Transparency International: 4 Arab countries are among the “most corrupt” countries in the world

The report says Saudi Arabia has made progress in fighting corruption. It has advanced four points in index scores from last year.

However, the report and the index calculation do not address other data such as the deterioration of the human rights situation in the Kingdom or the restrictions imposed on journalists, political and opposition activists and citizens in general.

The Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, launched a campaign in 2017 to fight corruption, as part of his reform plan in the country.

The Kingdom later announced that this campaign had succeeded in recovering approximately $ 106 billion of “stolen” goods and wealth. But the operation took place in the absence of any kind of transparency and no investigations or fair trials of the suspects were announced.

The report recommended that the Kingdom use its presidency of the G20 summit to end all forms of suppression of political freedoms and to uphold transparency and accountability in the executive branch.

The report dedicated a part to Tunisia, as it was said that in the last five years it has suffered a stalemate in relation to corruption indicators.

Tunisia scored 43 points out of 100 in the corruption perception index.

During the reporting period, Tunisia made legal changes that protect whistleblowers, improve access to information, make room for civil society and establish community accountability.

However, these laws were not enough to improve Tunisia’s position in corruption indicators, which the organization attributes to a lack of effective law enforcement.

The report states that implementation of the law is Tunisia’s biggest challenge in its fight against corruption.

And he recommended the need to provide financial and human resources to strengthen the Anti-Corruption Commission and give it greater independence.

The report also attributed Tunisia’s stagnation in not holding any political officials responsible for crimes related to corruption or in returning stolen money. This is partly due to the lack of complete independence of the judiciary.

The index is based on the rating of countries on a 100-point scale, so that corruption decreases the more points the state gets.

The index included 180 countries, of which only a third scored more than fifty points.

The countries were divided into six regions, namely the Americas, Western Europe and the European Union, African Sahara, the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific.

Western European countries and those of the European Union were the least corrupt, as Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore and Sweden ranked in the top five.

The 2019 Corruption Perception Index focuses on the relationship between politics, money and corruption and is based on data on the transparency of political campaign funding and public access to decision making.

The report came out with seven recommendations to end global corruption, restore confidence in government policies and fight political corruption. Which:

In total, the report revealed the progress of 22 countries in the fight against corruption, led by Greece, Guyana and Estonia. While 21 countries have fallen, including Canada, Nicaragua and Australia.