ECONOMY

Documents & Texts from America.gov

30 September 2008
Corruption Worldwide Remains High Despite Reforms

By Leah Dow
Staff Writer

Washington — Despite increasing government oversight, corruption continues to be widespread throughout Southeastern Europe and Central Asia, according to a new report released by Transparency International, a nongovernmental anti-corruption group with offices worldwide.

Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), issued September 23, measures the perceived levels of corruption that exist among public officials and politicians. It is a composite index that draws on different expert and business surveys conducted within each country. The 2008 CPI ranks 180 countries and grades them based on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean).

Rankings of 19 countries, including Albania, Cyprus, Turkey and South Korea, improved significantly from 2007 levels. The countries perceived least corrupt in 2008 were Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden, all scoring a 9.3. Somalia, with a score of 1.0, is perceived as most corrupt, followed by Iraq and Burma, which the report calls Myanmar, at 1.3.

“In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play,” Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency International, said in releasing the report. “The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty plaguing many of the world’s societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian disaster and cannot be tolerated.”

The study shows that corruption plagues not just low-income countries; wealthy countries also are having trouble maintaining high levels of transparency.

In 2008, both the United Kingdom and the United States received lower scores than they did in 2007. Transparency International reported that the perception of the United States, ranked 18th, is one of a country in which lobbyists and special interest groups have an unfair hold on political decisionmaking. The United Kingdom’s score, ranked 17th, reflected the public’s lack of confidence in government after a criminal investigation of a business deal was discontinued.

All 20 countries surveyed in Southeastern Europe and the post-Soviet states registered scores below 5.0, which indicates that most face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption, the report said. Little progress has been made in these countries’ fights against corruption despite heads of state promising to make anti-corruption campaigns a central element of governmental reforms.

Bulgaria, for example, was cited as having one of the more dramatic declines in its score due to the prominence of organized crime.

However, Albania was hailed for its anti-corruption efforts, driven by governmental reforms that resulted in arrests and prosecution of several public officials. These efforts have led to a growing confidence among the public that corruption is a serious punishable offense in Albania.

The CPI scores of Russia and Ukraine continued to slide, even though the consensus among officials is that “petty corruption has fallen post-revolution.” Grand corruption – activities that involve high-level leaders – remained a grave concern because many feel that too much emphasis was placed on prosecuting corruption instead of making concerted efforts to prevent it.

“The report calls for stronger oversight by parliaments, law enforcement agencies, independent news media and civil society.

“When these institutions are weak, corruption spirals out of control with horrendous consequences for ordinary people, and for justice and equality in societies more broadly,” it said.

Additional information about the CPI is available on the Transparency International Web site.

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