Monitoring of cases from previous Quarters

The below case was closed in Quarter II, however in this Quarter the case received a new life. According to Mugaddes Sultanov, head of a analytic information unit of the Anti-corruption Department under the General Prosecutor’s presentation on Public Television, in the result of investigation of the Department, the Romany Hospital was stripped by Ministry of Health of a special status of a closed medical institution, which was featured as a success of the Department. ALAC tried to obtain a letter from the Department by a verbal request, but failed and has applied in writing.

The above case was covered by the Transparency International newsletter.

As reported, the landlord firmly expressed his wish to increase the rent as of January 12, 2006, which was re-scheduled till April 12 (the negotiated cost will be raised from $1,175 to $1,400 monthly gross) and will again result in over expenditure in this budget line. The ALAC address is rather well publicized and the project can not afford move elsewhere at the moment. Attachment No 1 – Notification from the landlord.

No equipment was budgeted under this budget line for this quarter. However, expends occurred, totaling $162.83 under Telephone Equipment and $161.01 under Computer Sets budget entries from Balance from March-September 2005). These include: two answering machines for Baku and Ganja centers required because of impossibility of acceptance of evening and weekend calls,. Due to electric power supply problems UPS and stabilizer of Ganja project assistant’s computer burnt down and had to be replaced. The same happened in Baku. Local Network Server’s CD-rom and Project Legal assistant’s CD-rom in Baku office were broken and had to be replaced. Substantial amount was spent on cabling due to move of Ganja office.

No furniture was budgeted or bought for the period under review.

The problem with the bank commission reported previous quarter has been settled, meaning that paper processing has been streamlined, but lead to drastic increase of bank commission.

On 18^th of January ALAC Ganja office arranged for a psychologist to advise volunteer’s of the best attitudes towards complainants.

In March volunteers from Ganja have been sent for a training on Elections and Youth Encouragement in Elections. The4 day seminar was been held at the Olympic Center in Quba. Accommodation was provided by organizers. The picture depicts Ganja office volunteers outside of the Olympic Complex in Quba.




2.5. Designing of data base to record and process complaints
Electronic data base is being developed and will be introduced next Quarter.
2.6 Expanding legal library/cataloguing
This Quarter 8 books were purchased under ALAC, of which 5 legal documents, 1 dictionary, 2 research publications; 7 books and 3 magazines donated by various institutions in the period under review.
Media is monitored and most interesting articles related to corruption and anti-corruption efforts are archived and catalogued. Media archive in Baku (since March 2001) has 775 articles on corruption in Azerbaijan, 111 articles on business ethics, plus 231 by or on Transparency Azerbaijan (as compared to 211 articles in the previous Quarter).
Ganja Resource Center is quite popular round town and had 113 visits during this quarter, Baku office – 88 visits, of which 15 were new comers.
2.7 Time management
All project activities planned under the project have been implemented, except for Website and electronic date processing due to registration of Transparency Azerbaijan and all subsequent time consuming procedures.
Instead of opening of center in Lankaran it is planned to divert these funds towards subcontracting several local provincial NGOs to act as ALAC liaisons and focal points.
2.8 Website
Web site capacity was expanded from 100 Mb up to 200 Mb. Several pieces of new materials have been added to the website.
2.9 Registration of TA as an independent NGO
As follows from Quarter III report, TA was registered by the Ministry of Justice on December 28, 2005. After that, TA passed through Tax, Bank, Statistics and Ministry of Justice registration procedures as set forth by the law. New letter heads and stamp for newly registered organization have been designed and produced. Funds have been transferred to the organization’s own account money from old bank account (Society of Women for Peace and Democracy in the Transcaucasus) as of February 28, 2006. Attachment No 4 - Ministry of Justice registration certificate.
At the board meeting of Sabit Bagirov self-declined his candidacy and Fuad Suleymanov, TA board member from OSI-AF was elected Transparency Azerbaijan chairman of board. One board member (Namik Aliev) has been appointed Azerbaijan ambassador to Georgia and will have to formally resign from the board. New candidates are being considered .
2.10 Relations with TI – S
2.1.10 ALAC Workshop in Berlin

Transparency International – Secretariat (TI-S) organized an ALAC workshop in Berlin, on 30 Jan 30 – 1 Feb, 2006. Workshop participants were 31 National Chapter representatives (with existing ALACs or at the funds raising stage) and 7 TI-S staff members, including workshop facilitator Ben Elers, Program Manager for Europe and Central Asia The Workshop objectives were:

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  to allow existing ALACs to share their experiences and report/justify variations/amendments to the ALAC generic mandate due to either country specifics or impracticability of some of the mandate’s provisions;
  
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  to enable NCs at the fund raising stage to get a glimpse of ALAC at the pre-project implementation stage;
  
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  to do a field test of the final draft ALAC manual by TI-S and TI Romania
  

There are currently 11 ALACs in 7 countries in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus. An external evaluation was carried out of three ALACs in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Romania and Macedonia. The initial results from these three ALACs have been startling, with over 5,000 individuals having contacted three centers in their first year of operation.

