LONDON: The Corruption Perceptions Index published by the group, Transparency International, on Tuesday shows high degrees of corruption among developing nations. But banking systems in the West are helping make that possible.

“The total capital flight from the African continent a year is about 150 billion dollars, and the total aid flow to the African continent is 25 billion dollars,” Chandrashekhar Krishnan, executive director for Transparency International (TI), UK, told IPS.

“That flight of capital basically represents the routing of state assets by corrupt politicians,” he said. “That money is being deposited in financial institutions in London, in Zurich, in New York. What I suggest is that western governments should be doing much more to ensure that their financial systems are not used to launder dirty money.”

The receipt of money in banks in Britain, Switzerland and the United States does not show in the corruption perceptions index. Switzerland ranks a noble seventh in the index, after Iceland, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore and Sweden. Britain is 11th after Norway at number eight followed by Australia, Austria and the Netherlands.

The United States is number 17 after Britain and Luxembourg, Canada, Hong Kong and Germany. But no survey indicates the extent to which banks in these countries receive corrupt money.

This is in any case a corruption perceptions index; it does not purport to rank corruption itself. And in developing societies such as those in India, perceptions can often reflect a higher level of expectations.

“This is very possible,” Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen told IPS.

The survey presents a largely dismal picture of what people perceive. More than two-thirds of the 159 nations surveyed scored less than five out of a clean score of 10, ‘indicating serious levels of corruption in a majority of the countries surveyed’, TI said in a statement.

Among the countries included in the index, corruption is perceived as most rampant in Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Myanmar and Haiti, which are also among the poorest countries in the world.

“Extensive research shows that foreign investment is lower in countries perceived to be corrupt, which further thwarts their chance to prosper,” the TI report says.

“Similarly, the responsibility in the fight against corruption does not fall solely on lower-income countries,” the TI report says. “Wealthier countries, apart from facing numerous corruption cases within their own borders, must share the burden by ensuring that their companies are not involved in corrupt practices abroad.” —Dawn/IPS News Service