Corruption is on the up in Finland – and the private sector leads the way.
That’s the main finding in a new report from the Police University College, which looked at how prevalent different forms of corruption are across business and the state sector.
Most corruption cases in Finland involve misuse of funds, but increasing numbers focus on abuse of confidential data.
The report looks at crime figures from 2011-2014 and finds that there was a 10 percent increase in the number of corruption complaints on the previous period of 2007-2010.
In the three yearsto 2014, some 516 reports alleging corruption were received by the police. The number of bribery cases increased by 15 percent.
Bribery cases tend to be minor in scope, and usually relate to things like competitive procurement, match-fixing in sports, and influencing voters in the case of municipal elections.
Misuse of funds was the main type of corruption, but there is also an upward trend in cases alleging misuse of data.
“The number of corruption cases directly related to money has remained at the same level. It is increasingly a case of misuse of information.
“Information is also the most common gain from corruption cases,” said researcher Suvi-TuuliMansikkamki.
In several cases, senior company managers have used confidential data for their own benefit.
“Business activities are much stronger in the corruption statistics than in the previous study.”
According to the report, every other corruption case involves activities within a company or between companies.
Despite the increase in cases, investigations are hard-going with evidence difficult to uncover. Only 60 percent of cases in the study went to trial.