EF works in several countries to increase transparency at various levels of government by introducing citizen oversight into activities such as budgeting, spending and regulatory enforcement. Since EF’s anti-corruption program launched in 2002, the Foundation has invested almost $500,000 in this field, including 22 grants to NGOs throughout the region.
In Moldova, EF has played a vital role in establishing and running the Anti-Corruption Alliance (ACA), a group of 29 prominent Moldovan NGOs working to prevent and combat corruption. The ACA has taken an active role in drafting the Moldova Millennium Challenge Corporation Program aimed at fighting corruption in areas such as the judiciary, police, customs and health. This close cooperation with the Moldovan Government has resulted in increased trust in and respect for the ACA. Parliament now submits all draft laws and amendments for anti-corruption initiatives to the ACA for comment. At the local level, EF partners installed anonymous corruption report boxes in the regions. Instances of corruption in school administration bodies were reported in more than ten villages. This has led to more transparent behavior on the part of school administrators and other local public servants.
In Kazakhstan, the Foundation implements the Open Budget Kazakhstan program to involve citizens in the process of drafting, managing and monitoring local government budgets. The Foundation and its grantees under this initiative have successfully lobbied the Kazakh government to issue a decree that all state budget information should be made accessible to citizens though publications and websites. In addition, public hearings prior to budget development were instituted in four regions of Kazakhstan. This increased transparency has already yielded results. Last year, a grantee, in the course of analyzing expenditures by local government in the area of environmental protection, noted that 2 million tenge (about $20,000) had not been spent as planned, and the funds were now reportedly unavailable. The grantee organization investigated these funds and wrote up a report, which was later discussed at a public hearing and submitted to the prosecutor’s office.
In Armenia, several international monitoring organizations have reported that the country is backsliding in its fight against corruption. Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF) is working to increase the capacity of Armenia’s government, civil society and media to promote transparent public processes through fraud detection training, anti-corruption monitoring, investigative journalism and the use of Armenia’s Law on Freedom of Information. As a result, cooperation between targeted media outlets, civil society organizations and the government on issues of corruption has increased, including all sectors participating in debates and TV talk shows, participating media outlets increasingly address corruption and awareness of the impact of corruption among the general public has improved.
EPF in Georgia provides grants to local organizations to monitor municipal budgets. EPF grantee, the Center for Protection for Human Rights, implements the My City–My Money project to monitor municipal budget spending for city works and build the capacity of local organizations on civic participation and monitoring. These groups now have a better understanding of the budgeting process, are able to detect loopholes in the budget and make them subject to public discussion. Documented budget violations have since been submitted to the local government and as a result, the government and private organizations established a Public Board for the City Council to provide local civic groups greater opportunity for involvement in local budget planning and implementation, while increasing the transparency of budgetary processes.
