UK Suffers In Transparency International Corruption Index

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

29 June 2001

According to the anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, global efforts to combat corruption and money laundering practices are not yet working. The organisation released its annual index of perceived corruption levels earlier this week. The index, although it only measures perception (as the name suggests), is based on polls of business people, academics, and analysts, and lists results for 91 countries, based on surveys from seven independent institutions.

Finland, Denmark and New Zealand were ranked as the cleanest countries, and it was bad news for Europe, as the UK ranked 13th, Germany 20th, and France 23rd. The British ranking represented a drop from last year's position as the ninth least corrupt country in the world, and experts are worried about both the causes and implications of this.

Laurence Cockcroft, Chairman of the UK branch of Transparency International blamed the drop on concerns over money laundering in UK banks, and failure to introduce legislation to tackle the bribery of foreign officials. Mr Cockcroft observed that the results: '...could suggest that the UK's reputation for integrity may have been challenged in the last year.' 'In fact there are a number of areas such as money laundering, export credits and the defense industry where the UK has a key interface with the forces of global corruption and where we could do much more to counteract it,' he continued.

It was also revealed that Greece came in joint lowest-ranked of the industrialised countries. This will come as no surprise to the good people at the Foundation of Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), who recently published a report entitled 'The Black Economy and Tax Evasion in Greece', underlining the direct link between the Greek people's distrust of corrupt tax officials, and the widespread tax evasion which takes place in Greece.

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