Corruption still alive and well in post-bailout Greece

This summer, a lift at Athens’ largest public hospital broke down. When a repair technician arrived at the scene he couldn’t believe his eyes: knee-deep at the bottom of the shaft were hundreds of envelopes, the repository of bribes given to doctors who, pocketing the money, had then dispensed with the telltale fakellaki.

“Corruption in Greece is alive and well,” said Aliki Mouriki, a sociologist at the National Centre for Social Research. “In fact, if anything, people are now so squeezed they have fewer inhibitions about taking bribes than before the crisis.”

The practice of fakellakia, or little envelopes, exchanging hands was supposed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history when creditors demanded a root-and-branch cleanup of a public system seen as the source of much of the country’s financial ills.

In return for the biggest bailout in global financial history – rescue funds from the EU and IMF amounting to €240bn – it was hoped that old mentalities would change and a nation humbled by near-bankruptcy would finally dump its culture of deceit. Neither has been true.

Instead, with rising poverty and runaway unemployment, malfeasance and mistrust remain widespread. Anti-corruption officials continue to be on the take while the self-employed, not least shopkeepers on popular tourist isles, fail to declare their real income.

Transparency International said on Wednesday that Greece’s ranking on perceived levels of public corruption had improved from 94th place at the height of the debt crisis in 2012 to 69th this year. But Costas Bakouris, head of the watchdog’s Greek chapter, said the country remained entrenched in a crisis of values.

“There are two wars that Greece has to win and the first is to become a society that respects law and order,” he told the Guardian. “In a perfect society, a civilised society, people behave. Since our conscience ensures that this is not the case, the law has to do it for us. Our second fight is the long-term one of instilling individuals with values, turning them into good citizens, and that will take a generation at least.”

Chronic bureaucracy is part of the problem. In the realm of red tape, corruption flourishes, impeding business and entrepreneurship. In many cases, new laws and regulations have given crooked officials more paperwork to hide behind. Although the conservative-dominated coalition has made headway in purging the state sector since it assumed power in June 2012, nihilistic attitudes have been hard to erase.

“It’s a vicious circle. Nothing gets done any more because it’s so much more difficult to bribe civil servants,” complained one octogenarian, who admitted he found himself hankering for the bad old days. “In the past, bribes ensured a degree of efficiency. Now nothing works,” he said.

Corruption is said to be particularly rampant among local authorities and state-controlled organisations. A dysfunctional judiciary has resulted in few suspects being brought to trial. “Even agencies like Okana, dealing with the very sensitive issue of drug addiction, have been found to have abused funds on a massive scale,” said Harry Tzalas, former president of Kethea, the largest rehabilitation network for addicts in Greece. “Institutions where you would never expect to find corruption have fallen victim to it.”

Meanwhile the inevitable chaos that has come with the cash-strapped public sector’s decline has spurred growing numbers to ask why they should pay taxes when the state so very often fails to deliver. Since the crisis erupted in late 2009, the public health, welfare and education systems have been devastated by cuts.

Kevin Featherstone, professor of contemporary Greek studies at the London School of Economics, said: “World Bank indices of good governance have shown Greek scores declining and converging with other Balkan states and increasingly diverging from the rest of Europe. The optimism that the crisis would clean Greek politics was always fanciful because in a crisis people struggle to get any economic security by any means.”

In Greece, the very structure of the economy also facilitates corruption. “It’s an economy dominated by a few very large firms which means there is no natural constituency for liberal economics and plenty of room for cosy relations between the government and big business,” said Featherstone. “The attitude to the state is: what can we get from the state? In such circumstances, corruption can only do well.”