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."