Greece ranks high for graft

Coming in the midst of a series of corruption scandals, it was perhaps no surprise yesterday that the latest index measuring the perception of graft in 180 countries should indicate that Greece has made little progress since last year. Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index found Greece to be the 57th least corrupt country surveyed with a score of 4.7 out of 10. A country’s score indicates the degree of public sector corruption as perceived by businesspeople and country analysts and ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). Greece is the lowest-ranked eurozone country and is placed just below Italy and just above Turkey. Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand are ranked joint first with scores of 9.3. Somalia is ranked last with just 1 point. Greece’s score is an increase of 0.1 on last year’s index and shows that «the effort to improve must continue at a faster rate,» according to the representatives of the Greek branch of Transparency International, Costas Bakouris and Aris Syngros. «As long as citizens get the message that laws are not implemented or are implemented selectively, the consequences intensify over time,» they said. The government had a different view, saying that the improvement showed things are moving in the right direction. «This small but significant improvement proves that measures to intensify checks so everything is brought to light is bearing tangible fruit,» said government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos. Transparency International is expected to publish the details of its survey in January.