Corruption Mp3

[Margorie Gomoran]

Corruptioncan happen anywhere: in business, government, the courts, the media, and in civil society, as well as across all sectors from health and education to infrastructure and sports.

Corruption happens in the shadows, often with the help of professional enablers such as bankers, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents, opaque financial systems and anonymous shell companies that allow corruption schemes to flourish and the corrupt to launder and hide their illicit wealth.

Transparency is all about knowing who, why, what, how and how much. It means shedding light on formal and informal rules, plans, processes and actions. Transparency helps us, the public, hold all power to account for the common good.

Seeking and receiving information is a human right that can act as a safeguard against corruption, and increase trust in decision makers and public institutions. However, transparency is not only about making information available, but ensuring it can be easily accessed, understood and used by citizens.

The global average remains unchanged for over a decade at just 43 out of 100. More than two-thirds of countries score below 50, while 26 countries have fallen to their lowest scores yet. Despite concerted efforts and hard-won gains by some, 155 countries have made no significant progress against corruption or have declined since 2012.

Corruption undermines governments' ability to protect people and erodes public trust, provoking more and harder to control security threats. On the other hand, conflict creates opportunities for corruption and subverts governments' efforts to stop it.

Even countries with high CPI scores play a role in the threats that corruption poses to global security. For decades, they have welcomed dirty money from abroad, allowing kleptocrats to increase their wealth, power and destructive geopolitical ambitions.

The CPI is the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world. But how is it calculated? What kinds of corruption does it cover? And why are certain countries not included? Watch this short explainer video, or dive straight into the most frequently asked questions.

Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption may involve many activities which include bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement and it may also involve practices which are legal in many countries.[1] Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts with an official capacity for personal gain.

Corruption and crime are endemic sociological occurrences which appear with regular frequency in virtually all countries on a global scale in varying degrees and proportions. Recent data suggests corruption is on the rise.[6] Each individual nation allocates domestic resources for the control and regulation of corruption and the deterrence of crime. Strategies which are undertaken in order to counter corruption are often summarized under the umbrella term anti-corruption.[7] Additionally, global initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 also have a targeted goal which is supposed to substantially reduce corruption in all of its forms.[8] Recent initiatives like the Tax Justice Network goes beyond bribery and theft and brings attention to tax abuses.[9]

Corruption is a complex phenomenon and can occur on different scales.[14] Corruption ranges from small favors between a small number of people (petty corruption),[15] to corruption that affects the government on a large scale (grand corruption), and corruption that is so prevalent that it is part of the everyday structure of society, including corruption as one of the symptoms of organized crime (systemic corruption). "Corruption of the rich" is particularly hard to measure and largely excluded from conventional metrics like the CPI.[16]

A number of indicators and tools have been developed which can measure different forms of corruption with increasing accuracy;[17][18] but when those are impractical, one study suggests looking at bodyfat as a rough guide after finding that obesity of cabinet ministers in post-Soviet states was highly correlated with more accurate measures of corruption.[19][20]

Political economist Yuen Yuen Ang "unbundles corruption" into four types, encompassing both petty and grand corruption as well as legal and illegal versions: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, access money.[21] According to her definition, speed money "means petty bribes that businesses or citizens pay to bureaucrats to get around hurdles or speed things up." This is the kind of corruption associated with the "efficient grease hypothesis," which economists found burdensome to businesses in practice.[22] Ang defines access money as "high-stakes rewards extended by business actors to powerful officials, not just for speed, but to access exclusive, valuable privileges."[23] Most theories about bribery focus on speed money, but neglects access money. "From a businessperson's point of view, access money is less a tax than an investment... making it more sludge than grease."[24] The Unbundled Corruption Index measures the prevalence of these four types of corruption.

Petty corruption occurs at a smaller scale and takes place at the implementation end of public services when public officials meet the public. For example, in many small places such as registration offices, police stations, state licensing boards,[26][27] and many other private and government sectors.[clarification needed]

Grand corruption is defined as corruption occurring at the highest levels of government in a way that requires significant subversion of the political, legal and economic systems. Such corruption is commonly found in countries with authoritarian or dictatorial governments but also in those without adequate policing of corruption.[28]

The government system in many countries is divided into the legislative, executive and judicial branches in an attempt to provide independent services that are less subject to grand corruption due to their independence from one another.[29]

Systemic corruption (or endemic corruption)[30] is corruption which is primarily due to the weaknesses of an organization or process. It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system.

Factors which encourage systemic corruption include conflicting incentives, discretionary powers; monopolistic powers; lack of transparency; low pay; and a culture of impunity.[31] Specific acts of corruption include "bribery, extortion, and embezzlement" in a system where "corruption becomes the rule rather than the exception."[32] Scholars distinguish between centralized and decentralized systemic corruption, depending on which level of state or government corruption takes place; in countries such as the post-Soviet states both types occur.[33] Some scholars argue that there is a negative duty[clarification needed] of western governments to protect against systematic corruption of underdeveloped governments.[34][35]

Corruption has been a major issue in China, where society depends heavily on personal relationships. By the late 20th century that combined with the new lust for wealth, produced escalating corruption. Historian Keith Schoppa says that bribery was only one of the tools of Chinese corruption, which also included, "embezzlement, nepotism, smuggling, extortion, cronyism, kickbacks, deception, fraud, squandering of public money, illegal business transactions, stock manipulation and real estate fraud." Given the repeated anti-corruption campaigns it was a prudent precaution to move as much of the fraudulent money as possible overseas.[36]

While petty, grand, and systemic corruption, described above, are largely found in poor countries with weak institutions, a newer literature has turned to money politics in wealthy democracies and extreme global inequalities. Simon Weschle at Syracuse University examines the prevalence of campaign finance and its consequences for democracy.[38] Kristin Surak at the London School of Economics explores the controversial practice of millionaires buying "golden passports" with no intention of actually migrating. In her words, "a full-blown citizenship industry that thrives on global inequalities" has arisen."[39]

While not necessarily involving bribery, recent research documents the emergence of "a particular kind of large, non-state business group" that is akin to a mafia system in China.[40] In this situation, the boundary between public and private actors blurs.

Much of existing literature focuses on explicit corrupt actions like bribery and embezzlement, endemic in poor countries (see below). For "money in politics," the causes are very different and largely ignored in conventional literature. For example, the UK is a developed economy with a robust democracy, and yet London is a hub for money laundering.[41] In a critique of the failures and politics leading up to the US financial crisis, a Stanford financial economist noted, "In the real world, it turned out, important economic outcomes are often the consequences of political forces. During 2010, people within regulatory bodies told me privately that false and misleading claims were affecting key policy decisions... I saw confusion, willful blindness, political forces, various and sometimes subtle forms of corruption, and moral disengagement, first hand."[42]

Since a high degree of monopoly and discretion accompanied by a low degree of transparency does not automatically lead to corruption, a fourth variable of "morality" or "integrity" has been introduced by others. The moral dimension has an intrinsic component and refers to a "mentality problem", and an extrinsic component referring to circumstances like poverty, inadequate remuneration, inappropriate work conditions and inoperable or over-complicated procedures which demoralize people and let them search for "alternative" solutions.

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