The stifling atmosphere of corruption is pervading every sphere of public life in Kazakhstan. Sadly enough, press reports more frequently mention representatives of law-enforcement bodies involved in corruption-related crimes. In socialist years a uniformed police officer was someone to be considered sacrosanct, an incarnation of integrity and high moral code. But this vision in public mind is changing. Not only the police, but also high-placed judiciary bodies have fallen victim to their own proclivity to bribe-taking and inherent greed. What alarms the public is that corruption among law-enforcement bodies is increasingly assuming the form of drug-related crimes. Obviously, officials can no longer hush up rampant crimes in their own ranks which already got out of control.

In April this year the Prosecutor-General’s Office indicted a judge of Almaty district court for bribery. Investigations showed that the judge extorted $5000 from a wife of a defendant who was charged for selling narcotics. Although the guilt of the defendant was not proven the judge demanded the round sum of money from his wife promising her to review the case and withdraw the criminal charge against her husband. On the same day, April 20, National Security Committee Department officers in South Kazakhstan region detained a senior inspector of police for drug dealing in Shymkent. The suspected police lieutenant was caught with packages of 1 kilogram of raw opium in the boot of his car parked in a car-repair shop.

Regrettably, this is not an isolated incident which signals the rise of drug-related criminality in police ranks. Earlier this year security officers detained another policeman in South Kazakhstan with 238 kg of opium and 36 kg of heroin. But everybody knows that all these cases is only the visible part of deep-rooted crime in law enforcement bodies. The chief of Shymkent city police Kurmanbek Artykbayev, speaking at a press-conference, reported 140 criminal cases related to drug trafficking. Amazingly, according to him in 58 cases narcotics have actually been sold to drug users and only an insignificant amount of it, about 30 kilograms were seized, of which only 4 kg of heroin. Kurmanbek Artykbayev did not bother to explain the causes of low efficiency of anti-narcotics efforts of the police.

The number of teenager drug users is growing every year. And it is hardly surprising given the miserable state of anti-drug education and the spread of drug addiction among secondary school and university students. Last year the national paper Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, famous for its proclivity to depict the reality in rosy colors, waged a veritable verbal war against the state-owned Eurasian University stating that university professors were closing their eyes to drug sale in student canteens which took threatening proportions. The administration of the university reacted angrily, but could not deny the fact. On March 5 this year the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported the case of a teacher of Taraz University (South Kazakhstan) who was selling hashish to students right in the classroom. The detainee admitted that he himself was a drug addict. Curiously, the information about the incident came from a Russian source.

To a considerable degree, the reluctance of law-enforcement bodies to discuss openly the drug-related corruption cases is a reason for the low efficiency of fighting crime. Despite the declared transparency and openness, authorities still tend to whitewash reality, manipulating statistics and barring access to “confidential” reports for journalists. It is impossible in this situation to assess the real scale of drug-related crimes in law enforcement bodies. The increasing flow of migrants from turbulent Kyrgyzstan, and impoverished Uzbekistan and Tajikistan also contributes to the rise of crime. Labor migrants and refugees from Central Asian countries and Afghanistan are seen in Kazakhstan as potential drug traffickers and criminals, and they are in no way protected from arbitrariness and extortion.

Believing that widespread corruption in law enforcement bodies is caused by low income, the government raised the salary of police officers a year ago, but bribe-taking did not abate, even though police officers and judges are among the highest paid. Ironically, most of the drug-related corruption cases have taken place after the adoption of the presidential decree on fighting corruption on April 14 this year. This raises doubts about the ability of authorities to establish law and order by administrative methods which have never led to success in the past. Some circles in the Interior Ministry seem to understand the importance of public associations, journalists and NGO’s joining the fight against drug-related corruption. But for the top echelon of power that kind of collaboration is more dangerous than corruption itself.