Third year: Romania, BiH, Macedonia

Second year: Croatia, Montenegro

First year: Czech Republic, Azerbaijan

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  Positive results of the ALAC:
  
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    Increased public awareness of corruption.
    
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    Better public profile of the organization.
    
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    Established good working relations (personal trust) with relevant public institutions, so they do not view ALAC as a hostile entity.
    
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    Forcing public agencies to attend to corruption related complaints of citizens.
    

• 
  Things we would do differently from the very beginning:
  
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    Advertisement campaign content – we would resort to the nationwide broadcast TV at the project on-start, as other media outlets provide lesser impact on the population. However, other advertisement tools are useful as well for different purposes:
    
  • 
    the regular weekly radio program and face-to-face meetings with various layers of the population with the help of civil society organizations are good for education purposes.
    
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    distribution of flyers among population, billboards at the bus stops, crossroads and underground provide visibility for the project and recognition of the TV audience. From the project start we would collect data (registration form) on all customers, i.e. including all those who called and not only came or wrote.
    

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  Main challenges for the future of ALACs in Azerbaijan:
  
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    Press for serious legislative and institutional change.
    
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    Monitor and impact anti-corruption legislation enforcement.
    
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    Breaking skepticism of the population towards desire of public agencies to fight corruption and ability of NGOs to persuade them to do so.
    
  • 
    Publicize success stories regularly.
    

• 
  Obstacles overcome by ALAC in Azerbaijan:
  

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  Public bodies refused to sign MOU (de jure), however, most of them cooperate and non-cooperating agencies have been forced to cooperate de facto by shaming them publicly.
  
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  Many mass media (owned/controlled by corrupt public officials) refused to run ALAC advertisement, therefore private TV (ANS) and foreign radio (Liberty) had to be employed.
  
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  ALAC first operation period shall not coincide with any serious (parliamentary/municipal) elections in the country as the public/media attention is diverted which affected flow of customers.
  
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  Poor coordination between similar various projects which was addressed by encouraging the group of donors and the State Anti-corruption Commission to set up an anti-corruption Coalition.
  
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  Toll Free is difficult to use due to technicalities, therefore regular telephone number had to be added, which incurred extra costs.
  

Some ALACS reported on their variations form the mandate as well:

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  TI Macedonia has established 4 ALACs, despite relatively small size of the country.
  

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  Romania accepted complaints related to public administration system at large during the first year, specialized in complaints related to judiciary and whistle blower protection in their respective second and third years.
  
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  Other ALACs spent a lot of time designing electronic data base at the project on-start.
  
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  In Czech Republic ALAC was established at the request and co-funded by Ministry of Interior Affairs, main executive anti-corruption body in the country. This ALAC believes that primary function of ALAC is to teach public agencies to deal with complaints filed by citizens, therefore they do not file cover letters with legal opinion on TI Czech letterhead.
  

Consistency of ALACs and TI mandate was discussed with regards to: non-investigation policy and dealing with anonymous calls.

In any case, anonymous calls shall be accepted by ALAC and dealt in three possible ways:

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  In BiH the law requires reporting of any corruption related information, including anonymous, and failure to report can result in criminal liability for those in possession of such information.
  
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  In some other countries, legislation prohibits submission of anonymous complaints, therefore, such calls shall be accepted and processed for diagnostics purposes.
  
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  In countries where legislation is less clear, like Azerbaijan, where no prohibition on accepting anonymous is imposed for third parties, but acceptance by public agencies is denied, anonymous calls shall be dealt with at the discretion of ALAC.
  

Participation of Rena Safaralieva was funded by TI-S, however, it was decided expedient for Fikrin Bektashi, ALAC coordinator to take part as well. Funding came from leftover from the budget entry TI-S mid-term assistance. Total cost is $ 1,125.71.