The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency presents the 1st Survey of Perception of Corruption in Spain and the Valencian Community

Press release

Valencia, December 12, 2022.- The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency has presented this morning at a press conference the results of the  1st Survey of Perception of Corruption in Spain and the Valencian Community.

The Professor of Political Science and Administration of the University of Murcia and responsible for the Chair of Good Governance and Public Integrity, Fernando Jiménez, was in charge of publicizing the data of this survey that has had the collaboration of Luis de Sousa, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.  The presentation was also attended by the director of the Agency, Joan Llinares.

For the preparation of this survey, more than 1,500 interviews have been carried out  and 400 of them have been in the Valencian Community. The results of this survey offer for the first time an x-ray of the perception that citizens have regarding different aspects related to corruption and ethics and public integrity.

Main results of the encuesta

Among the main problems that concern citizens, the rise in prices occupies the first place with 21.4% followed by politics andn second place (20.3%). Corruption ranks 7th with 2.3%. If we look at the data obtained  in the case of the Valencian Community, inflation also occupies the first place although in a lower percentage (18.8%) while corruption falls to 8th place with 1.5% below issues such as the effects of the war in Ukraine.

As for trust with the institutions, the  Armed Forces, the police and the European Union are the ones that enjoy the greatest support from citizens both throughout the national territory and in the Valencian Community. At the other extreme, the Government, the Congress of Deputies and the political parties are the ones that generate the least confidence.

The survey also includes what citizens understand by corruption and most express that “the behavior has to be illegal to be considered corrupt.” It is striking how a large part of the population considers that “if the irregular action is carried out for a just cause, it is not corruption” or “if the result of an action is beneficial to the population in general, it is not corruption”.

In another of the questions thatis collected in the survey it is asked what they consider to be most important to have economic success in Spain and most think that “having good contacts and cultivating  them” while secondly  it  is considered that it is more important “to have good ideas and strive to explain them”.

Regarding the perception of whether corruption increased or decreased in the last year, 43.34% of the population considers that it neither increased nor decreased. However, the percentage of people who believe it increased is 43% as opposed to 13% who think that corruption decreased to a greater or lesser extent.

Asked about who is more corrupt, the  data indicate that citizens perceive politicians as the most corrupt (60%); followed by businessmen (47%); officials (39%) and citizens (36%). Despite considering that politicians are the most corrupt and when asked about the reasons why corrupt politicians are voted, the majority has responded “because the candidates are from the party with which you sympathize.” The rest of the reasons put forward in order of relevance are “because they have benefited from the favors of the candidate and feel gratitude” and “because they consider that all politicians are corrupt and that is why it does not matter who you vote for.”

When asked if any official has ever asked for gifts or money, 94% of respondents answered that “never” data that are similar both in the whole of Spain and in the Valencian Community.

On the protection received by  whistleblowers of corruption  in our country, the majority thinks that “protecting people who report corruption is an obligation for the whole society” followed by “whistleblowers of corruption can be subject to multiple reprisals” and in third place and well below the previous two is that “whistleblowers of corruption are already sufficiently protected by the police and judges”.

Facts about the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency

In this survey, interviewees have also been asked about issues that directly affect the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency and therefore only the population of the Valencian Community has been asked.

One of them was the degree of knowledge that exists among citizens about the Agency and 32% said they knew the existence of the same compared to 68%. By age, those under 34 years of age are the least known (85%) while the age group of 35-49 are the ones who know it most with 37%.

Among the 32% who answered that they knew the Agency, the opinion about it was considered very good, receiving a majority score of4 out of 5.

And on the functions entrusted to the Agency, the best known by citizens is to “protect those who report cases of corruption”, followed by “detect and punish corrupt people”, “prevent corruption from occurring” and finally “train politicians, officials and students in ethical values”.

