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CORRUPTION: The 'Clean' Should Look Within Too
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 18 (IPS) - The Corruption Perceptions Index published by the group Transparency International Tuesday shows high degrees of corruption among developing nations. But banking systems in the West are helping make that possible.
''The total capital flight from the African continent a year is about 150 billion dollars, and the total aid flow to the African continent is 25 billion dollars,'' Chandrashekhar Krishnan, executive director for Transparency International (TI) UK told IPS.
''That flight capital basically represents the routing of state assets by corrupt politicians,'' he said. ''That money is being deposited in financial institutions in London, in Zurich, in New York. What I suggest is that Western governments should be doing much more to ensure that their financial systems are not used to launder dirty money.''
The receipt of money in banks in Britain, Switzerland and the United States does not show in the corruption perceptions index. Switzerland ranks a noble seventh in the index, after Iceland, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore and Sweden. Britain is 11th after Norway at number eight followed by Australia, Austria and the Netherlands.
The United States is number 17 after Britain and Luxembourg, Canada, Hong Kong and Germany. But no survey indicates the extent to which banks in these countries receive corrupt money.
This is in any case a corruption perceptions index; it does not purport to rank corruption itself. And in developing societies such as those in India, perceptions can often reflect a higher level of expectations.
''This is very possible,'' Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen told IPS. ''Perceptions are indeed an irrational element. But they are important because the people whose perceptions we are receiving through 16 surveys, these are tens of thousands of businessmen, journalists, academics, other political observers, and mere perception, even if it is wrong, is a fact.''
Eigen said that perceptions can sometimes also be unfair ''because they may even penalise in some cases a government which has introduced very rigorous anti-corruption strategy because suddenly people see a lot of cases in the newspapers which otherwise may have been shoved under the rug.''
People's expectations also colour perceptions, Eigen said.
''I'm sure expectations play a part of it, but that's not all,'' he said. ''Because there are some countries where people say that in this country you cannot expect to win an honest tender. You always expect that you have to make secret payments in order to get a contract.''
Expectations may go either way, he said. ''They may either be too high, as in India, which is the oldest democracy of the world, and which is a country that should be mature, and resistant to corruption. And therefore maybe expectations are very high and frustrations and disappointments are therefore reflected in a very negative perception.''
But it may equally be the other way round, he said. ''People have very negative perceptions and therefore they simply do what they consider to be normal in a country.''
The survey presents a largely dismal picture of what people perceive. More than two-thirds of the 159 nations surveyed scored less than five out of a clean score of 10, ''indicating serious levels of corruption in a majority of the countries surveyed,'' TI said in a statement.
Despite progress on many fronts, including the imminent entry into force of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, 70 countries - nearly half of those included in the Index - scored less than 3 on the index.
Among the countries included in the index, corruption is perceived as most rampant in Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Myanmar and Haiti, which are also among the poorest countries in the world.
''Extensive research shows that foreign investment is lower in countries perceived to be corrupt, which further thwarts their chance to prosper,'' the TI report says.
An increase in perceived corruption from 2004 to 2005 was seen in countries such as Costa Rica, Gabon, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Uruguay. Conversely, a number of countries and territories showed noteworthy improvements, including Estonia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Qatar, Taiwan and Turkey.
Wealth does not determine progress against corruption. Perception of corruption has decreased significantly in lower-income countries such as Estonia, Colombia and Bulgaria over the past decade, an analysis has shown.
''Similarly, the responsibility in the fight against corruption does not fall solely on lower-income countries,'' the TI report says. ''Wealthier countries, apart from facing numerous corruption cases within their own borders, must share the burden by ensuring that their companies are not involved in corrupt practices abroad.'' (END/2005)
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