Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forJune 28th, 2001 | back to home

28 June 2001
Filed under:Uncategorized at5:27 pm

The Corruption Perceptions Index 2001 A survey of surveys taking in 91 countries and providing a few surprises.

This one suggests that Finland is perceived as the least corrupt nation in the world by some distance (9.9 out of 10). I wouldn’t have guessed that Singapore would be joint 4th with Iceland (9.2). Canada (8.9) is 7th (despite quite a few minor scandals reported in the local press) and the UK (8.3) is 13th, just behind Australia and Switzerland and three places ahead of the USA (7.6). Ireland (7.5)is perceived to be 18th most clean nation despite a series of scandals that have been emerging in recent years and I can’t imagine how Japan (7.1) could be seen as cleaner than, say, Belgium considering what you hear about organized crime there….

Sadly some of the poorest countries like Bangladesh (0.4) and Nigeria (1) are also reputed to be among the most corrupt and eastern european countries are mostly nestled near the bottom, too.