Uzbekistan ranked worst among Central Asian countries in the report – 175th out of the 180 countries and territories surveyed. Turkmenistan ranked 162nd, while Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were tied for 150th. Kazakhstan’s poor showing comes at a time when the country is flush with proceeds from oil and gas, and is slated to head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2009.
In the Caucasus, Georgia and Armenia both made gains. Georgia improved its score from 2.8 last year to 3.4 this year, and Armenia from 2.9 to 3.0 this year. Other countries in the region fared less well – Azerbaijan, for example, lost points in 2007. In Southeastern Europe, with the exception of Bulgaria, which slipped back from 57th place to 64th, all of the countries listed from the region – Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia – improved their rankings from 2006.
Macedonia made the most gains, moving up from 105th place in 2006 to being tied for 84th place with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Romania also moved dramatically up the list, from 84th place last year to 69th this year. The annual survey measures the perception of corruption among politicians and public servants, based on at least three surveys per country. Countries are then given a score between 10 (squeaky clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). While a perceived improvement in corruption problems is no doubt positive, the countries of Southeastern Europe, and to a greater extent, the Caucasus, hover on the list in the same company as Colombia (68th place), Saudi Arabia (79th place) and Algeria (99th place). TI also reckons that a score of less than five signifies that a country has serious corruption problems; none of the countries in the Balkans or the Caucasus rank higher than Bulgaria’s and Croatia’s score of 4.1.
Leading this year’s CPI are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, tied for first with scores of 9.4 each. Sharing the bottom of the list are Somalia and Myanmar, tied for 179th with scores of 1.4 each.
In other news, TI ranked former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic number five on its list of “The World’s Ten Most Corrupt Leaders” for allegedly embezzling US$1 billion from his country between 1989 and 2000. Milosevic was well behind such embezzling heavyweights such as list topper Muhamed Suharto, the former Indonesian president who allegedly robbed his country of as much as US$35 billion, as well as former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and former Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko, but did beat out notorious former world leaders Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti (US$800 million) and Alberto Fujimori of Peru (US$600 million).
