Corruption in Italy: Laws and authorities aren't enough. We need to rediscover honesty, a now obsolete word.

HOW TO FIGHT CORRUPTION

In Sierra Leone , where 5 bribes are taken every minute, a toll-free number , 515, has been set up to report bribe-seekers . In Italy, which holds the record for corruption in Europe , preceded only by Bulgaria, a single front has finally been set up, the National Anti-Corruption Authority chaired by Raffaele Cantone, to effectively combat what we can consider the country's heaviest burden.

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HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF CORRUPTION

Let's not confuse a poor African nation with Italy , for goodness' sake . Yet, with a modicum of intellectual honesty, we must recognize at least two important similarities that bring together two worlds so distant from each other in terms of economic and social conditions. First point : in Africa, there will never be a redemption of the continent and its people without concrete and widespread results in the fight against corruption. In Italy, there will never be a true economic recovery, much less a new economic boom , if we fail to bring the current use of bribes and kickbacks back to physiological levels, at least in line with the other more developed nations of the Western world, our reference club.

Second : 80 percent of Sierra Leone's population admits being "forced" (the quotation marks are mandatory) to pay bribes for public services that on paper are free; 90 percent of Italians, especially those working in the business world, are convinced that corruption and bribery , two sides of the same coin called mass illegality, are the easiest , and sometimes the only , way to obtain a public service that is rightfully theirs . As you can see, adding together the two points of contact, Sierra Leone and Italy reveal two countries closer than they seem.

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Confirmation of this admittedly rather depressing analysis comes from a small book with a very telling title ( It's Normal, Everyone Does It , published by Chiarelettere ), written by Michele Corradino , a magistrate of the Council of State, former chief of staff to several ministers, and for a couple of years commissioner, alongside Cantone , of the National Anti-Corruption Authority. Corradino uses an almost narrative method to describe the widespread nature of the phenomenon, and through the reconstruction of telephone and environmental wiretaps, published in various newspapers over the last few years, he turns the epic of bribes and kickbacks into a sort of Romanzo Criminale of our country.

Fortunately, there's no shortage of hilarious scenes and neorealist-style jokes in the dialogues between businessmen and the corrupt and the corrupters. At the same time, the commissioner—that's Corradino's role now—reminds us of some of the collateral effects, systemic damage and waste , of corruption in Italy. For example, the estimate of €60 billion a year drawn up by the Court of Auditors, subsequently revised and corrected (but is it really so important to determine the economic damage caused by corruption to the last cent, assuming it's even possible? Isn't what we see every day, just by browsing the newspapers or surfing the web, enough?) or the fact that every point lost in the Transparency International rankings, where we're constantly sliding down, translates into a 16 percent cut in foreign investment.

CORRUPTION IN ITALY

Corradino raises possible therapies , which, frankly, we already know about and are just waiting to see implemented: more transparent and effective procurement, or a short and clear law regulating lobbies in Italy, which are accustomed to operating in a sort of gray area where corruption becomes almost automatic. He then insists on the need for "a cultural shift ," a concept dear to Cantone, who wrote the book's introduction. And here we can only rely on the category of optimism of willpower, trying to look ourselves in the mirror, dusting off the patina of rhetoric, and remembering who we really are. Otherwise, we risk moving from news to fairy tales.

For Italians, honesty is not yet a shared value, a fixed point in our community life, something that unites even from the perspective of mutual benefit, which is not marginal to the purposes of a "cultural transformation." We lack an organic relationship with the etymology of this word, where honestus , as Cicero wrote, is a man worthy of honor . A category that is not covered by a law, a sanction, or any anti-corruption deterrent, but is part of the most intimate, and therefore most solid, part of the person and the citizen.

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