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Give us our daily scandal

When Transparency International announces the results of the Corruption Perceptions Index in December and Italy performs badly again, there will always be at least one commentator who feigns surprise. How could it happen? Italy has the same score as Bulgaria and Senegal again? The index must be wrong.’ The writer unquestionably accepts the scores for […]

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‘It has become more difficult to be corrupt in China’

In a blog published by the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, China expert Christian Goebel speaks about Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and how it is helping transform China from collectivist one-party rule to a one-person authoritarian system. In Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), China is among the countries with the largest decline in points, despite a […]

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Supporting security and development in the Americas

Last week, US vice-president Joe Biden wrote an important article in the New York Times to explain his administration’s plans to channel resources to support security, governance and development in Central America. Biden wrote that in order to sustain economic growth and economic equality in a region plagued by violence, poverty and corruption, you need […]

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Youths from Asia Pacific unite in the fight against corruption

Young people constitute a sizeable portion of the Asian Pacific population and tend to be particularly exposed to bribery and corruption as students, pupils, workers, customers and citizens. But young people can play a pivotal role in the fight against corruption, in Asia Pacific and beyond. While people from the older generation tend to see […]

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Lives on the line as Serbia battles healthcare corruption

A number of doctors and a head nurse at a hospital in Nis, Serbia’s third largest city, were arrested last month for allegedly accepting bribes of up to €13,000 and using their networks to secure healthcare jobs for relatives. Such news echoes results from Transparency International’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, which revealed that 81 per […]

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OECD sheds light on transnational corruption

This week, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a ground-breaking report that dissects the massive and mostly hidden phenomenon of transnational corruption. Looking at more than 400 bribery cases across 41 countries that amounted to US$13.8 million per bribe, the report gives a glimpse inside the shadowy world of corrupt practices by […]

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Sub-Saharan Africa: corruption still hurts daily lives

Once again, the Corruption Perceptions Index results are not fundamentally different from previous years: the majority of African countries still have a score of less than 50 per cent, which in our view depicts a situation of endemic corruption. In a continent with high level of economic growth rates (compared to many parts of the […]

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Europe, Central Asia and the state of corruption in 2014: the gold standard?

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that out of 175 countries in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, the once great economic hope of many – Turkey – suffered one of the biggest drops in score (down five points to 45 out of 100 on a scale where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 very […]

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Middle East and North Africa: a region in turmoil

Three out of the bottom 10 countries on Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index are from the Middle East and North Africa. Two of these three are in the midst of gruesome civil wars where lives are being lost daily. Iraq and Libya tell a story of a region in turmoil plagued with geopolitical insecurity, […]

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Corruption in the Americas: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

The 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index does not show significant movement in the scores of the countries in the Americas. For the more cynical among us, this is a good sign as there is always the possibility of worsening. But the reality is that stagnation is not good news. Each year that passes without things improving, […]

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