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CORRUP$ION: Perception vs. Reality---TI's
2012 Index
Corruption Remains Widespread Global Problem
Anger over corruption has sparked mass
demonstrations and even toppled governments in the past few years. But a global study published Wednesday byTransparency Internationalfinds
the problem remains widespread. The
group's Huguette Labelle says a majority of countries havea serious corruption problem. “This
translates into human suffering, with poor families being extorted to pay bribes to see doctors or get access to clean drinking
water,"
MANILA, Philippines
- Malacaņang has welcomed the latest results of the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which showed
an improvement in the country's anti-corruption drive, although the country's ranking still remains low.
A list of the
world's most corrupt countries released by Transparency International on Dec. 5 includes some of the past decade's fastest
growing markets. Corruption may not be enough to derail growth or scare away investors, but that doesn't mean it won't...
. Gov't to
push reforms vs. corruption. THE GOVERNMENT will continue to push good governance reforms in its fight against corruption
to make the country a viable investment destination, a Cabinet official said on...
Economic growth
and development need social stability and the rule of law, so that people and entrepreneurs feel that it is safe to invest
and seize opportunities to improve their living standards and that of their families. Corruption — in any form —
takes away...
The recently
launched Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index has indicated that corruption is on the rise in Zimbabwe,
a revelation that flies in the face of the Anti-Corruption Commission. 07.12.1202:56pm Tweet Share. by Staff Reporter...
India
was ranked 94th out of 176 countries in Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released on 5
December2012. In 2011, India was ranked 95 out of 183 countries. Denmark, Switzerland
and Finland topped the index with a...
A growing
outcry over corrupt governments forced several leaders from office last year, but as the dust has cleared it has become apparent
that the levels of bribery, abuse of power and secret dealings are still very high in many countries. Transparency...
It is again time
to announce year end results. There are two good news for Malaysians. One of the good news is, the country has jumped seven
places to the 71st spot out of 144 countries in the Economic Freedom for the World: 2012 Annual Report and...
KUALA LUMPUR
(Dec 7, 2012): The improvement achieved by Malaysia in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) this year will further boost
investor confidence in Malaysia, among foreign and domestic investors, International Trade and Industry Minister...
ON top of the
litany of woes that have befallen Greece, comes the news that the eurozone's weakest link is also its most corrupt. From holding
80th place in the 176 countries on Transparency International's corruption perceptions index in 2011, Greece's...
KUALA LUMPUR,
Dec 6 (Bernama) -- Malaysia will continue to fight corruption and improve its standing in the Corruption Perception Index
(CPI), said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. The Prime Minister in his latest tweet tonight said: "Malaysia moved up another...
Corruption is
universal, and there is no country that is free of it. However, there are wide variations across the world and the release
of the Global Report, 2012, by Transparency International (TI) confirms that in one thing at least Pakistan remains consistent...
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 7 (Bernama) -- Transparency
International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) results released yesterday ranked Malaysia at
the 54th place out of 176 nations surveyed. Malaysia's global ranking has improved compared to last year,...
Transparency
Interna-tional, the leading international watchdog fighting corruption worldwide, has released its 18th annual Corruption
Perceptions Index for 2012, ranking Pakistan on the 139th position amongst 176 countries. The CPI, which is a combination...
In public
perception, Pakistan today is more corrupt than it was last year and perhaps ever before, and in that it has come to reside
in the company of most corrupt of the international community. Not that we are unaware of the 'regress' in that direction;
we...
Citizens rank
public sector as slightly less corrupt than in 2011, but Israel continues to fall behind relative to other countries. chart
Photo: Screenshot. Israelis increasingly perceive their public sector as corrupt relative to other countries, according to
a global...
A day after Russia
once again ranked within the bottom third of Transparency International's corruption index, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika
said the battle against corruption remained a top priority. "Fighting corruption is one of the main priorities of state...
A jump of
24 percent is a notable improvement. For the administration of daang matuwid or straight path, however, ranking 105th among
176 countries – up from 129th place – in the latest Corruption Perception Index is still not much to crow about.
The CPI...
The 2012 Transparency
International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published yesterday, finds Afghanistan at absolute rock bottom, sharing
this dismal place with North Korea and Somalia. Despite the flow to Afghanistan over the last decade of...
