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Naming names: The nonprofit tracking corruption around the world
What is the least corrupt country in the world? According to a Berlin-based nonprofit called Transparency International, that would be Denmark. Finland is close behind. At the very bottom of the list is Somalia, dead last out of 180 nations.
Founded in 1993 by a retired World Bank Official, Transparency International operates in more than 100 countries, promoting accountability and exposing public sector corruption.
The team, led by CEO Daniel Eriksson, attended the 2024 Munich Security Conference last week with a warning about the rise of “strategic corruption,” a geopolitical weapon involving bribes and disinformation to attain a political goal in another nation.
“Our definition of corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain,” Eriksson told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis.
This year is critical for democracy as dozens of countries head to the polls for elections that could determine policy and politics for the remainder of the decade. Among other projects aimed at rooting out political corruption, Eriksson’s team tracks foreign funding meant to influence the outcomes of campaigns or get certain candidates elected.
Check out the complete rankings list for 180 countries published yearly in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
See more coverage of the Munich Security Conference from Global Stage.
- The Graphic Truth: The World Cup of graft ›
- David Miliband and Ian Bremmer discuss the Atlas of Impunity ›
- Hard Numbers: Kenyans march against femicide, Corruption costs Ukrainian defense, Germans protest far right, Evergrande tries to avoid liquidation (again), Say more than ‘Oui’ to Paris! ›
- The Graphic Truth: Where corruption is rising, falling ›
Hard Numbers: US camps in Philippines, Malaysia may nix death penalty, Bulgaria’s close vote, Burkina Faso vs. journalists, hungry as a bear in Japan
4: On Monday, the Philippine government confirmed the location of four new military camps that will indefinitely host rotating US forces, despite China’s opposition. The new encampments, which were announced last February, place US forces closer to Taiwan and key trade routes in the South China Sea, where China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.
1,300: Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament approved a bill on Monday to abolish mandatory death sentences, possibly sparing over 1,300 death row inmates. If the bill passes the upper house as expected and gets the king’s signature, it will mean capital punishment is no longer obligatory for crimes like murder and drug trafficking.
5: So far, it’s a dead-heat in Bulgaria’s parliamentary election, the 5th in two years, between center-right PM Boyko Borisov and liberal ex-PM Kiril Petkov. Corruption and inflation were the top concerns for voters in the former Soviet ally, which has struggled to form a durable ruling coalition in recent years. Final results are expected later this week.
2: Burkina Faso’s military junta has expelled two French reporters in its crackdown on journalists. The junta, which seized power in a coup last September (the country’s second in 2022), has not offered an official reason for the move, but it comes after one of the journalist’s publications investigated the execution of children inside military barracks in the northern part of the conflict-plagued West African country.
17: Japanese bear encounters have been on the rise in the wild … and at dinner. A new vending machine in Semboku, northern Japan, is clawing a profit by selling wild bear meat for $17 (2,200 yen) per 250 g. It’s proving so popular that the operator is getting mail-order requests from as far away as Tokyo.Hard Numbers: Russia to helm Security Council, Sonko seized, Stubborn EU inflation, Australia vs. climate change
30: Russia is set to helm the UN Security Council as of April 1, a transition of power that Ukraine has dubbed "an April Fool's joke." The council's presidency rotates every 30 days. As president, Russia – and Putin, by extension – will have the ability to set the security council’s agenda. While there have been calls to boycott, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to chair the meeting in New York in April.
2: Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko received a 2-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday. He was found guilty of defaming Senegal's minister of tourism by accusing him of embezzlement. Sonko came in third in the last presidential election and is looking like a frontrunner ahead of the 2024 race. In an attempt to placate supporters who saw his arrest as politically motivated, authorities decided the sentence will not prevent Sonko from running for office.
7.8: Inflation in Germany remains stubbornly high, hitting 7.8% this month, despite drops in energy costs and easing economic pressures in the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Spain's annual inflation dropped by half, which sounds promising … but core consumer inflation (which excludes energy and food) remains just as high there as in Deutschland. The report comes on the heels of the European Central Bank raising interest rates by half a percentage point earlier this month.
