A law passed in Albania gave ANK Sh.PK, a company close to the ruling Socialist Party, a extremely expensive contract for the construction of a 17.2 km road. Construction costs are expected to amount to almost 300 million euros, more than double the amount envisaged by the government. In Türkiye, a law reclassified a protected wetland so that the new Istanbul airport can be built there. Six people in Macedonia are accused of laundering of around 4.5 million euros to finance the political party VMRO-DPMNE. Among them is former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, also implicated in several other corruption scandals.
These are examples of state capture, when powerful individuals and groups use corruption to shape a nation’s policies, laws, and economy to benefit their own private interests. This allows the corrupt to retain their power, enrich themselves thanks to the state and avoid sanctions.
Ordinary citizens pay the price by losing their livelihoods, losing public services, limiting opportunities, and losing faith in democracy because they see government institutions as serving private interests.
This is happening at all levels of government – from local authorities to the executive – in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. Here, chains of loyalty and mutual benefit lead officials to abuse their position and tighten the grip of a few networks on these countries.
A new Transparency International Report on the Western Balkans and Turkey reveals the causes of this state capture, as well as two enabling factors that allow it to occur: undue influence on the judicial system and on law-making.