Final Essay. Corruption in Large Infrastructure Projects: Australia and Sudan

Corruption in Large Infrastructure Projects: Australia and Sudan
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Political corruption is observed when a government official misappropriates their public office's power and networks to delegate authority to others in exchange for an illegitimate increase of wealth for private use (Locatelli, Mariani, Sainati, & Greco, 2017; Owusu, Chan, & Shan, 2017). In improving the economic growth of a country, corruption in public policies significantly affects the rate on which a country will improve its quality of life; therefore, locating the source of corruption and eradicating it are some of the primary objectives that different governments are trying to achieve (Locatelli et al., 2017).
However, the people should recognize first the different faces of corruption before anyone can learn how to combat its effects. Philp (2002), pointed out different faces of corruption depending of the type of gain that the public official will receive. In political corruption, the most common form is bribery where a politician accepts any individual or organization’s material inducement for a special favor in securing a certain result outside the due process (Philp, 2002). This is especially evident when it comes to the procurement of construction management in large infrastructure projects (Owusu, Chan, & Shan, 2017).
According to Owusu, Chan, & Shan (2017), corruption in infrastructure projects is observed when a public official gives favor to a certain organization or construction company in exchange for the contract of a construction project. Additionally, the corruption in the construction industry is prevalent since they can easily mask money laundering, bid rigging and other evolutions of corrupt acts, which can have a detrimental effect to the construction project, such as the decrease of building quality, due to the loss of budget, that reduce the lifespan of infrastructures (Owusu, Chan, & Shan, 2017).
In the study of Locatelli et al. (2017), they observed a relationship between the corruption and infrastructure project performance depending on the location of the construction site. It is mainly due to the fact that the bending of the rules is dependent on the physical locations that is highly controlled by corrupt officials where they can either or both: unlawfully qualify a certain bidder for the procurement of a construction project, and raise or reduce the engineering quality of the infrastructure materials and man-power during the construction timeframe (Locatelli et al., 2017).
Corruption in the construction industry is common around the world, the citizens of different nations view corruption with cultural relativism that has varied acceptance and rejection of corruption depending on the type (Murray & Zagaretos, 2001 as cited in Brown & Loosemore, 2015). In Australia, the building and construction industry is one of the main contributors of its national economy and welfare since large quantities of wealth is related with the economy of a developed country, Australia had experienced its own contribution in corrupt practices in large infrastructure projects through the years and try to eradicate corruption in construction (Hartley, 2009).
In other less developed countries, such as Sudan, they rely on large infrastructure projects that are necessary in leading the country to economic growth; however, the initiators of corruption in the construction sectors had mandatory bribes that is acceptable to the people (Elamin, 2019, Kukutschka, 2017), which hinders a country’s development, especially in secluded locations in its provinces where they lack transparency in financial information of the local public officials and the prevalence of cronyism (Sohail & Cavil, 2008).
Although corruption in large infrastructure projects are almost share the same concept in every country, the geographical location of the developed and less developed countries such as Australia and Sudan respectively, should be further studied since it can reveal the different methods used in corrupting the construction projects that significantly affect a country’s economic growth and be aware on how public officials can easily corrupt infrastructure funds depending on location.
Corruption in the Procurement Process of Large Infrastructure Projects
In the case of public procurement, the most common steps of securing the construction contract should follow the standards of the of the International Competitive Bidding (ICB) that covers the steps in evaluating the qualifications of a bidder to be awarded with the construction contract (Søreide, 2002). According to Søreide, (2002) political corruption can be associated in procurement process when the public official has the authority to invite certain possible bidders of the construction projects. Next, the official can then shortlist the numbers of bidders depending on a certain qualification about the bidder that the offcial wanted to win. Then, the public official abuses the confidentiality of information regarding the legal process and documents necessary to help the bidder win using political powers (Søreide, 2002).
Added by to Søreide, (2002) in the case of an emergency such as during a state of calamity, the deviation from the standards of procurement can be justified by the public officials and choose the bidders where the politicians can gain the most. Although there is corruption during this process, there are specific characteristics of construction projects, as described by Stansbury (2005), that are more susceptible to corruption, which includes the size, uniqueness, government involvement, and project involvement (as cited in Locatelli et al., 2017).
Among all these, the size of the project is the most susceptible to corruption since bribes are easily concealed and the claims to the exaggerated total cost of the project is almost always believable, thus large projects are more exposed to corruption than smaller projects (Stansbury, 2005 as cited in Locatelli et al., 2017). Also, uniqueness of the project can easily conceal the inflated total cost since there is no baseline information to what the project should cost in the first place (Stansbury, 2005 as cited in Locatelli et al., 2017). This abuse in project uniqueness is especially relevant in less developed countries since most of the construction project are the first of their kind in their area, thus making it difficult to compare the assumed budget.
Corruption in Infrastructure Project in Australia
One of the leading sources of Australia's national income comes from the building and construction industry, which significantly boosts the nation's prosperous prosperity; however, the country is still not safe with the occurrence of corruption among the different ranks of its government officials (Hartley, 2009). Australis is considered to be a developed country with a relatively low index of corruption, including the enforcement of the rule of law within the government system. The occurrence of public official's corruption, such as accepting inducement for special favor of a private individual, is rare but it still exists in the country (Hartley, 2009). Despite the efforts of the Australian anti-corruption agencies and different legislations, such as the Anti-corruption law, corruption in infrastructure projects still remain rampant in Australian construction industry (Brown & Loosemore, 2015).
It is important to understand that one of the most significant factors in the occurrence of corruption in the procurement process is that there is a strong degree of pressure in the construction industry, especially, to the contractors that drives corrupt behavior and neglect standard policies to be in a favorable position. Therefore, in the construction industry, both the government officials and the contractors created the culture of corruption in the construction industry that changed the official rules of procurement into corruption in practice (Brown & Loosemore, 2015).
Corrupt behavior exists in different stages of the construction process in Australia (Brown & Loosemore, 2015). Depending of the complexities of the contract, the number or size of the construction interface, the pressure of procurement competition, and the government officials position in the construction projects, corruption had been seen as the social norm in the whole infrastructure industry (Brown & Loosemore, 2015).
According to the study of Brown & Loosemore (2015), the most common form of corruption in the construction industry are kickbacks, fraud and bribery. These acts are based on the behavioral Theory of a Corrupt acts by Rabl and Kühlmann (2008) where corruption in the construction industry is deeply connected with personal gain of the public official (as cited in Brown & Loosemore, 2015). Added by Brown & Loosemore (2015), kickbacks, fraud and bribery are favored by the corrupt officials and contractors since these corrupt acts are supported by high goal feasibility, conducive attitudes and subjective norms, and high perceived behavioral control.
According Theory of a Corrupt acts by Rabl and Kühlmann (2008), goal feasibility is the level of difficulty in committing the corrupt act; attitude and subjective norms is the personal belief of the individual about the possibility of producing a certain outcome where the outcome of an action, in this case corruption, is right or wrong depending on personal belief; perceived behavioral control is the ability to decrease the risk and maximize gain (as cited in Brown & Loosemore, 2015).
On the other hand, kickback is when there is a percentage given to a certain government official in every transaction where the assistance of that official was needed; Fraud is the unlawful deception in the claims or documents to secure an increased unlawful financial or personal gain; Bribery is the giving of money or gifts to the official to favor the giver of the bribe (Brown & Loosemore, 2015).
Since the Australia's high wealth gain is from the construction...