TR EMERITUS

Agence France-Presse, 17 November 2009

Graft watchdog Transparency International hit out at rich countries over shady banking practices on Tuesday as it published its annual rankings naming and shaming the world’s most corrupt nations.

The group slammed developed countries that are otherwise relatively free from corruption for allowing dirty money to be parked in their banking systems and said that no region in the world could claim to be corruption-free.

“Corrupt money must not find safe haven. It is time to put an end to excuses,” said the Berlin-based group’s head Huguette Labelle.

“Even industrialised countries cannot be complacent: the supply of bribery and the facilitation of corruption often involve businesses based in their countries,” the report said.

In the wake of the financial crisis, the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised countries turned up the heat on tax havens, targeting rich countries with long-held banking secrecy laws like Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

But Labelle said extra efforts were imperative, calling for more bilateral treaties on information exchange in order to “to fully end the secrecy regime.”

Stepping up efforts against corrupt money is all the more important given the billions being injected into economies around the world to bolster the global financial system, Transparency International added.

“At a time when massive stimulus packages, fast-track disbursements of public funds and attempts to secure peace are being implemented around the world, it is essential to identify where corruption blocks good governance,” added Labelle.

Banking secrecy rules that exist even in some countries close to the top of the list “severely undermine efforts to tackle corruption and recover stolen assets,” the report said.

Switzerland, the Alpine country seen as a bastion of bank secrecy, appeared to be a case in point, ranked as the fifth least corrupt country with a score of 9.0 points.

The score is based on perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts.

New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore and Sweden were the top four countries, while the most corrupt nations were Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq.

“These results demonstrate that countries which are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by long-standing conflicts, which have torn apart their governance infrastructure,” the group said.

“With the vast majority of countries in the 2009 index scoring below five, the corruption challenge is undeniable,” concluded the report.

Republished from AFP

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