Haiti, Burma and Iraq are perceived as the most corrupt countries in the world, while Finland is seen as the cleanest, a global graft watchdog reported this week. Transparency International (TI) said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index covering 163 countries that some of the world’s poorest states were also the most corrupt, thus undermining international development efforts. “Corruption is still a hard fact of life in the 21st century,” said Huguette Labelle, chairwoman of the Berlin-based organization. “Corruption compromises the lives of millions of people and, according to the World Bank, about USD 1-trillion is lost every year to bribes around the world.” The index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts. It ranges between zero, which is highly corrupt, and 10, which is very clean. On the 2005 list, the worst levels of perceived corruption were in Chad, Bangladesh and Turkmenistan. TI said corruption was shockingly rampant worldwide, with almost three-quarters of the countries in the report scoring below five, including all low-income countries and all but two African states.
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