International   

“Myanmar, very corrupt nation”

Myanmar was named one of the most corrupt countries in the world in a league table published by an international anti-bribery group.

The military regime comes joint bottom in Transparency International’s 180-country index, sharing 179th position with Somalia, and slightly below Iraq.

The group’s chair, Huguette Labelle, said at the group’s launch: “Repressive regimes lend themselves to potential violence, but of course also to corruption. The situation allows people not to account for revenues they receive.”

Forty per cent of the world’s states are listed in the survey as having “rampant corruption”. Ms. Labelle said most of the countries were desperately poor, with looting by public officials an enormous drain on resources.

Among the rich countries with relatively clean records for domestic corruption the U.K. at 12th in the rankings is behind Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Singapore. The honour of least corrupt country is shared by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand.

The U.K.’s ranking is expected to fall when next year’s survey is conducted in the wake of the BAE and “cash-for-honours” scandals which emerged in 2006-7.

Britain also came under attack for what Ms. Labelle called “the dark side” of rich western states, whose multinational companies were complicit in driving the corruption of poor countries and whose offshore financial systems profited from money laundering.

Lawrence Cockcroft, the development economist who chairs the U.K. end of the organisation, said: “There are huge flows of money from Russian and Thai sources, buying up British football clubs. And no questions are being asked by prosecutors or the Serious Organised Crime Agency”.

He said there was an “extraordinary failure” by the British government to reform its corruption laws. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Security Council urges Myanmar to show restraint
“Myanmar, very corrupt nation”
Brown copied speech?
N. Korea promises results from talks
Dalai Lama meets Angela Merkel
24 Tigers killed in intense fighting
We have the numbers: PML (Q)
Bush accused of bid to derail U.N. climate conference
Three Gorges Dam causing problems, says China
Chidambaram: India should grab nuclear deal
Pranab, Rice review bilateral relations
Benazir Bhutto for peace treaty

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu