United Kingdom

Details

  • Service: Advisory, Risk Consulting
  • Type: Business and industry issue
  • Date: 07/01/2013

Transparency International releases 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index 

Man writing on a graph
The Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was released at the end of 2012 and features a new methodology, which now presents a score for each of the 176 countries and territories from 0 (public sector perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (public sector perceived to be very transparent).

Charlie Patrick, Head of Anti-Bribery & Corruption at KPMG in the UK, says:

 

“The CPI demonstrates that the threat of corruption has a truly global reach."
“While there are some movers on last year’s results, the 2012 rankings support many popular assumptions around the location of the world’s most corrupt territories.  It also highlights the very significant threat posed by corruption in high-growth areas such as Russia, India, China and parts of South East Asia." 
“Today’s high-risk and high-growth markets offer multinational organisations exciting opportunities for growth.  However, these countries also typically provide fewer sources of publicly available information about people and businesses; have differing cultural and business norms; and have complex legislative and regulatory regimes in place.  All of these can lead to the risk of higher levels of corruption."
“It is therefore paramount that multinationals perform an appropriate level of due diligence prior to conducting business in a foreign territory or entering a new market; the CPI provides a useful indication of how in-depth that due diligence should be and often forms part of the suite of tools and resources that inform the decisions and strategies of companies with a global reach.” 
“However, even the UK and other western democracies are slipping down the table, with recent events forcing the review of established assumptions regarding low levels of corruption in public institutions.  The media coverage in the UK of topics such as MP's expenses and media scandals has the potential to change the perception of corruption in the UK.”
The “global reach” of corruption demonstrated in the 2012 results is summarised by Transparency International as follows:
“Some countries score well, but no country scores a perfect 100. Two-thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable”.

It should be noted that the index just considers perceptions of corruption in the public sector and does not consider corruption in the private sector.


The full 2012 results, represented in an interactive heat-map of corruption perceptions, can be found on the Transparency International website (external link) 

Contact

Charlie PatrickCharlie Patrick

KPMG in the UK

0207 694 5470

 

charlie.patrick@kpmg.co.uk

 

 

 

Share this

Share this

What is the corruption perceptions index?

The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be, giving each both a score and rank.

 

The score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 – 100, where 0 presents a country or territory as being perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean.  The 2012 score given to the United Kingdom is 74.

 

The rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories included in the index (a score of 1 being the best). This year's index includes 176 countries and territories, against which the United Kingdom is ranked as 17.

Related publications

 

Fighting Fraud links

Recent articles