LONDON, 21 October 2004 — Corruption is crippling the battle against poverty and robbing oil-rich countries such as Iraq of their development potential, a respected global graft watchdog said yesterday in an annual report on sleaze.
Haiti and Bangladesh were perceived as the world’s most corrupt nations in the survey of 146 countries by Transparency International, closely followed by Nigeria, Myanmar and Chad.
“This is an amazing evidence again that corruption is still rampant all over the world,” the organization’s chairman Peter Eigen told a press conference in London.
“In most countries economic policy is still perverted by corruption... and therefore poverty cannot be effectively addressed.”
The index by the Berlin-based watchdog looks at perceived corruption among public officials and politicians.
Just below the worst five countries were Paraguay and Azerbaijan, all seven of which scored less than two out of a best possible score of 10.
Sixty countries failed to score three out of 10, the mark corresponding to Transparency’s benchmark for “rampant corruption,” while 106, fully two thirds of those surveyed, scored less than five.
The countries with the cleanest slate were Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland and Singapore.
Eigen said developing countries in particular must root out sleaze in public works if they hoped to improve the quality of life of their citizens.
“Corruption in large-scale public projects is a daunting obstacle to sustainable development, and results in a major loss of public funds needed for education, health care and poverty alleviation, both in developed and developing countries,” he said in a statement.
He added that nations rich in natural resources too often undermined their own prospects with widespread graft and kickbacks among local leaders and foreign investors. “Oil-rich Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen all have extremely low scores,” he said, indicating high corruption.
“In these countries, public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials.”
