Corruption In My Country? Of Course NOT!

No country in the world is totally free from corruption – fact. Even those countries assessed as the least corrupt internally, have been known to perpetuate corruption in those deemed to be very corrupt, usually in the name of business, or perhaps more accurately – greed.

Transparency International (TI) – an NGO founded by a few individuals in the early 1990s, now based in Berlin but present in over 100 countries – has produced figures which identify the level of “official” corruption in almost all countries, but has also identified external influences which may effect the on-going perpetration of corrupt practices in other than their own country; that is, countries scoring highly on non-corrupt practices at home may facilitate the export to, and perpetuation of corruption in countries at the other end of the scale.

To quote two examples only – TI identifies London as the world’s centre of corruption, as through unmatched influence on the global economic system, private bankers facilitate the movement of funds into and out of the city/country virtually unchecked, thus exporting the conditions necessary for wide-scale corruption to cities and countries worldwide, while simultaneously providing a safe-haven for money, legal or otherwise. Effectively, money-laundering is alive and well in and through the City of London!

Secondly, although all Scandinavian countries are assessed in the top five least corrupted, allegations that TeliaSonera – a Swedish-Finnish firm 37 per cent owned by the Swedish state – has paid bribes in the millions of dollars to secure business in Uzbekistan, ranked 153rd on the index, has seen the company now withdraw from that Asian region.

Corruption is fuelled by lack of access to any number of resources, from land to food to education, so generally the rankings of the more corrupt countries will come as no surprise. TI produces a yearly Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures levels of public sector corruption worldwide, based on the opinion of independent experts. Virtually all the highest scoring corrupt countries are involved in armed conflicts – of the bottom 20 only 10 are assessed as notionally conflict-free, but many conflicts are deemed to arise from frustrations with ‘official corruption’ anyway.

Additionally, to demonstrate the relative lack of success in combatting corruption, the OECD Convention on Combating Foreign Bribery entered into force in 1990, but of the 41 signatory countries, half show little or no enforcement, 25% only limited enforcement, and 50% have prosecuted no foreign bribery cases at all in 25 years. Since virtually all of the signatory countries export to, and/or have direct business interests in many of the lower ranked countries, with apparently lax attitudes like these, corruption-free global trade is unlikely to be achieved any time soon, to the detriment of peoples the world over.

Somewhat alarmingly, of the 20 most corrupt countries listed, 13 have either gone backwards in combatting corruption, or are still at the same level they were three years previously. However, seven of the ‘least corrupt’ top 20 countries have also regressed somewhat or have just maintained the same level as three years previously, which does not send a very positive message to those further down the list.

Least corrupt countries (Base score 100: incorrupt):

Rank	Country	2015	2014	2013	2012
1	Denmark	91	92	91	90
2	Finland	90	89	89	90
3	Sweden	89	87	89	88
4	New Zealand	88	91	91	90
5	Netherlands	87	83	83	84
6	Norway	87	86	86	85
7	Switzerland	86	86	85	86
8	Singapore	85	84	86	87
9	Canada	83	81	81	84
10	Germany	81	79	78	79
11	Luxembourg	81	82	80	80
12	United Kingdom	81	78	76	74
13	Australia	79	80	81	85
14	Iceland	79	79	78	82
15	Belgium	77	76	75	75
16	Austria	76	72	69	69
17	United States	76	74	73	73
18	Hong Kong	75	74	75	77
19	Ireland	75	74	72	69
20	Japan	75	76	74	74

Most corrupt countries (excluding those in, or effected by conflict):

Rank	Country	2015	2014	2013	2012
123	Madagascar	28	28	28	32
123	Timor-Leste	28	28	30	33
130	Cameroon	27	27	25	26
130	Nepal	27	29	31	27
130	Nicaragua	27	28	28	29
130	Paraguay	27	24	24	25
136	Comoros	26	26	28	28
136	Tajikistan	26	23	22	22
139	Bangladesh	25	25	27	26
139	Guinea	25	25	24	24
139	Laos	25	25	26	21
139	Papua New Guinea	25	25	25	25
139	Uganda	25	26	26	29
150	Burundi	21	20	21	19
150	Cambodia	21	21	20	22
150	Zimbabwe	21	21	21	20
153	Uzbekistan	19	18	17	17
154	Turkmenistan	18	17	17	17
158	Haiti	17	19	19	19
158	Venezuela	17	19	20	19
163	Angola	15	19	23	22
167	Korea (North)	8	8	8	8

Enforcement Levels Combatting Foreign Bribery: overview
Active Enforcement (four countries with 23% of world exports): German, Switzerland, UK, USA
Moderate Enforcement (six countries with 9% of world exports): Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland, Italy, Norway
Limited Enforcement (nine countries with 12% of world exports): France, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal
Little or No Enforcement (20 countries with 20% of world exports): Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey.