Survey Shows Germany Winning Corruption Battle

Germany's battle against corruption seems to be working according to the latest survey of the world's most corrupt nations carried out by Transparency International. With Finland at number one as the least corrupt country in the 146-country survey, Germany was rated 15 in the table for 2004, up one place from 16th in 2005. The report placed Haiti and Bangladesh as the worst offenders followed by Nigeria, Myanmar and Chad, all of which scored less than two out of a best possible score of 10. Germany scored 8.2. The index by the Berlin-based watchdog looks at perceived corruption among public officials and politicians. Transparency International also said that corruption is crippling the battle against poverty and robbing oil-rich countries such as Iraq of their development potential. "Oil-rich Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen all have extremely low scores," said the organization's chairman Peter Eigen at a press conference in London. "In these countries, public contracting in the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials."