As the party financing Bill continues to be pondered and accusations of cronyism, graft and misuse of public funds continue to fly about, here’s a story to bring tears to your eyes, whether you want to laugh or cry. It is the notorious Toblerone Affair, which rocked Swedish politics almost 20 years ago.

In October 1995, the deputy prime minister of Sweden, Mona Sahlin, was in pole position to succeed Ingvar Carlsson, the prime minister who was set to retire. There were virtually no other serious contenders. Since Sahlin was popular, and this was a Social Democrat government, in a country where the main opposition usually gets only an occasional, and brief, turn at the helm – the last time being only a few years earlier – it looked like a long stretch as prime minister beckoned for Sahlin.

Only she never became prime minister. In fact, she’s one of only two Swedish Social Democrat party leaders never to have served in that role. So, what went wrong that October?

A newspaper revealed that Sahlin had bought chocolate using a credit card reserved for working political expenses. What’s more, she never paid the money back. The Toblerone bars turned up on the credit card statement, together with various other private expenses amounting to some 50,000 Swedish kronor (which, today, would be the equivalent of less than €5,500).

Once the spotlight was turned onto Sahlin, more emerged.

She had used the card to hire cars for private use. She had failed to pay her TV licence and parking fines. She had also engaged a foreign nanny without declaring it for tax purposes.

It is very tempting to use mock, multiple exclamation marks in listing those revelations while writing all this in Malta, the land where scarcely a single parliamentarian was able to declare to Bondiplus, a few years ago, that the family housemaid was employed in strict conformity to the law, and where the private use of ministerial cars is flaunted with impunity.

But the revelations ruined Sahlin’s career. She managed to get herself cleared of criminal wrongdoing. She made a tearful apology. But she also had to rule herself out of the political succession. Instead, a colleague, Goeran Persson, became prime minister and governed for 10 years.

Sahlin eventually succeeded him as party leader, a decade later, but by that time it was the turn of the opposition party to have a go at government. Sahlin eventually resigned the party leadership without ever having become prime minister.

Thinking back to Malta, and its political culture, one is tempted to read this story as a parable on the stark difference between Nordic virtue and Mediterranean venality. But it’s a dangerous story to believe.

If we really want to make political funding and use of public funds more transparent and accountable, we have to see that that contrast is very misleading. It suggests, at least in subtext, that the key difference is popular culture. In fact, a lot of effort has gone into keeping Scandinavian politicians honest with public money.

Elsewhere in the world, Scandinavian private companies get up to all sorts of monkey business when not bound by the same rules. You may have heard of one or two of them in connection with allegations of bribery not a million miles away from home. Third World graft would scarcely be in the same league without First World inducements.

The same goes for the rest of political Europe. North, south, east, west, the difference between Malta and the rest does not lie in what politicians are prepared to do. A proper comparison would, in fact, leave our lot looking very tame in comparison with most.

Italy’s proximity makes its shenanigans familiar: illegal party financing, profiteering off public property, graft in the awards of public contracts, trading in influence.

There’s no point in having codes of ethics that are not enforced

But France is difficult to keep down. One former President, Jacques Chirac, has been convicted of embezzling public funds, conflicts of interest and abuse of office. Another, Nicolas Sarkozy, is under investigation. A minister of finance was found to have hidden bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore. The really sleazy aspect of the secret love affair conducted by President François Hollande, uncovered last year, is that the apartment he used for his trysts belonged to the mistress of a Corsican gangster.

In Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been caught in receipt of kickbacks on various business deals. His party’s long-time treasurer is accused of having collected and (partly) redistributed €48 million.

At this point, some observers are fond of worldly-wise sighs about Latin irrepressibility and Catholic moral nonchalance. It’s to be blamed, according to the theory, on easy access to confession and forgiveness of sins; although, strangely enough, the same theorists attribute an excess of guilt feelings on sexual matters to confession. It would appear the same sacrament can make one both excessively lax and morbidly guilty.

Or, perhaps it’s just the theory that’s useless because it ignores what goes on in the rest of Europe.

That giant of a German politician, Helmut Kohl, had to end his career in the midst of a huge party funding scandal with a strong stench of government favours granted (though never revealed). His successor as Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, pursued policies that favoured the Russian energy company Gazprom, only to end up on its very generous payroll shortly after leaving office.

Over the same time period, the UK has been racked by a House of Commons expenses scandal and by a cash-for-questions scandal, not to mention a major party funding scandal, back in 1997, involving Tony Blair’s then fresh government.

The point is not that we’re all the same and nothing will ever change.

Some countries are more corrupt than others. It’s no coincidence that the Scandinavian countries regularly top the transparency indices.

But the differences are not to be attributed to religion, geography or popular culture. They lie, rather, in two other areas.

First, the most effective transparency laws are holistic. Laws and controls governing politicians and money run the whole gamut.

They regulate campaign funds but also post-election funding. They cover all possible aspects of corruption: from misuse of public funds to graft; from favours granted in office to those enjoyed after leaving office.

If, on the other hand, we just fiddle around with the amounts that political parties can receive as donations, or the amount that can be spent on a campaign, we will simply be controlling one source of sleaze but ignoring that it will simply flow to the other areas of opportunity.

The second key difference lies in public culture, that is, what matters for civil society watchdogs. There’s no point in having codes of ethics that are not enforced, scandals that break out but then not pursued, reports on abuse that are then allowed to just fade away.

Across Europe, it’s the willingness of the media to dog or dodge the issue, to outlast the politicians’ attempts to sit the scandal out, that often makes the entire difference.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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