The
countries worst hit by the European financial crisis are also perceived as being among the most corrupt in Western Europe,
and those perceptions appear to be getting increasingly negative, an international watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.
Analysts
say that corruption continues to go unbridled and unchecked in Pakistan as Transparency International has ranked Pakistan
the 33rd most corrupt country in the world. Pakistan has gone from being the 42nd most corrupt country in the world in 2011...
International
Anti-Corruption Day is marked on 9 December, yet Egypt does not have much to show for itself this year. Soon after the 25
January Revolution, everybody thought things would change: no more bribes to facilitate one's business or get oneself off...
Home
· News · National. Israel ranks 39 on world corruption index. Transparency International's corruption perception index shows
corruption isn't improving around the world, it's getting worse. By DPA | Dec.05, 2012 | 9:57 AM | 10. Tweet. Garbage piling
up...
Transparency
International, a global anti-corruption watchdog, has listed Nepal among the most corrupt countries in the world. Nepal ranked
139th out of 174 countries with a score of 27 on its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). A country with a score of zero...
PETALING
JAYA (Dec 6, 2012): The government will continue to push for reforms and fight corruption even as the nation's ranking in
the global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has improved, albeit slightly. The initiatives that will be implemented to tackle...
LONDON (Reuters)
- Frank Vogl, who co-founded the anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) in 1993, believes campaigners have
reached base camp in their fight to end the abuse of public office for private gain. TI has offices in more than 100...
KUALA LUMPUR,
Dec 6 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's improved ranking on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) to 54th spot this year from 60th last
year indicates all efforts and reforms by the government were effective. Association of Certified Fraud Examiners,...
Israel Travel · Shop. Bare Pass. Israel
receives score of 60 in perceived level of public sector corruption Photo: Avigail Uzi. Israel ranks 39th in corruption index.
Jewish state down three places from 2011, nine places from 2010 in Corruption Perceptions Index.
Transparency
International has reportedly listed Botswana as the least corrupt country in Africa with improved international ranking and
score. According to Gabzfm news, the annual Corruption Perception Index that was released by Transparency...
The WJP Rule of Law IndexŪ is an innovative quantitative assessment tool
designed by the World Justice Project offering a detailed and comprehensive picture of the extent to which countries adhere
to the rule of law in practice. It provides original data regarding a variety of dimensions of the rule of law, enabling the
assessment of a nation’s adherence to the rule of law in practice, identify a nation’s strengths and weaknesses
in comparison to similarly situated countries, and track changes over time. (The following video of the launch of the Index
is 1 hour and 44 minutes)
Reports of fraud by corporate employees have continued
their ceaseless rise so far this year, according to the Quarterly Corporate Fraud Index. The current drivers are increasing
awareness of fraud, mandated whistle-blower protections, and changing company cultures. The index measures reported frauds
as a percentage of all compliance-related reports. Most recently, for the second quarter of 2012, that ratio climbed to 22.9%,
up from 21.7% for the same quarter in 2011. “This index essentially has been going up since the day we started tracking
it [in 2005]”...
Ramped up enforcement of laws like the U.S. Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act have caught the attention of boards of directors. According to a new survey, one third of board members at public companies
cite corruption and bribery as the greatest fraud risk facing their company. The survey also found that directors are acutely aware of that risk when it comes to their
dealings with officials of foreign governments. More than two thirds of the directors surveyed said their companies do business
abroad, of those 57% said they interact with foreign officials and 32% believe risks related to bribery of those officials
have increased over the past two years.
With less than two months to go before the U.S. presidential
election, a new survey found 61 percent of Americans say a candidate's commitment to rooting out corporate wrongdoing will
be key in deciding who gets their vote...
"Americans are mad as hell about corporate wrongdoing and are
going to do something about it in the November elections and beyond," said Jordan Thomas, a partner at law firm Labaton Sucharow,
which commissioned the survey...
61 percent report that a candidate's commitment to rooting out corporate wrongdoing
will be a significant factor in their voting decision in November. Particularly telling, 77 percent of Americans believe
politicians generally favor corporate interests over their constituents' interests and 81 percent do not believe the government
has done enough to stop corporate wrongdoing. The data also revealed 54 percent of Americans have personally observed
or have first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace and 64 percent believe that corporate misconduct was a significant
factor in bringing about the current economic crisis...
