, which makes it an institution that is quite ineffective to fight corruption (Transparency International 2016, 14).
In terms of judicial reforms, In June 2015, Kosovo has amended laws on the Kosovo Judicial Council (KJC) and Kosovo Prosecutorial Council (KPC). Giving more options for these institutions to draft and propose their budged in Kosovo Assembly. Another legal amendment
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done by the Kosovo Government is the KJC appointment of its members: previously KJC had thirteen members, where nine were appointed by the assembly, and now since March 2016, the changes go in line with the recommendation of Venice Commission where only two members of KJC are appointed by the Kosovo Assembly, whereas the other seven are appointed directly by the judiciary (Transparency International 2016, 15)
Based on the survey conducted by Southeast European Leadership for Development and Integrity (SELDI 2016), in terms of pressure and involvement of corruption show that 27 % of respondents from Kosovo have been asked to give bribe (money, favor, gift) whereas 22 % have given bribe. Ranking Kosovo the fourth in Western Balkans. In terms of acceptability, where corruption is considered as an acceptable behavior, Kosovo ranks second in the region with 48% of respondents accepting forms of corrupt behavior. The same study further
examined the environment of corruption by estimating the perception of respondents on survey in terms of corruptness of public institution, which entailed the question “According to you, what is the degree of corruption proliferation in the following institution?”, the scale set 1 to 5, with one being high degree of proliferation, and 1 no proliferation at all. The results showed that Government is the highest corrupted institution with score of 3.01, followed by Parliament 2.68 and Courts 2.64. Police stands relatively low with 2.25 score, whereas EULEX has a score of 2.44. Furthermore, the study shows that 66% of respondents believe that most or all political parties and coalition leaders are involved in corruption, whereas 64% believe that ministers are also involved.
When responded in South-Eastern Europe were asked the question: “According to you, to what extent is corruption spread in the following countries?”. On a scale 1-5, Kosovo scored highest among its neighbors (3.4), whereas Croatia was perceived with lowest score of 1.8 (SELDI 2016, 21). Corruption related cases number is relatively low in Kosovo,
Transparency International report that the conviction fell by almost 50% between 2009 and 2012 where the transition of institution from international to community and national authorities gradually took place (Transparency International 2016, 17).