Many people believe that corruption is an inextricable part of our life. It is present in the industrialised and developing countries, in the North and in the South, in the totalitarian regimes an in the democracies. It existed already in ancient Egypt and we can observe it in the post-industrial societies. The fight against corruption has already brought results in the world and in our country, too. In several developing countries the repugnance to limitless corruption has overthrown antidemocratic governments, and a growing number of countries forbids its companies to exercise corruption abroad and there is more and more countries having introduced just laws on public procurement and politicians in more and more countries feel that they have to take a stand against corruption.
Money laundering faces obstacles in an increasing number of states.
The situation in Hungary is complex, to put it subtly. Theoretically, all components of the set of democratic institutions have been put in place, but these components are not quite operational and are not fully refined in their complexity. They do not mean that corruption had been made part of the scarce economy and the distributive system from the very beginning of state socialism, because the extension of that corruption looks almost ridiculous to the present one. Corruption in socialism had indeed been a so-called corruption serving subsistence. As there had been no free press, the average Hungarian citizen could not get informed about the waste of government funds amounting to billions, due to reasons of prestige and personal interest.