List of the Most Corrupt States in the World

List of the Most Corrupt States in the World, ranked in Order

The list is the Transparency International annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks 175 countries on their levels of public sector corruption.

Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of Transparency International

The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks States, since 1995, “by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.” The Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International is, in fact, a composition of several corruption indicators.

According to the paper “Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index: Whose Perceptions Are They Anyway? (Revised March 2005), authored by Theresa Thompson and Anwar Shah, the Corruption Perceptions Index “ranks countries on a zero to ten scale, with a score of zero representing very high corruption. Since each source of data about the level of corruption used a different scale, the scores need to be standardized before being averaged into the Corruption Perceptions Index.

Once standardized, each source receives equal weight in the index. In other words, it is the simple mean of the standardized sources.

Most of the component indictors only rate corruption for a sub-set of the countries included in the CPI. Therefore, all of the countries included in a particular year’s CPI have not been rated by the same sources. In addition, since results from multiple editions of some sources were used, the ratings of some organizations had a higher weight. For example, in the 2003 CPI, the World Economic Forum’s “Global Competitiveness Report” corruption scores from 2001, 2002, and 2003 each received equal weight in the Corruption Perceptions Index as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s “Country Risk Service and Country Forecast” , since only 2003 data was included from the Economist Intelligence Unit score.

The number of sources used in the index tends to change from year to year, as well as the number of countries scored. (…) The World Competitiveness Report and the Asian Intelligence Issues are included in all years.”

The Corruption Perceptions Index generally defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit.”

The following list is from the least corrupt countries to the most corrupt countries (2015):

• Denmark
• Finland
• Sweden
• New Zealand
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Switzerland
• Singapore
• Canada
• Germany
• Luxembourg
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Iceland
• Belgium
• Austria
• United States
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Japan
• Uruguay
• Qatar
• Chile
• Estonia
• France
• United Arab Emirates
• Bhutan
• Botswana
• Portugal
• Poland
• Taiwan
• Cyprus
• Israel
• Lithuania
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Czech Republic
• Korea (South)
• Malta
• Cape Verde
• Costa Rica
• Latvia
• Seychelles
• Rwanda
• Jordan
• Mauritius
• Namibia
• Georgia
• Saudi Arabia
• Bahrain
• Croatia
• Hungary
• Slovakia
• Malaysia
• Kuwait
• Cuba
• Ghana
• Greece
• Romania
• Oman
• Italy
• Lesotho
• Montenegro
• Senegal
• South Africa
• Sao Tome and Principe
• The FYR of Macedonia
• Turkey
• Bulgaria
• Jamaica
• Serbia
• El Salvador
• Mongolia
• Panama
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Brazil
• Burkina Faso
• India
• Thailand
• Tunisia
• Zambia
• Benin
• China
• Colombia
• Liberia
• Sri Lanka
• Albania
• Algeria
• Egypt
• Indonesia
• Morocco
• Peru
• Suriname
• Armenia
• Mali
• Mexico
• Philippines
• Bolivia
• Djibouti
• Gabon
• Niger
• Dominican Republic
• Ethiopia
• Kosovo
• Moldova
• Argentina
• Belarus
• Cote d’Ivoire
• Ecuador
• Togo
• Honduras
• Malawi
• Mauritania
• Mozambique
• Vietnam
• Pakistan
• Tanzania
• Azerbaijan
• Guyana
• Russia
• Sierra Leone
• Gambia
• Guatemala
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lebanon
• Madagascar
• Timor-Leste
• Cameroon
• Iran
• Nepal
• Nicaragua
• Paraguay
• Ukraine
• Comoros
• Nigeria
• Tajikistan
• Bangladesh
• Guinea
• Kenya
• Laos
• Papua New Guinea
• Uganda
• Central African Republic
• Congo Republic
• Chad
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Myanmar
• Burundi
• Cambodia
• Zimbabwe
• Uzbekistan
• Eritrea
• Syria
• Turkmenistan
• Yemen
• Haiti
• Guinea-Bissau
• Venezuela
• Iraq
• Libya
• Angola
• South Sudan
• Sudan
• Afghanistan
• Korea (North)
• Somalia