Literature Review

“97.7 percent of business in Lebanon expect to pay bribes for government contracts” (Gatten). In fact, “the cost of bribery in Lebanon amounts to 3.9 billion dollars per year” or a staggering 10 percent of the Lebanese GDP said Rabih Sfeir a finance professional (El Amin). Lebanese citizens despair as daily life is becoming increasingly frustrating. Several reasons are behind the widespread of bribery. It is the result of a 35-year long civil war which led to a lack of accountability and transparency and a destruction of the ethics code. Lebanese people “came to understand that to become rich, you must be dishonest, cheat or steal” (Yeranian). Corruption and bribery are indubitably having an adverse effect on businesses and the socio-economic situation in Lebanon.

A common point found in three of the articles studied is the difficulty of measuring corruption to generate national data in order to remediate the scandalous situation. Despite many efforts made to reveal corruption, response rates to surveys and participation in tolls on websites and even mobile applications remain low. This is either because some are too scared and lack the courage to speak up (Rayane), (Gatten) or for the simple reason that bribery happens in secret (Amin).

In an interview conducted with an employee in a construction company who insisted on staying anonymous, we learned some facts about corruption in the construction sector. Large amounts of cash are paid out to government clerks and officials in order to obtain building permits and avoid exhausting bureaucracy and stalling. This is in exact accordance with an article entitled “The Bribes between the Bricks” in The Executive magazine. This article offers valuable insights into the process of bribery in the construction sector and the financial burden that it represents to companies.

A major reason behind bribery is the low wages of government clerks. Yahya Hakim, the director of the Lebanese Transparency Association stated that “low public sector wages make bribes a highly attractive option to government employees”. These people are getting paid below the line of poverty and bribery is therefore “the only way open to them” (Gatten). Another reason is speeding up transactions and avoiding having to complete exhaustive paperwork only to have your file collect dust on a government employee’s desk. Citizens are now used to paying bribes “to facilitate and accelerate government procedures”. In fact, the more people you know in the public sector, the faster and less complicated the paperwork (Rayane).

After examining several articles, it is clear that other than