Page 51 - bne_March2019_20190306 magazine

bne March 2019 New Europe in Numbers I 51
Russia and Ukraine battle it out for title of most corrupt country in Europe
still noticeably better than nearly all the countries of Central Asia.
The surprise performance from these two regions is Belarus that has notice- ably improved its score since 2012, ris- ing from 31 to 44 this year, and putting Minsk ahead of most of the countries in the Balkans and just behind those in Central Europe.
Georgia is another standout success from its neighbours and Estonia is peerless in the region, ranked 18th in the survey and placed alongside the mature democracies of Belgium and Ireland. The next highest is Poland with a score of 60 that ranks it 36th, heading a pack of the more progressive countries from Central Europe,
but even these countries still have a serious corruption problem that remains a work in progress.
bne IntelliNews
Russia recaptured the dubious title
of “most corrupt country in Eastern Europe” after it slipped three places in this year’s Transparency International Corruption Perceptions index, falling from 135th place in 2017 to 138th last year out of 180 countries surveyed.
Ukraine on the other hand has shed the most corrupt title it held in 2015 and improved its standing, rising from 130th place in 2017 to 120th now, buoying its supporters’ claims that progress is be- ing made.
Looking at the actual corruption scores, which run from 1-100 with 100 standing for no corruption at all, then the picture is less encouraging. Russia’s score
fell one point from 29 to 28, whereas Ukraine’s score improved two points from 30 to 32.
Ukraine has been pressured into at- tacking corruption by its international donors, which have insisted on a new anticorruption system.
The new National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) is leading an anti-graft drive, but the complimen- tary court to prosecute wrong-doers has been missing. And at the end of 2018 the government finally dropped its resistance to an anti-corruption court (ACC), but it has yet to be set up.
Indeed, the first “big fish” to be indicted by NABU was Roman Nasirov has been neither prosecuted nor charge, but is running for president in the current elections. Nasirov's case was a test of the system and it failed.
Russia has a bad image problem when it comes to corruption, but it has also been cracking down on the cancer and made some progress. Presidential Om- budsman for Business Boris Titov was
appointed a corruption tsar and there has been some progress as part of the general drive. Some 10,000 policemen have been sacked on graft charges and even a sitting minister, Alexey Ulyu- kayev, was sent to prison after he was caught red handed accepting a bribe.
A quick look at the latest bne IntelliNews Heatmap of Transparency International corruption scores over the last seven years underlines the point: Russia and Ukraine remained more or less tied in the red “highly corrupt” category, but are
HEATMAP: TI Corruption Perception Index
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