Armenia ranked 113th in Transparency International Corruption Index

Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO, assigned Thailand a lower score than past year in their Corruption Perception Index, which was released today.

The annual survey, published on Wednesday, ranks 176 countries on a scale of 100 (very clean) to 0 (highly corrupt). The third most corrupt country is North Korea, followed by Syria, a war-torn country which is presently seeing a massive outflow of refugees.

The majority of Asia Pacific countries sit in the bottom half of the Corruption Perceptions Index 2016. Malaysia was ranked in 55th place, alongside Croatia.

“The track record of populist leaders in tackling this problem is dismal; they use the corruption-inequality message to drum up support but have no intention of tackling the problem seriously”, said Transparency International.

The report ranks nations according to their perceived level of public sector corruption.

“Corruption needs to be fought with urgency, so that the lives of people across the world improve”, added Ugaz.

“There are only few such anti- corruption agencies in the region and beyond”, she said.

Even though more countries declined than improved in the 2016 results, Estonia has steadily improved its score across the years leading up to 2015 – 64 in 2012, 68 in 2013, 69 in 2014 and 70 in 2015.

The chair of TI’s Finnish chapter, Tommi Niinimäki, says that the drop in Finland’s position is down to several corruption cases and scandals that have come to light in recent months.

“The Government takes corruption seriously and we’ll continue to work to protect New Zealand’s reputation as a fair and transparent nation to live in and do business with”, the Minister said.

The CPI is the most widely used gauge of corruption by governments, police, court systems, political parties and bureaucracies, measuring the perception of corruption in 176 countries. This centre serves as a more convenient avenue for the public to lodge complaints.

It aggregates 13 sources of data from institutions such as the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The research body also warned United Kingdom could fall out of the top 10 if the country fails in delivering a promised national Anti-Corruption Strategy.

Ghani since taking charge as the president has been fighting against corruption; however, the Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) in a report claimed that Afghan people annually paid $3 billion in bribes.