Tax evasion is a known problem in Italy and Greece |
The debt
problems of eurozone countries like Greece and Italy are due in part to their
governments' failure to tackle bribery and corruption, according to an annual
report by an anti-corruption watchdog.
Corruption
has exacerbated the eurozone debt crisis and continues to hamper efforts to
control it, anti-graft organization Transparency International said in its
annual report on global corruption released Thursday.
Debt-ridden
countries Greece and Italy scored particularly poorly among the 183 countries
ranked in the report. On a scale of zero to 10, zero signifying the highest
perceived corruption, Italy and Greece scored 3.9 and 3.4, respectively. That
placed Italy in 69th place (first being the least corrupt) and Greece in 80th
place.
The report
said the financial woes experienced across the 17-nation eurozone have happened
"partly because of public authorities' failure to tackle the bribery and
tax evasion that are key drivers of the debt crisis."
The debt crisis has had ripple effects across the whole eurozone |
Robin
Hodess, director of research for the Berlin-based group, added that the
eurozone crisis "reflects poor financial management, lack of transparency
and mismanagement of public funds."
At the
bottom of the list were Somalia and North Korea, both scoring 1.0. At the more
positive end of the scale, New Zealand topped the survey with a score of 9.5,
followed by Denmark and eurozone country Finland. France and Germany, the
eurozone's two biggest economies, ranked 25th and 14th, respectively.
The report
also cited the Arab Spring revolutions as evidence that "nepotism, bribery
and patronage were so deeply ingrained in daily life that even existing
anti-corruption laws had little effect" in the region.
Transparency
International's annual corruption report analyzes data from 17 surveys, looking
at factors like enforcement of anti-corruption laws, access to information and
conflicts of interest.
Author:
Andrew Bowen (AFP, dpa)
Editor:
Martin Kuebler
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