Ïîïóëÿðíûå ñîîáùåíèÿ

вторник

Each year Transparency International releases its Corruption Perception Index, and this year, like most, the Scandinavian countries and New Zealand were at one end of the spectrum as the least-corrupt nations in the world.

In the category of most-corrupt, there was a three-way tie: Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia.

The index by the watchdog group measures the perception of corruption in a country's public sector. It ranks nations on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (squeaky clean). Two-thirds of the 177 countries on the list scored below 50.

The U.S. was among the least corrupt at No. 19 on the list, with a score of 73.

Other takeaways:

— Corruption in Spain, reeling from the effects of the economic crisis, worsened. It dropped six points to 59, and was 40th on the list. Greece, by contrast, was 80th, with a score of 40 — an improvement over its score last year. Reuters reports:

"Spain's five-year economic slump, which has forced it to adopt tight austerity laws, exposed how cozy relations between politicians and construction magnates fed a disastrous housing bubble. The former treasurer of the governing People's Party (PP) told a judge that he had channeled cash donations from construction magnates into leaders' pockets, and he was found to have 48 million euros in Swiss bank accounts. The king's son-in-law, Inaki Urdangarin, was also charged this year with embezzling six million euros in public funds."

Blog Archive