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PREVENTING CORRUPTION IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENTS IN DOMESTIC LEGAL SYSTEM

Public sector corruption as a form of abuse of the legal powers of individuals, undoubtedly is one of the most serious social malformations that undermines the national economies groundworks, breaches the social security and, as a result significantly reduces citizens’ confidence in the system stability. No modern state system, no matter how powerful, financially stable and democratically oriented is, is immune to the corruption phenomenon. However, this is particularly evident in transition countries (including North Macedonia) which are still going through the process of creating and promoting the market economy and establishing the concept of the „rule of law“ that should contribute to greater control and appropriate punishment of these illegal actions to the detriment of the state budget. Public procurements as an instrument which the central government and local authorities use to buy goods, services or constructions, naturally are one of the most serious (quantitative and qualitative) financial interactions in the public sector, so therefore are inevitably followed by various forms of corrupt behavior. In times of widespread public procurements corruption, the question that naturally imposes, is how to ensure rational, purposeful and transparent spending of state money, which is in fact the main goal of the Public Procurements Law. Consequently, the basic idea of this paper is to give an overview of the most common illegal behaviors that increase the risk of public finances abuse, the institutional framework for public procurements control and current regulations and policies to identify the different forms of corruption in the domestic legal system in order to secure their proper punishment.