30: Australia passed an emissions reduction bill on Thursday aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030. The bill, which uses a "safeguard mechanism" to target the most significant industrial polluters, represents some cooperation on environmental matters in a country where climate change has been a divisive political issue.
The Graphic Truth: Economic turmoil in Venezuela
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and tough US sanctions since the Maduro regime came to power in 2013 has meant that the petrostate has failed to benefit from its vast reserves of liquid gold.
While high oil prices under the Chavez regime in the early 2000s gave a boost to Venezuela’s middle class, US sanctions first imposed in 2006 – and significantly ramped up under the Obama and Trump administrations – have cut Caracas off from US financial systems.
Economic hardship is rife, with a staggering 50% of people living in extreme poverty. Pervasive hopelessness has also led to one of the worst migrant crises in the world.
In a bid to offset a global energy crisis in 2022 as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration began lifting some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector. So how are things faring? We look at GDP per capita and corresponding oil prices since 1999.What We’re Watching: An encore for French protesters, Zelensky’s growing wish list, Weah’s reelection bid
Round Two: French pension reform strikes
For the second time in a month, French workers held mass protests on Tuesday against the government’s proposed pension reform, which would raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. Organized by the country’s eight big trade unions, authorities say as many as 1.27 million protesters hit the streets nationwide, bringing Paris to a standstill and closing schools throughout France. (Unions say the number was higher.) Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron is sticking to his guns, saying that incrementally raising the national retirement age by 2030 is crucial to reducing France’s ballooning deficit. (Currently, 14% of France’s public spending goes toward its pension program – the third-highest of any OECD country.) But for Macron, this is about more than just economics; his political legacy is on the line. Indeed, the ideological chameleon came to power in 2017 as a transformer and tried to get these pension reforms done in 2019, though he was ultimately forced to backtrack. But as Eurasia Group Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman points out, protesters’ “momentum is the key” and could determine whether legislators from the center-right back Macron or get swayed by the vibe on the street. This would force him to go at it alone using a constitutional loophole, which never makes for good politics. More demonstrations are planned for Feb.7 and Feb. 11.“To give me liberty, give me jets”
“Thanks for the tanks. Now we need jets.” That’s the message Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has for his country’s Western allies. Poland and the Baltics have been predictably supportive. The French, British, and Dutch have said “let’s discuss it.” Early indications from Washington and Berlin are less positive. Zelensky’s latest set of maximalist requests set off a lively debate within your GZERO team meeting, with compelling arguments on both sides. Argument 1: The guy is president of a country fighting a war for survival. It’s not his job to make life easy for American and European decision-makers; it’s to eject Russia from Ukraine, and he needs the best Western weapons to do that. Every day, innocent people in his country die. He should ask for more than everything he needs to make it stop. Argument 2: That’s all true, but there are already voters in the US and Europe who wonder how expensive (and dangerous) escalating support for Ukraine might become with a nuclear-armed power on the other side. Zelensky must understand that the elected leaders in these countries have to listen to these voters. If his demands seem exorbitant and unending, Zelensky might be doing more harm than good. We’ll be watching to see how the West responds to his latest ask.
Weah running for Liberian re-election
Former soccer star George Weah confirmed this week that he'll seek a second — and final — term as Liberia's president in the October election. Weah swept to power in 2018 after beating VP Joseph Boakai in a landslide, promising to rid the country of corruption. Almost five years later, though, graft remains widespread, with Liberia ranking 142nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2022 corruption perceptions index, and last year the US slapped sanctions on Weah's own chief of staff over multiple graft scandals. The president has also come under fire for doing little to address high inflation and food shortages related to Russia's war in Ukraine. More recently, Weah got flak for going on a two-month foreign trip — including a stop in Qatar to watch his son, Timothy, play for the US at the soccer World Cup — while most Liberians live in poverty. Still, Weah, the only African to win the coveted Ballon d'Or award for world's best player, has the one thing that all the opposition candidates lack: name recognition.
If you're a soccer fan and his name doesn't ring a bell, check out this FIFA video to discover how damn good Weah was in his prime.
