Giannis Panousis on the normalisation of corruption

The corruption index for 2009 presented by Transparency International places Greece, together with Bulgaria and Romania, at the bottom of the ranking within the EU. Criminology professor Giannis Panousis analyses in the daily Eleftherotypia the ties between power and corruption: "Because corruption is mostly viewed as a 'trivial offence' and represents a 'white-collar crime' it is regarded by some as only a minor form of cheating. … So it's an error rather than a crime. This is why we must seek out those responsible rather than the culprits. For some, corruption is nothing more than a lapse of the powerful, or in other words a form of behaviour that is more a matter of political ethics than criminality. So corruption becomes the tool of an 'unlawful democracy' beyond the official system. In this way the political mechanism which usually affects the corruption of the group, the clique, the faction and the party 'humanises' [normalises] the role and support given by all those who are in need and don't know how to deal with the typical state procedures."

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