The forgotten of the TREBEP

Blog AVAF-En

Urban legends say that the most well-known and cited norm of all the legal systems in the world is the Fifth Amendment to the North American Constitution of 1791. The legal chronicles ( Swerdlow , 1982) collect as one of the historical moments of the use of the Fifth Amends the appearance of Blanche Posner, a retired teacher member of the WSP ( Women Strike for Peace ), who invoked the Fifth up to 44 times in the same hearing before the HUAC (Un-American Activities Committee). She, along with her companions, who also followed the same line of defense, added up to 145 invocations in the same process of the norm of the North American Constitution that allows witnesses to refuse to answer when the answers could incriminate them. In the legal practice of our national legal system, the legal precepts on which there is a consensus as the most used and cited are also two articles of the 1978 Constitution, 14 and 24. The first, regulating equality, and the second, effective judicial protection and the right to defense. On the opposite side of fame, in the place where oblivion lives, are the least used and unknown articles of our legal system, which apparently from the doctrine turn out to be articles 52 to 54 of the TREBEP. THE FORGOTTEN TREBEP: Articles 52 to 54 of the Consolidated Text of the Basic Statute of Public Employees. The code of conduct for public employees is largely forgotten in our administrative legal system, and it is worth noting that such abandonment has been due to both doctrine and the selection processes carried out by Public Administrations, as well as (sometimes) training that is given to public employees once they enter the public service, as, consequently, due to its lack of application, due to the jurisprudence that emanates from Courts and Tribunals. The regulation of the code of conduct is found, to the surprise of many public employees who are unaware of this issue, included with the force of law in articles 52 to 54 of Chapter VI of Title III of Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of October 30, by which the consolidated text of the Law of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee is approved. The TREBEP establishes the regulation of the code of conduct for public employees (art. 52), detailing the ethical principles that must be respected (art. 53) as well as the principles of conduct to which they are subject (art. 54). Below we will analyze and justify in this text the affirmation that the regulatory articles of the code of conduct for public employees are the great forgotten of our public legal system, having to anticipate from this moment that part of the doctrine has already been pointing to this conclusion, although without detailing and extending it, a reason that drives and justifies this work, and in this sense we have to endorse the forceful conclusion that reminds us that “the TREBEP Code of Conduct, applicable to public employees, has passed without pain or glory, as a perfect stranger” (Jiménez Asensio, 2020). 1. The doctrine: late administrative ethics and doubts about ethical codes. Concerns for modernization and reform of the public function in our legal system have fundamentally revolved around bureaucratic, organizational, and control aspects (Irurzun Montoro, 2010). Thus, the concern of the legislator, and of a large part of the doctrine, was focused on the study of electronic administration, and very specifically on the integration of new technologies in the classic institutions of our administrative law, the study of ethics within the framework of the Administration. It will not be until the first decade of the 21st century when the well-known and abundant cases of corruption produced in the framework of political activity -and in a related way in the Public Administrations themselves- have given rise to doctrinal reflections that would culminate in the regulation of behaviors. ethics of public activity. From this moment, a doctrinal concern for the behavior and ethical and moral qualities of public employees will be strengthened. The doctrine has been using indistinctly, for this figure unknown up to now in our public law, the denominations of public ethics or political ethics (Villoria Medineta , 2007), seeming in our opinion more accurate the denomination of administrative ethics (Gracia Romero & Latorre Villa, 2007). The doctrinal study of administrative ethics is based on two main pillars; on the one hand, that branch of knowledge that addresses and pursues the explanation of the ethics of the public organization itself; On the other hand, the second approach to administrative ethics deals with the study of the ethics of the personnel at the service of the Administration itself. The ethics of public employees, in which the code of conduct is integrated, can also be analyzed from two conceptual prisms: the negative and the positive (Carro Fernández-Valmayor, 2010). The negative approach addresses the construction of a limiting ethic, that is, one that seeks to avoid fraudulent or corrupt behavior. Positive or extensive ethics, on the contrary, seeks, in contrast, an improvement or passion for the sense of public service, fleeing from the repression of behaviors to seek the promotion of values. 2. The legal effectiveness of the codes of conduct and their application by the Courts and Tribunals. The problem of the legal effectiveness of articles 52 to 54 of the TREBEP regulating the code of conduct, despite its undoubted inclusion in a legal norm, arises from the moment the Basic Statute of Public Employees was approved in the year 2007, and this because already in that statement of reasons the legislator, after pointing out the innovation that the configuration of “an authentic code of conduct” implied in our legal system, immediately specified immediately that it was included in the Statute with ” a pedagogical and guiding purpose”. The dogmatic difficulty that arises from the statement of reasons itself is accentuated by the literal wording of article 52 in fine, which establishes that “The principles and rules…

The Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency presents its complaints mailbox to the group of experts of the European Commission

Press release

Brussels, November 30, 2022.- The director of the Agency, Joan Llinares, appeared this morning before the Commission of Experts of the European Commission in charge of the work of the transposition of the European Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of persons reporting corruption, better known as the Whistleblowing Directive.

The meeting was attended by  representatives of the 27 member states as well as the candidate countries to join the Union.  The Agency has been invited by the European authorities to explain how its complaints mailbox works as well as its experience in the implementation of this channel.

The Agency’s whistleblowing channel is based on the Globaleaks platform that was originally adopted in Spain by the NGO X-Net. After introducing some improvements such as the bidirectionality of the channel, the possibility of incorporating documents or their legal approval, it was implemented in the Agency in 2018 during its first year of operation.

Currently, 88% of the complaints received at the  Agency are made through this complaints mailbox which also allows the complainant to choose if they want to make the complaint anonymously.

The success ofthe Agency’s complaints mailbox  has been such that its complaints channel model has been exported to other Valencian public bodies and institutions thanks to the signing of collaboration agreements with large administrations  such as the Provincial Council of Castellón or the City Council of Valencia  , to smaller ones such as the City Council of  La Yesa of just  120 inhabitants.

These protocols include that the Agency’s complaints mailbox becomes the external complaints mailbox of these bodies, thus complying with the European Directive on the protection of whistleblowers of corruption. To do this, the technology is adapted and a link is incorporated on the institution’s website that connects to the Agency’s complaints mailbox.

Likewise, the Agency helps and advises these institutions so that they can implement the mailbox as an internal channel of complaints within a group of actions aimed at providing these bodies with a framework of integrity. At this point,  the adoption of the Agency’s internal complaints mailbox has also been shown as part of the approval of the Code of Ethics and Conduct for its staff and the creation of an Ethics Committee.

In his speech, the Director of the Agency  was accompanied by Javier Alamá, head of the Agency’s information service and  one of the persons responsible for the operation of the complaints box who answered the technical questions asked by the members of the Committee of Experts on the operation of   the mailbox.

In addition to the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, the Autorità Naziional Anticorruzione (ANAC) has been invited to show its experience in a day that lasted all morning.

 

Link to the complaints mailbox:

https://www.antifraucv.es/en/complaints-mailbox-2/