ФАКТОРИ ПОШИРЕННЯ КОРУПЦІЇ В БЕЗГОТІВКОВОМУ СУСПІЛЬСТВІ

Abstract

This work examines the potential consequences of society’s refusal to accept cash payments and the final transition to cashless payments to prevent the emergence and spread of corruption. It was found that the transition to a cashless society will have an uneven impact on various forms of corruption: those forms of corruption that involve the possibility of transferring a bribe in cash form from a client to a corrupt official – bribery and extortion – are most affected, and those forms of corruption that do not involve similar cash payments – mutual favors, embezzlement and embezzlement involving other persons. It is shown that even in the case of such forms of corruption as extortion and bribery, the deterrent effect of the transition to a cashless society will be limited. The latter is explained by the fact that the participants of the corruption agreement have a sufficient number of acceptable opportunities for adaptation to new conditions: the reorientation of corrupt officials to the provision of corruption services in the form of mutual services; use of foreign currency to pay bribes; transition of corrupt officials to non-monetary forms of bribes. It is also shown that due to the low efficiency of the financial monitoring system, corrupt officials almost do not risk even taking bribes in cashless form. It has been proven that the transition to a cashless society, as a measure to prevent the emergence and spread of corruption, will have a minor impact on the overall level of corruption in the country. The low effectiveness of this measure is due to the following factors: the presence of forms of corruption that do not involve the direct payment of a bribe; the possibility of interested parties entering into a corruption agreement to refuse bribery and extortion in favor of other forms of corruption; increasing the specific weight, in the total number of corruption deals, of those forms of corruption that require greater efforts to detect them. A small reduction in the number of concluded corruption deals will occur, only in the short-term period, during which corrupt officials and their clients will look for alternative mechanisms for concluding corruption deals, adapting to new conditions.