The Graphic Truth: Where corruption is rising, falling
We didn't make much progress on ending global corruption in 2022 — thanks to political instability and armed conflicts, major contributors to graft worldwide. For instance, kleptocrats in Russia have long been cozy with Vladimir Putin and unsurprisingly did nothing to stop him from invading Ukraine. The war also hampered anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, where President Volodymyr Zelensky recently fired multiple senior officials suspected of pocketing military procurement funds. So, which nations were the most and least corrupt last year? We take a look at Transparency International's ranking of perceived graft.
Ukraine anti-corruption moves won't hurt war effort
Will resignations and a political shake-up in Ukraine negatively affect its war efforts?
No, not at all. This is anti-corruption efforts, getting rid of a bunch of people that are seen as problematic in terms of skimming money within the government. Russia's been more corrupt than Ukraine historically, but actually, it's quite close. There's a lot of work to be done, and as people start thinking about Ukraine attracting major funds from the Europeans, the Americans, others, multilaterals to rebuild the country, they really need to make sure that the money is going where it needs to, and that means running the economy well. So this is the effort that's being tried here, but it doesn't really matter with the war effort at all.
How will Kevin McCarthy's planned visit to Taiwan further escalate tensions with China?
Well, the Chinese won't be happy about it, of course. I think that the level of Chinese retaliation will be lower than what we've seen with Pelosi, in part because Pelosi is seen as close to Biden and aligned with Biden policy. Even if Biden didn't want her to go with McCarthy, I think the Chinese understand that's not what we're talking about here, and also the Chinese are trying not to have escalation and creation of crises with the Americans. So specifically, I'm sure you'll see a bunch of military activities that'll occur, training exercises, missiles and the like in response to a McCarthy trip, but I don't think you would see the economic retaliation against Taiwanese entities on the ground. In fact, quietly, the Taiwanese are saying that they really don't need this McCarthy trip, and I also don't think you'll see a break in negotiations in diplomacy between the United States and China, as you saw after the Pelosi trip.
Pipe dream or real possibility: a common South American currency?
Pipe dream. This was the Argentine and Brazilian presidents getting together and saying that they're working on a currency, a common currency. They actually aren't, especially because the Argentine president is almost certain to lose upcoming elections and the opposition is going to come in, and the opposition opposes this. That makes it a dead letter, but there's so many other reasons why it's not plausible that you're going to get a common currency anytime soon. The chances of real movement in that direction in the foreseeable future are functionally zero.
- What We’re Watching: Armored combat vehicles for Ukraine, Biden’s border move, Bibi’s team vs. High Court, Assad’s new friends ›
- As inflation nears 100% in Argentina, the political class struggles to respond ›
- Hard Numbers: RIP wages in Argentina, Japan's missile arsenal, Mogadishu attack, Singapore’s big LGBT move ›
- What We're Watching: Sri Lanka's shrinking military, McCarthy's ... ›
- What We’re Watching: Israel’s mass anti-corruption protests, Sweden’s NATO own goal, Germany's mixed signals ›
- The Graphic Truth: Where corruption is rising, falling ›
What We're Watching: EU-Qatar bribery probe, US-Africa talk shop
Did Qatar bribe MEPs?
On Sunday, a Belgian judge charged four people with multiple crimes related to suspected bribery at the EU's legislature by a suspected Gulf nation. (It's Qatar, although, of course, the Qataris deny it.) Among the accused is Greek MEP and European Parliament VP Eva Kaili, who's been arrested and kicked out of the center-left parliamentary group as well as her own Pasok party in Greece. In what is being buzzed about as one of the chamber's biggest-ever corruption scandals, prosecutors suspect that the Gulf state tried to influence European Parliament decisions by giving money and gifts to MEPs. The bombshell probe comes just as Qatar is in the global spotlight over the FIFA World Cup, which many suspect the emirate paid bribes to host. Notably, just last month Kaili defended Qatar's human rights record, giving it credit for abolishing the kafala system that treats migrant workers as modern-day slaves. While the investigation is ongoing, the legislature has already suspended an upcoming vote on visa-free travel to the EU by Qatari nationals, and Greece announced Monday that it's freezing Kaili's assets.