18 percent of Americans polled felt that their employers' ethical values took a back seat to
bottom line profits. With respect to acting on reports of misconduct, 24 percent of Americans would fear retaliation if they
reported wrongdoing in the workplace and 20 percent believe that a report of wrongdoing would not be appropriately handled
by their employer.
Enforcement of laws prohibiting bribes to foreign officials is
almost exclusively isolated to the U.S. and Western Europe, a new report found. Of the top seven countries that actively enforce
foreign bribery laws, all are located in the West...The U.S. was by far the most active enforcer with 275 cases completed
as of 2011, and 113 investigations underway. The rest of the top seven was rounded out (not in order) by: Germany, U.K., Italy,
Switzerland, Norway and Denmark... the total number of cases that have been prosecuted since the convention was passed
jumped from 564 in 2010 to 707 in 2011...more than 250 individuals and almost 100 companies were sanctioned as a result of
foreign bribery-related cases by the end of 2011. So far, 66 people have gone to jail in those countries for bribing overseas
officials in business deals.
Creating good jobs, reducing corruption in the federal government, and reducing
the federal budget deficit score highest when Americans rate 12 issues as priorities for the next president to address.
A new survey of corporations throughout the region reports an increase in
the adoption of compliance measures and greater awareness of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—while also illustrating
the persistent sentiment that effective laws and enforcement are wanting...
The survey respondents clearly identified how corruption impacts their companies: 44 percent
agreed that corruption presents a “significant obstacle to doing business”—down from 48 percent who thought
that way in 2008, the last time the survey was administered.Overall, 51 percent of respondents believe “they have lost
business to competitors that have made illicit payments,” while 72 percent say the anticorruption laws in their country
are not effective...85percent
of respondents said their company’s management “has taken steps to protect the organization from corruption risk”—up
from 77 percent of respondents in 2008.
The top measures that are being implemented by management, according to respondents, are: anticorruption
policy (81 percent); procedures for gifts, travel, and entertainment for officials (nearly 70 percent); procedures for charitable
and community donations (62.6 percent); and anticorruption training (61 percent).
105
BIGGEST PUBLIC COMPANIES REPORT MOST ON CODES OF CONDUCT, LEAST ON PAYMENTS TO GOVERNMENTS
The world’s
largest publicly-traded companies are reporting more than in the past about their anti-corruption programmes but still need
to do a lot more to increase transparency in reporting on their operations, according to a new study by anti-corruption group
Transparency International.
“Multinational
corporations can and must play a significant role in the global fight against corruption. As the world continues to recover
from the deep economic pain of 2008, the leadership at more companies must commit to stopping corruption,” said Transparency
International’s Chair, Huguette Labelle.
Company scores
ranged from 0 to 10, where 0 is the least transparent and 10 is the most transparent, and were based on public availability
of information about anti-corruption systems, transparency in reporting on how they structure themselves and the amount of
financial information they provide for each country they operate in.
Overall, companies
showed improvement in their reporting on their commitments to anti-corruption programmes, as compared to a Transparency International
study of the same companies from 2008.
Norway’s
Statoil, the highest scoring company, scored 8.3. Statoil discloses significant information about its anti-corruption programmes,
subsidiaries, taxes and profits across its 37 countries of operations.
Still, the study
found that reporting by banks and insurers on transparency measures underperformed across the board even though opaque company
structures played a contributing role in the recent financial crises and in spite of a significant focus on fixing the lack
of transparency in this sector. The 24 financial companies included in the report scored an average of 4.2.
“If country-level
financial information is not adequately disclosed, it is difficult to know how operations in many developing countries contribute
to local governments. Experience has shown that the requirement to report encourages companies to build strong management
systems supporting disclosures, and in the process improving their anti-corruption systems,” said Jermyn Brooks, Chair
of Transparency International’s Business Advisory Board.
A lack of transparency
makes it harder to identify where companies earn profits, pay taxes, or contribute to political campaigns. The study shows,
for example, that about half of the companies evaluated do not disclose information about political contributions.
“The multinational
companies remain an important part of the problem of corruption around the world. The time has come for them to be co-leading
the solutions. For this they need to dramatically improve,” said Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency
International.
Transparency International
calls on companies to fight corruption by disclosing more information about how they mitigate corruption and by making public
how they are organised and how monies flow in the countries in which they operate. Only with this level of information can
citizens the world over know how much money flows into public budgets, a key issue of accountability for governments everywhere.
Governments and
regulators should make transparency obligatory for all companies seeking export subsidies or competing for public contracts.
Investors should demand greater transparency in corporate reporting to ensure both ethical, sustainable business growth as
well as sound risk management. (From TI Press Release)
15 LOWEST RANKED COMPANIES: Bank of China 1.1 Bank of Communications (China) 1.7 Honda Motor 1.9 China Construction
Bank 1.9 Berkshire
Hathaway 2.4 Nippon Telegraph
& Telephone 2.6 Amazon.com 2.8 Gazprom, OAO 2.8 Toyota Motor
2.8 Anheuser-Busch
InBev 2.9 Google 2.9 Canon 3.0 Commonwealth Bank
(Australia) 3.1 Bank of America
3.2 Apple 3.2
According to the survey, 24 percent of respondents
reported a belief that financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct in order to be
successful, while 26 percent of respondents indicated that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the
workplace. Particularly troubling, 16 percent of respondents reported that they would commit a crime—insider trading—if
they could get away with it...
The survey also revealed the following:
39 percent of respondents reported that their competitors
are likely to have engaged in illegal or unethical activity in order to be successful;
30 percent of respondents reported their compensation
or bonus plan created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law, while 23 percent of respondents reported
other pressures that may lead to unethical or illegal conduct; and
30 percent of respondents feel that the SEC/SFO
effectively deters, investigates and prosecutes misconduct—despite the new leadership, record enforcement actions and
new reforms; 29 percent of respondents feel the same way about FINRA/FSA.
One in five of the professionals surveyed weren't
sure of, or had serious doubts about, how their employers would handle a report of wrongdoing.
Fifteen percent of chief financial officers around
the world are willing to make cash payments to win or retain business, according to a survey of executives interviewed by
the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP.
The firm’s annual “global fraud survey”
of 400 finance chiefs, interviewed from November to February, found a greater tolerance of bribery compared with the previous
year, when 9 percent said they would make cash payments. Five percent of CFOs said they would misstate financial performance,
while 3 percent said that the year before, according to the survey.
Bribery and corruption are widespread
Q: For each of the following, can you tell me whether you think it
applies, or does not apply, to your country/industry, or whether you don’t know?
Base: All respondents (1,758)
The “Don’t know” and “Refused” percentages have
been omitted to allow better comparison between the responses given. China results include Hong Kong.
Selected country results are contrasted with global results to the
left for illustrative purposes.
Deloite's inaugural Bribery and Corruption Australia and New Zealand survey highlighted that exposure
to bribery and corruption was on the rise and that several organisations either did not recognise the risks, or were not addressing
them.
Read especially: If You Think You’re
Done Looking…Keep Looking Investigating financial statement fraud
Every fraud has to be hidden somewhere on a
company’s books. Most financial statement frauds start small but eventually grow in size, scope and duration.
According to confessed fraudsters, committing
the initial fraud is easy; the hard part is concealing and ending it.
When performing a fraud investigation or a post-mortem
on a financial statement fraud in a litigation context, it is important to focus on the area where the fraud was
directed but also on seemingly unrelated areas
This website is dedicated to providing a reference
source on the scourge that is whirling across planet Earth destroying governments, businesses, cities, families and imperiling civilized
culture by agregating and making available on one site sources of news, analysis and opinion about corruption.
Criteria for inclusion on this site of "BIG
Corruption" cases:
Very High level corporate and/or government official(s) involved;
Very Large amount of money lost;
International financing/aid agency program;
Global impact on numerous countries/businesses/investors; and/or
Classic example that can be used in training/seminarsmajor cases of global fraud and corruption.
As a news agregator website this site primarily serves to gather for research and educational
purposes in one single place news and information specifically pertinent to major global corruption in business and government.
The news items, views, editorials and opinions summarized or reported on this website are taken from the general media and
reputable blogs, websites, etc., and are exclusively the responsibility of the original sources and/or authors. In accordance
with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work on this website is distributed under fair use without profit or payment
to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes
only. Ref: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107html
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